Of "Royal" Birth

I wanted to jot this down before it goes into the back of my foggy memory never to be remembered again.

Or I accidentally delete the email with the family history in it. My Uncle Brent (my Grandpa's brother) told me how the name Royal came to be in our family so I could someday tell Cole.

Cole Royal was named after my Grandpa, Don Royal Jewkes. Who, incidentally, when we told Grandpa we had given Cole the same middle name as him, said he never liked his name much.

My Grandpa (Don Royal) was named after his father Royal S. Jewkes... my Great-grandfather.

My Great-grandfather (Royal S.) was named after his Uncle, Royal Reid, who died just a few days before he was born. Minnie Reid was my Great-great-grandmother (Royal S. Jewkes's mother) and was Royal Reid's sister. Royal Reid was a teen when he died. He drowned after a group of his friends dared him to swim across the Green River. Royal Reid was an excellent swimmer but that spring there was a lot of winter snow run-off and the river was flooding. With Cole, the name Royal has now been handed down to every generation since Royal Reid. Five generations of Royal in all.

Jeff and I always felt it was important to give our kids a family name so they understood they truly are of "Royal" birth.

(Update. Apparently I wasn't entirely wrong the first time I posted this and said my great-grandfather's middle name was Samuel and not the initial "S." My Dad told me yesterday that he just learned on my Grandpa's birth certificate it was listed as Royal Samuel Jewkes. But... a few years before my great-grandpa died, he had to get a birth certificate for something and had to get his siblings to testify that his name was Royal S. Jewkes and not Samuel. No one really knows why or how Samuel was put on the birth certificate originally. But it explains why I've always thought it was Samuel!)