A Possible Schmidt Rosetta Stone!

[fudge stripe cookays]

Hey gang! I think I have finally begun to dig up information on the Schmidts in PA who I can connect up to my Smiths! Has anyone had to do this? Matching up the old Germanic names with modern day variants? I'd been putting this off because I was still new, but now that I've found some stuff I never thought I would, I've gotten SUPER confident about what I'm doing.

I have an old LDS film with christening records from the area in PA where my Smiths came from. I was able to match my GGgrandfather and his sister from their birthdates and their parents' information. But I've been trying to see if I can take the family back any further than my GGG grandparents. I even had a male cousin take a DNA test to see if we could find any matches. Nothing so far.

I knew that my GGGgrandfather's brothers and sisters were acting as sponsors for the baptized kids, and I picked out three that were good candidates (all males with Schmidt last names). One, Jacob, also happened to possibly be a brother who helped my GGG grandmother process GGG grandfather's estate.

From that, I figured he had to be living closer to them in NY than in their original home in PA. I found a couple with Americanized versions of their names (Jacob and Maria became Jacob and Mary) living in a neighboring county. They also had a son John living nearby (whom I believe was the Johannes that was baptized under their name).

I've sent for death certs, that probably won't yield much, from the time period they died (1860s and 1870s, when not much was shown on certs). But I'm also ordering wills, land records, and death certs for their sons to see what is shown for childrens names. If any of them have the mother's maiden name, I'll be able to match them up, since she was listed with it in the baptisms.

I've also discovered some possibles in PA, but they're going to be MUCH harder to prove, since their birth/death records were spottier, and there are no RAOGK volunteers in Monroe County. Grrrrr....

Yay me!
:D

[cornermouse]

1. Have you tried searching for the word "palatine"?

http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/palatines/

http://www.awesomegenealogy.com/palatines.shtml

There also used to be a page that I don't seem to be able to find online any more with a lot of surname information. I think, but am not sure, it was Palatine and Pennsylvania Dutch by Kraig Ruckel which seems to have disappeared. Which means either I hook my old computer up to the net for the book mark or find my paper copy. That means the file cabinet and 3 unbelievably tall stacks of paper.:scared: If I can find it, I'll post it.

[cornermouse]

2. I was wrong.

It was Kerchner. Links.

http://www.kerchner.com/padutch.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/germname.htm

and surname spelling

http://www.kerchner.com/spelling.htm

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Yep! Isn't he great?

I actually found his page to be really valuable with the whole "household saint name" conversion process.

That's how I think I figured out that this family had a son named "John" because initially I wasn't sure which name to look for!

This son showed up in later censuses with the middle initial Y, and I couldn't figure out what it might have stood for. It appears he was named after an uncle, "Johannes Jost Schmidt", and must have become Americanized to "John Yost Smith."

Yay me! :woohoo:

[cornermouse]

4. I looked through the name order thing and

found that it definitely applied to one family and, based on the names of one side the family may have given me a strong hint for their maternal grandfather.

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Turns out the "possibles" in PA are MORE than possible!

Found a cousin in the mailing list for Monroe County who posted information about this family in 2004. He has a booklet put out in 1977 with more information about the family, and also sent me a link to a Monroe, Northampton County etc old county history that discusses the family! Yay!

The birthdates of the "Smiths" and all the family names match with the "Schmidt" names and birthdates from my list of baptismal records!

:woohoo: !!!!

This is so HUGE! The Mormons will love me for putting this together! Not sure how much of this I'll include in MY book (pictures and full family stories), but I'll at least be able to put a descendancy in a later chapter. I won't have enough time on this mortal coil to research ALL these people as much as I'd want....