From the Buncombe Co. Clan.regarding Robert Rea

I just received this from our cousin Rod Mann there in North Carolina. He has spent vast years researching the Rea clan. I posed him a question regarding the "Wright" "Right" and "Rite" middle name fetish here in our Indiana line. Here's the reply.

Robert was apprenticed to a wagon maker or "wheelwright" named James Harris at age 12. This is most likely the same Captain James Harris whose company Robert joined at first in the Revolutionary War. Robert named his first son, James Harris, so there was obviously a lot of respect there.

In Robert's birth time period,  children were not generally given middle names. That did not start happening until about the 1790's. We have no record of Robert being given the middle name of Right. Lee Rea, feels strongly that if middle names cannot be supported by documents or records, they should not be added by descendents. By naming a son, Robert Right, Robert was probably not trying to give himself a middle name, but again was honoring James Harris. That is just my feeling on it.