came across this on another site about the Johnsons hope it helps going to cheek it out. Mary was the daughter of David Shay and Cassandra Cook. Her last name on her marriage license to William Johnson is spelled "Shye". A native of southern Georgia, Mary would have had the "southern belle" accent that existed around the turn of the nineteenth century. Shay, when spoken with this southern drawl, quite likely may have sounded like "Shye" and may have been spelled on her marriage license according to the way it was pronounced out loud. The name "Shay" was given as a middle name to at least six males of Mary's descendants; all of them through her son, William Wilburn Johnson (1829-1910)