Piglet! My Irish surname means piglet!
Like millions of Americans, I’ve been poking into my heritage using ancestry sites, such as FamilySearch.com.
That’s how I learned that “Purcell” is an occupational name of Norman origin for “swineherd.”
My name derives from the Norman-French word “pourcel,” which comes from the Latin word “porus,” which means piglet!
I always thought my heritage was mostly Irish and German, but I’ve just learned I’m part British, French and Scandinavian?
OK. Now I understand why I love jokes that begin like this: “An Englishman, a Frenchman and a Scandinavian walk into a bar…”
Until I started my research, all I knew about my heritage was that my great grandfather, Thomas James Purcell, came over from Ireland in about 1885.
He got a laborer job in the steel mills and met his bride, Jane Shappey, at a saloon near the mills that her family ran.
Jane’s family had also immigrated to Pittsburgh around the 1880s. They came from Alsace-Lorraine when she was a child, and the Shappeys proudly considered themselves French, not German.
Jane and Thomas’s union produced eight children, seven daughters and one son, my grandfather, also named Thomas James Purcell.
Jane suffered much grief in her 79 years. She lost three daughters, one as a child and two in their 20s, a young grandson and her husband.
She also lost her only son, my grandfather, who died from strep throat in 1937 when she was 65 and he was only 33.
Despite the significant losses, Jane — better known as “Grandma Purcell” — was a live wire and her house was always full of laughter.
During the Great Depression, several adult family members and their children lived together in her big house on Orchlee Street.
Copyright 2024 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.