than and myself had removed to the cemetery at Lexington, Kentucky, the remains of Clement Hearne and wife, and several others of the family, and a handsome monument placed there to mark their last resting place.) We visited several other old homesteads, but have noticed sufficient.

A large number of the Hearne family have left the last "e" off the name, and while in the East in the spring of 189!, I made diligent inquiry of those now living there, as to when it was first commenced by them, but none seemed to know, and about all of them were of the belief that it was always 'Hearn': but after my return home, I met my cousin, William L Hearne, of Wheeling, West Virginia, then seventy-two years of age, and a grandson of Lowder Hearne, who told me that when on a visit to my grandfather Clement (in Kentucky 1836). who was the best informed of any of the family of his day as to the family genealogical record. and having in his possession three very old books, ledgers. family records, etc., dating back to 1627, 1680, 1688, which were the property of the first William in America. (Wm. L. said one of these old books contained the genealogy of the family, tracing in an unbroken line to the conqueror. Mrs. Eveline Mien, a granddaughter of Clement Hearne told me the same thing. She and William L. were then eighteen years old.) He told him that in a very early day, about 1770. there was one of the family named Samuel Hearne, a son of the second William, who was a surveyor by profession, a man of good education and fine property and an influential man in the community, who assumed to say the final 'e' in our name was superfluous. and proceeded to leave it off himself and finally prevailed on all the familv in the locality to do likewise, except himself (Clement). Cousin William L. said that even then, after sixty or seventy years, Grandfather Clement was greatly worried that any of the family should leave out a single letter of the name. It would seem, from information I have, that Thomas Hearne[1], grandson of the first William, and whose name and family are on the family tree of 1891, did not leave the 'e' off his name after the removal to North Carolina, and it is likely that his descendants did not for several generations, and of them I know never have.

I have before me now a note from Rev. Erasmus H. Hearn,.

[Continued on page 446]

[1] Thomas Hearne, 1717, son of Thomas Hearne.