Hello folks,
I am searching for pretty much any info on the surname "Wastie". From what I've heard from relatives, the Wasties started in Ireland (no idea where), and pretty much moved everywhere else. But it's still a pretty rare name. If anyone has any scrap of info on their home parish/region or anything, please let me know! This is one of the biggest questions in my family tree :)
Thank you for any help you can offer,
Liz
Hello, There is a comprehensive list of Irish surnames here--http://www.americanlastnames.us/last-names/Irish/W/W-0.html--but Wastie is not among them. Do you have any documents showing this name? If so, perhaps you might show them here.
Hello again,
There's a Thomas Wastie married to Jane in the 1900 U.S. Census. Thomas is from Canada, his parents from England. This Wastie is English, not Irish.
If you have any names and dates, it would help with searching your family.
There isn’t a single person named Wastie anywhere in Ireland in the 1901 Irish census, nor one in Griffiths Valuation (1848 -1864). So I think it’s fair to say the name is unknown in Ireland (or wasn’t spelled Wastie anyway).
This is pure speculation, but if your Wastie ancestors did live in Ireland, then there's a Scottish/Irish/Manx surname which might conceivably have been heard by English speakers as something like "Wastie". In Scotland and on the Isle of Man, the name was spelled Mac Uisdin, and in Ireland it was spelled Mac Úistin. According to MacLysaght in his Surnams of Ireland, both were branches of the Scottish Clan MacDonald (people from a number of Scottish clans migrated to Ireland in the Middle Ages, even before the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th Century). The name was apparently based on a form of the given name Hugh, and was anglicized in a number of ways, including MacCutcheon, Hutchinson, Hutchin, Kitchen, Houston, MacQuestion, MacQuiston, MacWhisten, and Whiston. I'm thinking that the last of those might conceivably be the source of your Wastie version of the name, because the final "n" would not have been pronounced very prominently in Irish (almost swallowed, in fact), and final vowel sounds were often heard yy non-Irish speakers as an "ee" sound. The name was obviously a hard one for English speakers to hear clearly. As I said, though, this is just speculation.
Folks, thank you for your replies!! I appreciate your time! @Patricia, thank you for that tip - i'm going to follow up, even if that Wastie isn't Irish. @Elwyn, thank you! That's not surprising, but it's good to maybe rule something out.
So far, I have a couple names/dates and whatever records Ancestry.com brings up....past 2 gens it gets a little hazy:
And that's as far as Ancestry takes me for right now. I am getting Census records of Wasties in NY, some selective service cards, the odd marriage lic. record. Actual birth/death certs will be very helpful, of course and hopefully I can pin those down. Siblings research and talking to what relatives we can find keep pointing to Ireland, but no fixed location or solid clues Given what @kevin45sfl says, this name could be a mispelling or Anglicization or something else. Whiston/"whistee" or something similar could be a candidate. It's not like names weren't changed a lot in the era of hand writing. And of course, the threads of English/Irish/Scottish ancestry do get so intertwined it wouldn't surprise me if I'm barking up the wrong tree with the country.
My advice is to trace your family back generation by generation in US records using censuses, naturalisation, birth, death & marriage records, till you find ancestors who were born outside the US. Once you know who they were (and roughly where and when they were born) then it becomes possible to look in the right records in the right country. Knowing their occupations and religious denomination can help narrow the search too, especially if they were born before the start of Vital records in Ireland (or wherever).
Hi Liz ...
I'm a WASTIE researcher, living in England. I came across your posting on this messageboard whilst doing one my regular internet searches on the surname. I think I may have some useful information for you!
Before typing it all out, could you please respond to this message to let me know if you're still researching this aspect of your family history? Thanks.
Penny