22 July 20014 from
Warren Forsythe - genealogy118 (at) fairpoint.net

Thank you all for responding with suggestions RE: 1843 CURRAN marriage in Harrison Co OH
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YES! it was my compilation at

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=REG&d...

of descendants of Samuel Kerr who md 1815 OH Ann Nancy Smith/Smythe

which prompted the Nancy Curran descendant to email me in the first place.
[their daughter Nancy Kerr married 1844 and 1860 still in us census under 1844 married name]

Occasionally her maiden name is reported as Kerr or Kerns or Kern, but in the two best documents:
Her 1843 marriage in Harrison Co OH it's spelled CURRAN, and
[no help from her own 1891 Gallia Co OH death certificate]
Her daughter Mary [Kail] Coughenour 's 1944 Gallia Co OH death certificate lists her mother's maiden name as approximately KUREN

In modern Scottish pronunciation, the above names are more similar than they look in our spelling of surnames AND DESPITE OUR INABILITY TO FIND A FAMILY LIKE CURRAN IN 1830 NOR 1840 OHIO US CENSUSES:
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My guess is that since it’s an uncommon name with possible non-USA-English burred-R sounds etc,maybe people therefore , for convenience or conventionality, oversimplified it to KERN or KERR?A 2014 Scottish person pronouncing KERN, might sound to us like Curran or Carn?~~Happy searching, Warren Forsythe for database ildaunewtest at http://wc.rootsweb.com