Hi Barb, At 10:13 AM 8/29/00 EDT, [email protected] wrote: >Howard and all >Beautifully put, and for the most part, agrees with what I believe to be >true. One difference being the "translation" of the first name of Lijntjen >Theissen. > >My main source for this info is "The Descendants of Paulus and Gertrud >Kusters" by Jean White. The Kuster Book quotes some of the same sources you >do, Howard. Do you own this book? If not I will check it for a reference of >an original source listing Lijntijen, as Lijntijen Theisson. No, I have not seen that book. Thank you for mentioning it. >An email I just sent to Sandy is below: > >FYI >from the book "The Descendants of Paulus and Gertrude Kusters" Jean White >editor. >Keep in mind Gertrude Doors m. Paulus Kusters was the sister of Helene >Theissen m. Thones Kunders. Did the use of the name "Helene" come from the White book? In any event, I would be very interested in what source or justification was cited that her full name was Helene as opposed to Magdalena or Elenora. Although I have seen secondary sources call her Helene, Helen, etc., none of them has given any evidence. >With the naming patterns not yet established in >the days of these peoples birth, siblings did not always use the same last >name. Some were "modernizing" the way names came down and used the actual >last name of their father, others used the old Dutch naming pattern. This is >the best an ignorant person such as myself can explain the difference in one >family for kids to ends up with different last names. It was also true in New Netherland / New York that when people began to adopt hereditary surnames (if they didn't already have them) that some branches of a family adopted different names. So, the fact that some of the Doors siblings were called Doors and some Theissen is not unusual. There are several examples of this in an article by Rosalie Fellows Bailey, F.A.S.G, titled "Dutch Systems in Family Naming: New York and New Jersey," National Genelaogical Society Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 1, (March 1953), pp. 1-11; and no. 4 (Dec 1953), pp. 109-118. This is an excellent article for those who want to learn more about the names of the Original-13 families. Some of the topics covered are: Patronymics Place-origin surnames Occupational surnames Personal charactersitic names Last names of married women Godparents and Sponsors [at baptisms] First names of children [the "naming pattern"] Diminutives There may be other things at work as well. Eg. in the book Doctor Zhivago, the title character has a surname, Zhivago. But many times he is referred to as (or called by other characters) Yurii Andreievitch, using his patronymic. In the case of Leentje, she is referred to as: Leentien Doormans at her bap in 1670 Lentgen Matteisen at her marriage in 1677 Lijntijen Teisen on the 1681 marriage certificate Lentje Kunders on the 1710 marriage certificate The point is that how a person was called in those days may depend on who was writing it down and when and where. > >Now I quote from "Kusters" book: > >" Gertrude Doors was born about 1648 in Kaldenkirchen, the daughter of Theiss >(Mathew) and Nees (Agnes) Doors. Many earlier genealogies of the Kuster >family speak of Gertrude Streypers as the wife of Paulus Kuster. This >misconception was probably passed along for many years because of the article >appearing in The Pennsylvania magazine of History and Biography in 1880 by >Samuel W. Pennypacker, "The Settlement of Germantown, and the Causes Which >Led to It," saying that Gertrude was a sister of Jan and Willem Streypers. Thanks for this reference. Although I looked at Pennypacker awhile back, I want check out the above. He may have been using the same letter I cited. >She was in fact the sister-in-law of Jan/Johann Streypers, her sister, Anna, >having married him. The term "sister" has changed through the years and in >the 1600's "sister" could refer to a child of the same parents, to his >brother's remarried widow, to the wife of a brother of his own wife (or as in >this case to as sister of his own wife), as well as to a child of his >stepmother. I now see that the Neipoth-Lukens article says pretty much the same thing in the first paragraph. "In-law" in particular had a broader meaning than today. For example, take the relationship between my father and the husband of my mother's sister. Back then those 2 guys may have been called brothers-in-law. But today, brother-in-law is usually understood, I think, to be only the relationship between my mother's sister and my father. My father solved the problem by calling the spouses of my mother's siblings "out-laws." :) It took me awhile before I realized that that was not an official term, but just his little joke. Regards, Howard [email protected]