Identifying the German immigrants is not always easy. One difficulty is the fact that names are repeated and the individuals are confused. In a recent case, Barbara Vines Little found that a man who had been described as John Rector was in reality two individuals. Her findings were confirmed by John Alcock. Now that the two men have been identified, the records are clearer and some of the mysteries are cleared up. But before they were broken apart, they had been merged into one man.
Looking through the lists of names for the ships, especially those for Philadelphia, where the best record keeping was done (and preserved), several names are essentially duplicates of names found in Nassau-Siegen, or in the extended Germantown community. For example:
Johannes Oterpack (Otterback in English or Utterbach in German) arrived in Philadelphia 25 Sep 1732, on the "Judith". Johannes Krim (Grim) and Martin Krim landed 19 Sep 1738. No connection to John and Jacob Crim in the Little Fork group have been discovered and only the similar names suggest there may be a connection. A Daniel Buttong (Jan Daniel Bouton) arrived 27 Aug 1739 and he may be identical with a Daniel Buttons in the Elk Run District of Prince William Co., VA, in 1751. Possibly this man has been found in Europe and his story is interesting enough to warrant a note in itself. He may have had a connection with the Jung (Young) family.
One individual with a high probability of being a Germanna person is Johannes Steinseiffer who landed at Philadelphia 19 Sep 1749. Stonecypher (in one English spelling) is a Nassau-Siegen name. Though John Stonecypher lived in the Second Colony area, he was associated with the John Hoffman family and appears to be Reformed. Other Stonecyphers left Nassau-Siegen in the 1738 emigration.
A study of the names in the ship's lists and in the naturalization lists often will help to identify where an individual is from. Consider these names from the ship "Nancy" which arrived at Philadelphia on 31 Aug 1750: Tilman Creutz, Johann Jacob Brumbach, Johann Gitting, Daniel Shneyder, Dilmanus Weissgerber (Whitecarver), Johannes Reesbach, and Johannes Jung. Several of these names are to be recognized as Nassau-Siegen names and the probability is almost certain that we talking about a contingent from Nassau-Siegen. The only one not to recognized in the Germanna community is Johann Gitting. The name Shneyder is equivalent to Shneider or Snider. The name Reesbach became Railsback and John Railsback married Elizabeth Thomas in the Second Colony area.
Identifying any one individual from a ship's list with a later individual in the colonies is problematic though. Too many of the names are similar.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.