This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

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In researching the McArthurs and Lotts, especially the various Catholic Church records, much confusion has resulted over the correct spellings of these two family names. We do not know how these two names were spelled centuries ago, but we do know that from the early 1800’s to the present, the above spellings are correct. For example, the name “Lott” appears as “Loth” on the baptism records of the children of Lott McArthur and Marcelline C. D’auby. These records are on file at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, LA. Baptism records of Rebecca and Mary Ann “Nancy” McArthur, daughters of James McArthur, Sr. and Celia Lott, found at Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay St. Louis, identify both their parents as the above, spelling their names as we have them. Both baptisms took place in the 1880’s after a conversion to Catholicism in their old age.
Other proof of the correct spelling of “Lott” is on the Georgia Passport in 1810 when “James McArthur” was traveling to Mississippi with “Solomon Lott.” All the early civil and land records spell Lott with two t’s with one exception. The 1836 survey of MS Lands list “Solomon Loth, John Loth, Stephen Loth, Elisha Loth, and James McArthur” as being land holders. These same people on earlier, as well as all later records, spell their name as “Lott.” Today, we pronounce this name as “lot” - a parcel of land. Apparently, the early pronunciation was something like “low-th.” This could account for the misspelling of Loth for Lott.
With the exception of a few Church records (baptism records of the children of “Loth McCarthy” at St. Louis Cathedral) and very few civil records, we find the name “McArthur” spelled correctly. As early as the Georgia Passport, to census records, to tax records over the years, to the way it is spelled by today’s generation - we find the name spelled “McArthur.” The most common misspellings are: MacArthur, McArther, McCarthur, McArthy,
McCarthy, and McCarty.
It should be noted that there was a family of “McCarty’s” that settled in Hancock County, MS. This was Langant McCarty from South Carolina. He came to Hancock County shortly before 1850 (he appears in Hancock County census that year) with children that were born in Alabama.
To make matters worse, and to partly explain how the name McArthur is mistaken for “McCarthy,” the older people of Hancock County, even in the 1970’s, pronounced the McArthur name as “McCarty” or “McArthy.” With this knowledge, it is easy to see how the priest from St. Louis Cathedral wrote down “McCarty or McCarthy” for McArthur. More than likely Lott McArthur and Marcelline D’auby were illiterate, thus they never realized their names were being incorrectly spelled on the baptism records of their children. Even though the early French and Spanish priests of this area were good record keepers, they often misspelled names as anyone with a working knowledge of these church records will verify. As further proof of the McArthur-Lott union, the names Celeste, Marcelline, Solomon,
James, and Lott are continuously used in the McArthur family - even to this day. They are not found, to any degree, in the McCarthy or McCarty families of this same area.
James McArthur appears as head of a household in 1820. The household has: 1 male age 26-45 (James Sr.), 1 male age 10-16 (John), 1 male under 10 (Lott), 1 female 26-45 (Celia), and 2 females under 10 (Rebecca and Mary Ann “Nancy”). James McArthur appears again in the 1830 Hancock census as head of household with: 2 males age 50-60 (James Sr. and William Roan, age 72 in 1850 census), 1 male 20-30 (John), 1 male 15-20 (Lott), 1 male under 5 (James Jr.), 1 female age between 40-50 (Celia), 1 female 10-15 (Rebecca), 2 females between age 5-10 (Mary Ann “Nancy” and an unidentified female).
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