I was just rereading a few pages in Henry Z. Jones, Jr.'s, book " More Palatine Families ". This was published in 1991, so it has aged a bit. However, "Hank" has some good advice in it and we might review a few of the points.
Hank Jones' 1st Rule. Study the Neighbors.
Hardly anyone came alone from Germany in the Eighteenth Century. Even if they did come alone, they were probably joined in a few years by others from the same village. Once here, they often lived together and intermarried perhaps to the second and third generation.
If we want to find out about one family, we have to study all of the families in the community. On our first approach to a genealogy problem, we may think a family is isolated. But that is seldom the case. Taking the first twenty names at a particular Communion Service in the Lutheran church in the Robinson River Valley (Hebron), it might appear that there were some relationships present just because a few names were repeated. An in-depth study shows that ten of these twenty people were descended from the same woman! Only two of the twenty were not related to at least one other person in the group of twenty.
I found the wife of Peter Fleshman, the immigrant, because relatives tended to associate, even unto the second and third generations. In this case, the association was with whom one chose to sit at church. Peter Fleshman and his wife were both dead by this time, but the associations continued into the succeeding generations.
Sometimes I am asked how to find where a person came from in Germany. My recommendation is to make a list of all the associations and see which ones are the strongest. Marriage is one association. The neighbors are another. Who witnessed the will? Who witnessed the land transactions? Who gave bond? Who inventoried the property? Who carried the chains? After one has this list, the next question to ask is whether the origins are known for any of the people. Then the first villages to search would be the ones of these people.
Don't forget to look on the ships' lists for a grouping of the same names. This doesn't tell the origins, but it helps to confirm whom to look for.
We are fortunate that the origins of so many of the Germanna colonists have been found. As I have looked through the records in some of these villages, I am struck by how many names seem familiar to me. I did not find any of the unknowns, but it was a suggestion that one might want to explore more in these neighborhoods.
(Hank Jones' Rules are continued in the next Note, Nr. 1625.)
(21 Mar 03)
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