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I believe Sam West and Joe Rene Israel have actual documentation of the marriage of Olive Regan and Lemuel Israel in 1776.
As to the "Ezzell's" Newits family line may have CHANGED the name from "ISRAEL" and its variations after the 1850's but his brother John Israel's family certainly DID NOT. I have the family Bible Records of John Israel and his son David Israel and ALL 2 DOZEN names are correctly spelled as ISRAEL and have been through succeeding generations.
The Ezzell theory comes from a listing in Sampson County where Lemuel Israel and a George Ezzell were (the beginning of this insistence by Ezzell descendents of their idea of the proper spelling). This to my mind is the most tenuous of threads to base the foundation of a whole theory on.
The plain DOCUMENTED factS are at least from 1800 forward every descendent of Lemuel Israel and his son John Israel have ALWAYS SPELLED THE NAME AS "ISRAEL."
I seriously doubt if any Israel descendent after over 2 centuries are going to oblige the "Ezzell" propenents by changing over 200 years of actual documented history with a name change to Ezzell.
Most of the citizens of Robeson County and indeed the census takers themselves were virtually illiterate and even the most educated barely able to read and right and of course in those circumstances and differing "accents" many names were spelled many ways. Indeed Israel itself was often mispelled "Isreal" or other variations but it is consistently clear that it was indeed "ISRAEL."
Another example of this which so confuses researchers is another family line of mine which is "PITMAN" which after 1920 for some obscure reason added another "T".
Anyway, It took me many months of intensive research to locate my 2 great Pitman grandparents finally finding them under the spelling, "PETENAN" yet another example of the writing/listening abilities of the census takers and the language skill communications between both the census takers and the families enumerated.
I am a descendent of LEMUEL ISRAEL not Lemuel Ezzell. And so shall remain until something better in the form of actual documentation proves otherwise. Speculation from a single census in Sampson County previous to Lemuel showing up in Robeson, NC simply is not enough.
Terrell Johnson
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