| John Graweere or Geaween? Jack Goins . |
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John Graweere or Geaween? Jack Goins These above names became important to me in my Goins and Melungeon research, especially after discovering the original court records were lost and the two documents researchers used and referenced in their notes had transcribed the name differently. Both transcribed the records from a copy transcribed from the original record by Conway Robinson. One as John Graweere and the other as John Geaween, so with the combined efforts of other concerned researchers we obtained a copy of the court case of John Graweere from the Virginia Historical Society, copied by Conway Robinson who wrote the name twice, once as “John Graweere”, and again as “said Graweere.” This review of Colonial records and names in those records question the accuracy of the genealogy and all articles written using the name Gowen as a variant of Geaween which presents a major problem for Gowen researchers who claim the freed slave was John Gowen. Conway Robinson’s notes dispute their claim because Graweere is not a variant of Gowen. Copies of this court record have been given to Librarians and to experts in historical handwriting in four different states, all of whom concluded the word as transcribed by Robinson was Graweere. I will list a few examples of the many reasons given for the conclusion on why the word is *Graweere: The last letter in said word is an e- example the word (the) was used in this court record 27 times and the ending e is identical to the ending e as in Graweere. Also in the document, the ending letters in the word *therefore are identical to the ending re in Graweere. The second letter is an r rather than an e as in Geaween (Gowen)because several words in this record where the second letter is an r and one of them is directly under the word Graweere and that word is brought, the r in brought is identical to the second letter as in Graweere. Several words in said document end with an n such as then and women and they prove the last letter as in Geaween cannot be an n as claimed by researchers who used Geaween a variant of Gowen and then use the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography as their reference. Henry Read McIlwaine (1864-1934) also transcribed the name as Graweere from Conway Robinson’s notes, which is not a variant of Gowen. The reason researchers ignored Conway Robinson’s transcribed copy from the original record may have been because it was not on microfilm, or in major libraries, but this begs the question why did they claim Henry Read McIlwaine transcription was wrong?
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