Favorite Name: Mehitabel

Hitty, her first hundred years by Rachel Field.
New York, Macmillan Co., 1929.

Week 6 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompts us to write about a favorite name. My family tree is dotted with several names over and over. John and Nicholas; Mary and Margaret are just a few of the most common. While their individual stories are interesting, their names... not so much. I do have a Missouri and a few presidents and an ancestor whose second wife was named Cinderella. But none of those particularly inspired me for this week's post.

I have always been intrigued by Puritan virtue names like Patience and Prudence. Sadly, I don't have have any of them either. I do, however, have a Mehitable! I loved that old-fashioned name long before I discovered I had one in my family tree. The name Mehitabel was popular during the colonial period when many Protestant children were given names from the Old Testament. The name is Hebrew for "God rejoices."

When I was growing up I read any books I could get my hands on about adventurous girls like Caddie Woodlawn and Laura Ingalls and friends Betsy, Tacy and Tib. Another favorite was the story of Hitty – short for Mehitabel –  a wooden doll whose story begins in Maine in 1820. The book follows Hitty's adventures over the course of a century after she becomes separated from her original owner, Phoebe, as passes through many hands.

Hitty's story won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature for author Rachel Field in 1930, which is timely as the Newbery awards for 2018 are being selected this week! My fondness for these adventure stories has continued well into adulthood. I know I am not the only one as new opportunities to engage with these stories have presented themselves such as the recent publication of the highly acclaimed Prairie Fires, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. While I don't know enough about my Mehitable to write a full paragraph, let alone a 625-page biography, I'll continue to revisit Hitty and my other old friends and think of one of my favorite names on my family tree.