You're killin' me with these fractions, Mike! LOL!
Okay, here's the online reference you'd asked for in e-mail. It's from somebody writing on RootsWeb, and quoting from the same exact passage of *Amy Vanderbilt's Etiquette* that I rely upon in matters such as these:
> "A man who is a Jr., a II, a III or possibly a IV, usually needs
> to take action when the preceding holder of the name dies. A 'Jr.'
> usually drops the 'Jr.' unless there would be what I call a
> confusion in history. In other words, if the father were so well
> known and perhaps [the Jr.] himself is so well known that to drop
> the 'Jr.' might cause public confusion. As the man who is called
> 'II' is NOT named for his father BUT FOR SOMEONE ELSE, perhaps an
> uncle or a grandfather of the same name, he drops his suffix on
> the death of the holder of the name unless there is a possibility,
> too, of a confusion in history."
Your online reference can be found here:
http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/roots-l/messages/96aug/3840
-- Nanaea