How do you tell whether your families are German and what part they might have come from? I have Bise and Burkett/Burger that I suspect are German but is there a way to tell from the surname where they came from? Also what would Pritchett be? I don't know if I'll ever get out of the south. I also think my Wilsons came from Maryland. Is there some way to find out what county to start searching for them in. I'm not sure if they were English or Scots-Irish. Are there clues I'm not seeing? What about the surname Todd and Bishop? At 09:33 AM 9/21/00 -0500, you wrote: >Those pesky Germans! :) They 'leap-frogged' up (to the southwest) the Valley >of Virginia from Pennsylvania, into Tennessee even, with the "Scots Irish". >You'll find settlements and smaller pockets (Widener Valley in Washington >County) of them all over. My Swiss German ancestors (Surbers) were a smaller >subset of the Germans. In the early days, the Swiss Germans tended to marry >exclusively other Swiss Germans, whether those Swiss German families had >been in the Palatinate for a couple of generations (my associated Haller >line) or even in Alsace or Bayern, etc. or not. > >Also, having Elsassische (Alsatian) ancestry can complicate things! My >Strosser ancestors were officially Frenchmen, but they were as German as >could be and asociated only with other Texas Germans. > >Rick > > >==== SW_VA Mailing List ==== >#4 Chain letters, gossip, non-genealogical notes, commercial ads, pleas for help, etc. are >PROHIBITED on this List. -sysop > >============================== >RootsWeb's guide to tracing family trees: >http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/ > >

One thing to look out for in trying to determine your family's origin: many times people from areas that make up the British Crown are referred to as "English," when in actuality they could be Scots/Irish, Scot, Irish, Welch or......English. So just because you find they arrived from a port in England, or because they are referred to as English, they could still be another people from a country that is under the English Crown. Sharon Young Jebavy <>< [email protected] Those that preserve their integrity remain unshaken by the storms of daily life. they do not stir like leaves on a tree or follow the herd where it runs. In their mind remains the ideal attitude and conduct of living. This is not something given to them by others. It is their roots...it is a strength that exists deep within them. -Anonymous Proud member: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Lawrence Co. Web Site: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~churn/index.html KY Young Research Site: http://www.geocities.com/charryoung/index.html KY Young Mailing List: [email protected]

On 21 Sep 2000, at 10:38, A. Daniels: It is not easy to recognize them as German. It takes a lot of experience in research. It was not the Germans that changed their spelling. The English/Scot Irish clerks at the courthouse did the writing. Many could not write or sign their name. The clerk doing the writing did the spelling. That was true the second they got on the English ship or stepped off the ship in Philly, PA. Frost does not look very German to me, but it is. Smith and Black do not either, but they can be and in SW VA most likely are. Driving around here in Raleigh it is interesting in the names one does NOT see. If your family is German and lived early in SW VA there is a 90% chance they came from PA thru MD and down, or up, the Great Valley of VA . The valley in SW VA they choose to live in is a clue. The Germans lived in valleys that looked much like the PA, MD and valleys of the Rhineland. In the first generation they married nearly exclusively other Germans. This suggest to me that there were language limitations. Of course what I say here is general statements. The German influence in SW VA is greatly underestimated. The food, culture, and religion of SW VA has a strong German flavor. -eddie How do you tell whether your families are German and what part they might have come from? I have Bise and Burkett/Burger that I suspect are German but is there a way to tell from the surname where they came from? Also what would Pritchett be? I don't know if I'll ever get out of the south. I also think my Wilsons came from Maryland. Is there some way to find out what county to start searching for them in. I'm not sure if they were English or Scots-Irish. Are there clues I'm not seeing? What about the surname Todd and Bishop? At 09:33 AM 9/21/00 -0500, you wrote: >Those pesky Germans! :) They 'leap-frogged' up (to the southwest) the Valley >of Virginia from Pennsylvania, into Tennessee even, with the "Scots Irish". >You'll find settlements and smaller pockets (Widener Valley in Washington >County) of them all over. My Swiss German ancestors (Surbers) were a smaller >subset of the Germans. In the early days, the Swiss Germans tended to marry >exclusively other Swiss Germans, whether those Swiss German families had >been in the Palatinate for a couple of generations (my associated Haller >line) or even in Alsace or Bayern, etc. or not. > >Also, having Elsassische (Alsatian) ancestry can complicate things! My >Strosser ancestors were officially Frenchmen, but they were as German as >could be and asociated only with other Texas Germans. > >Rick > > >==== SW_VA Mailing List ==== >#4 Chain letters, gossip, non-genealogical notes, commercial ads, pleas for help, etc. are >PROHIBITED on this List. -sysop > >============================== >RootsWeb's guide to tracing family trees: >http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/ > > ==== SW_VA Mailing List ==== #3 Support the fight against unrequested junk e-mail (SPAM). Visit the webpage at: http://www.cauce.org/ -sysop ============================== Know the town name but not the county? Look it up at: http://resources.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/townco.cgi

I found that what Eddie said about the Germans emigrating to PA, migrating to Frederick County MD and down the Great Valley of Virginia, settling in Augusta, Wythe, and Washington Counties was pretty much standard procedure. I have a copy of a will signed by Johann Adam Sheffey June 25th 1793. The name Sheffey was spelled three different ways on the same document. Sheffy and Sheffey by the scribe. Adam's signature appeared to be, after some experienced evaluation at the local family history center was deciphered as Scheffe. The old German style of writing went through several distinct stages of style throughout the years and is difficult to read without a comparison model. There are some samples on the internet you can use as a comparison as well as in books in most libraries. An "S" can look more like a "Z" and they use a mark for the second letter such as in "ff". This is only two examples. It is easily to see why it was "rounded off" to make it easier to write, read and understand. The English scribe had written it more the way we write today. The associated family names were all German. Loehr, Bengel, and Geyer while in PA and MD. If you can connect back that far you will find that the German Churches kept excellent records. The information as it had been transcribed from these Church records has these spellings changed in this manner, Lohr, Bengle, Gyer, Giar and Sheffie. In Wythe County, the Sheffies married Swecker/Zwecker, Fisher/Fischer, Groseclose, Huddle, Rhea, Spiller, Haller, Fulkerson, Winton and a Collins?. (my line). It appeared, to be successful in the endeavors, it was necessary to change to fit in but they still married within their nationality. As I researched these German families, I found that they had an ethic (and to the present day) for education and success in professional fields very much more aggressive than that of the British folks. These migration patterns need to be taken seriously. If you can make connections back to the late 1800s to where you can check those wonderful records of the early German churches back East, you will be able to sort through these name variances and make some good solid connections. But you must start at the known and work backward to the unknown. If you can go back to Maryland on your line, research "History of Western Maryland" by Thomas Scharff. There are several volumes and an excellent index with names. The DAR series has a lot of names. These old English speaking boys that did all the record keeping in SW VA were pretty darn sloppy in their work. They had no idea and probably wouldn't have cared had they known of the problems they would be causing us'ins as we try to put the pieces of our family puzzle together.. Robert Crabtree