The Trivettes of Western North Carolina

This website is copyrighted 2004

|||||     Introduction     |||||     The Earliest Trivettes     |||||     North Carolina Political Boundaries     |||||     Whose Child Is Whose?     |||||

|||||     How Do You Spell Trivette?     |||||     Sorting Out the William Trivettes     |||||     Trivettes in the Civil War     |||||

|||||     Descendants of John and Richard Trivette     |||||     What Was It Like As An Early Trivette?     |||||

||||     What Happened To Nathaniel C. Tribet?     ||||     Works Cited     ||||

 

How Do You Spell Trivette?

 

 

This table shows the number of Trivettes using the various spellings.  These figures come from Ancestry.com’s all-persons U.S. Census index.  But it’s important to remember that early census takers usually didn’t ask how a family spells its name; they simply spelled what they thought they heard the way they thought it should be spelled.  This was frequently necessary since it was common for entire families to be illiterate.  In later years there was more literacy.  To compound the problem, census takers often had terrible handwriting, making it challenging for indexers to accurately record surnames.  In spite of all this it’s still an interesting exercise to see the trends in the spelling of names. 

 

In the 1790 census John’s name is spelled Trevit.  In the next several decades North Carolinian’s spelled the name with a ‘b’ instead of a ‘v’.  This is also shown in another source, the minutes of South Fork Baptist Church.   The first Trivette did not appear in North Carolina until the 1880 census.

 

Thomas Trivette and sons who moved to Arkansas in the mid-1800s spelled their name Trivitt, and most all of his descendants continued that spelling.  Likewise, the Trivettes who came to Kentucky after the Civil War initially used the Trivitt spelling, but at some point changed to Trivett and Trivette.

 

There appears to be a separate and distinct family that spells its name with a “b”.  There was such a family in Rockbridge County, Virginia beginning about 1800.  There also is a large family of blacks that initially appeared in the 1810 Delaware census that used the “b” spelling.  They make up a significant number of the Tribbett spelling.  There has also been a small number of blacks using the “v” spelling, but there is no evidence to suggest intermarriage. 

 

The Trevett spelling comes from the large Trevett clan in New England which probably began with the appearance of Henry Trevett in about 1623 in Massachusetts.  Most of them have spelled their name with an “e” as the first vowel, but a few have used “I”. 

 

In a legal deposition dated October 10, 1916, Squire Trivette, the oldest son of Owen, states:

 

“The correct spelling of our surname is Trivett, without the final ‘E’.”

 

In another deposition in the same case Millie Ann Trivette, widow of William H. Trivette, states:

 

“I have written my surname with a final ‘e’ always.  The name has been spelled in a variety of ways by different ones of that name – Trivitt, Trivett, Tribbet, Tribbit, and Trivette; and I have been told by those who have looked the matter up, that Trivette is the correct way to spell it.  My husband used to spell the name Trivitt, but in his later years, he always spelled it Trivett; his brother Dr. Morgan, I think, spelled the name Trivette; Emory, my husband’s son by his second wife, who is the principal owner of the Trivette Grocery Company, of Pikeville, Kentucky, always spells the name with a final ‘e’.  And, all of my children, I believe, spell the name with a final ‘e’.”

 

I do not know where one goes to “look the matter up.”

 

Spelling

1790

1800

1810

1820

1830

1840

1850

1860

1870

1880

1930

Trivet

1

1

0

0

0

4

13

7

44

4

5

Trivett

0

1

2

6

0

9

36

108

110

227

847

Trivette

0

0

0

0

5

0

0

4

11

15

238

Tribet

1

0

1

0

0

5

55

23

15

39

3

Tribett

1

0

0

1

0

1

6

60

38

41

142

Tribbet

0

0

5

2

5

4

58

76

73

52

80

Tribbett

0

0

3

6

3

5

51

64

68

177

407

Trivit

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

12

2

11

Trivitt

0

0

0

2

0

0

32

16

42

13

198

Trevit

2

0

0

0

0

1

4

0

0

6

0

Trevitt

3

1

1

1

2

4

7

32

36

55

33

Trevet

0

0

0

1

0

0

6

4

9

0

5

Trevett

1

1

2

5

4

6

78

135

119

169

400

Trebbitt

        0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

5

Trebbit

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Trebbett

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

5

Trebbet

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

Tribbitt

0

0

0

1

0

1

13

23

18

18

86

Tribbit

0

0

1

0

6

16

9

20

19

23

23

Trevette

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

6

6

13

Trivitte

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

Trevitte

0

0

0

0

9

0

0

0

0

0

0

Tribut

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

7

3

Tribute

0

3

0

1

5

0

6

3

4

7

5