Last Saturday, I heard four talks, each of a full hour, by Henry Z. Jones. He has devoted his life, starting at the age of eight, to genealogy. By the time that he was a teenager, he had worked out his own family. Though he is known primarily for his work with the "poor Palatines," he has few German ancestors himself. The first ones that he found do have an unusual history. They were among the emigrants of 1709 who were sent to Ireland, where they maintained a German community for a couple of centuries. This increased his interest in the entire German emigration of that year (which included a Germanna descendant, the son of Rev. Haeger of the First Germanna Colony).
Hank found that lists of names had been preserved for the Germans sent to the Hudson River in a naval stores program. There were about 847 families in the lists and he set himself the task of finding where each of these families originated in Germany. At the same time, he also included some two thousand affiliated families for whom he wanted the homes. At the time, he was thought to be crazy for such an ambitious program but he succeeded. While he didn't find the homes of all of them, he found so many that no one even questions his success.
Before he was done, he had made 17,000 family group sheets. He published his results in the two volume book of 1298 pages, " The Palatine Families of New York, 1710 ", (in 1985). This was before the wide-spread use of computers. He was assisted by a German researcher, Carla Mittelstaedt-Kubaseck, to whom he generously gives credit for making the project a success. Primarily, the key to success was to note that people did things together. One of the things that they did was to appear together in unalphabetized lists. So if one did discover the home of Johann Schmidt, then it was likely that his neighbor in the lists and in other activities was a friend or relative from Germany. The fact that names from one village did appear together, helped to make the identity in Germany more certain. Another thing that neighbors tended to do was to marry each other. People just simply felt more comfortable with others that they had known for some time. These associations often went on for up to two generations.
If you never have had the opportunity of hearing the man, you should watch for an opportunity. He has an easy-going way which results from practice and experience. He is a professional actor though he has retired from that, except when he is on the podium telling you about his genealogical experiences. Though he has done this perhaps a thousand times, he always seems fresh and enthusiastic, as though he were announcing to the world a discovery that he has just made. Even with four hours of talks in one day, the audience is kept on the edge of their seats.
By his own confession he admits that he has debated whether to use some new money for research or for food for his family. This might help some of you to identify with him.
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.