No matter where they lived
One of the very first lessons The Legal Genealogist learned as a baby genealogist just starting out was, genealogy is as much a matter of geography as it is of history.
Take, for example, my Baker family, who pulled up stakes from Virginia and moved to western North Carolina en masse during the Revolutionary War.
They ended up living in Rowan, Burke, Yancey and Mitchell Counties in North Carolina — and they never moved.
What changed was the county lines. Burke was created from Rowan in 1777,1 Yancey from Burke and Buncombe in 1834,2 and Mitchell from Yancey, Caldwell and Watauga in 1861.3
The lesson is an important one, we all learn, because the courts they attended or were called to were in the jurisdiction where they lived at the time. The taxes they paid were to that jurisdiction. The local laws they lived under were the laws of that place. And the records created in Rowan stayed in Rowan, the records created in Burke stayed there,4 and the ones created in Yancey stayed there, and …
So we’re taught, as American researchers, to think geography as much as history. Our early ancestors who lived in what is now Kentucky were under Virginia’s laws until 1792.5 What became Missouri was part of the Louisiana Territory until 1812.6 Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820.7
So if this is such a basic lesson, why am I focusing on it so much, and why today?
Because today is the 151st anniversary of another major bit of geographical history, one that impacts roughly one out of every six Americans, and one that most of us — yep, me too!! — forget all too often, even after a whole week-long course last week in German script that included lots of lessons on the history and geography of the areas where my ancestors lived.
I keep saying — to point the finger directly at one major offender — that my paternal ancestry is entirely in Germany.
Well, yeah, once there was a Germany.
But the German Empire — consolidating whole bunches of itty bitty little states, duchies and principalities — didn’t exist until 151 years ago today, when the King of Prussia, Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenzollern, was proclaimed as the first German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles after the war with France.8
So though I tend to say that my ancestry is German, my great grandfather Hermann Geissler (1855-1933) wasn’t born in “Germany” at all. He was born in the Kingdom of Prussia. Many of his ancestors were born in the Kingdom of Saxony. His bride, my great grandmother Emma Graumüller (1855-1929), was born in the independent Principality of Reuß jüngerer Linie.
And all over continental Europe, we should expect to encounter the same kind of geographical fragmentation and border changes that we encounter in our American research. Princes, kings, even emperors came and went. Laws changed. And the records changed with them.
To thoroughly research our genealogy, we need to be mapping the ancestors — to the actual jurisdictions where they lived at the time, not to the political borders of the world as it exists today.
Something I was reminded of today, the 151st anniversary of the German Empire, and the first time my own ancestors might have even begun to think of themselves as German.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Mapping the ancestors,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 18 Jan 2022).
SOURCES
Image: Wikimedia Commons, user Alexander Altenhof, CC BY-SA 4.0
- “An Act for dividing Rowan County, and other Purposes therein mentioned,” Chapter 19 in Acts of Assembly of the State of North Carolina (Raleigh : By Authority, 1777), 33 et seq. ↩
- “An act to erect a new county by the name of Yancy,” Chapter 83 in Acts of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina … 1833-34 (Raleigh : By Authority, 1834), 145-146. And no, that’s not a typo on my part. The printed statute does spell the county name without the e. But the county itself is and has always been Yancey with the e. ↩
- “An Act to Lay Off and Establish a New County by the Name of Mitchell,” Chapter 8 in Public Laws of the State of North Carolina … 1860-61 (Raleigh : By Authority, 1861), 14 et seq. ↩
- Well, except for those that didn’t survive the Civil War courthouse fire… ↩
- See Wikipedia (https://www.wikipedia.com), “Kentucky,” rev. 17 Jan 2022. ↩
- The Missouri Territory was created by Congress on 4 June 1812. “An Act providing for the government of the territory of Missouri,” 2 Stat. 743 (4 June 1812). ↩
- See “History,” Maine.gov (https://www.maine.gov/ : accessed 18 Jan 2022). ↩
- “Proclamation of the German Empire, 1871,” The Palace of Versailles (https://en.chateauversailles.fr/ : accessed 18 Jan 2022). ↩
Thank you so much for re-emphasizing this essential point, Judy. It is essential that we understand the relationship between the places our ancestors lived, the governmental and political entities in power at the time, the historical background of the place and its citizens, the nature of the citizens’ occupations (agrarian, industrial, et. al.), the economic conditions, the social climate, the current events in the area and throughout the country and the globe, and many other factors. Genealogy is not just “collecting names, dates, and places”, it is weaving the components together to build context! Like you, I learned early on the importance of maps, and my experience was molded in North Carolina history. One of my ancestors purchased a piece of property in what was then Orange County. Over time, that area of Orange County became Caswell County, and the area then became Person County. A portion of that property remains in my family to this day. However, I learned early on that it was essential to understand when those counties were established and how important it is to perform research in the right county at the right time period to locate ancestral records. I also had to understand what records were created in each of the counties, why they were created, what information was contained in them, and what alternate sources might be used when the original records might not exist. Developing context by researching records ANd putting them into perspective in historical, economic, and social context truly helps bring these people to life. Thank you for your always excellent insights!
Thanks so much for the kind words, George!
“… the first time my own ancestors might have even begun to think of themselves as German. …” Yes and no. Yes because that was when a nation-state called “Germany” was created. But no because the idea of “Germany” as a home of the German speaking people (mostly) had been around for ages. Exactly what that Germany consisted of was a moveable feast. For a long time Austria was considered part of (Greater) Germany (until Bismarck…). So the legal and procedural aspects are important (that’s Prussia etc) but we shouldn’t forget the psychological / emotional background as well.
Yep, and the fact that my grandfather listed his birthplace as Reuss and NOT Germany well after there was a Germany tells me the psychological / emotional background here.
My 2xgreat grandfather only ever referred to his country of origin as Bavaria, from arrival in Oz in the 1850s until he died in 1916. Having been born in Bavaria, he was Catholic. Such is the focus on Lutheran “Germans” in Australia, the Catholics are often overlooked – or assumptions made that there wasn’t a Lutheran church close by when they married etc.
My ancestors came from “Hohenlohe Land,” which sits in the middle of what was the Kingdom of Württemberg until 1806. But, before then it was actually a part of Prussia, even though separated from Prussia by hundreds of miles.
Yes! This is why I use the term “geo-genealogy” to describe genealogical research with a strong geographic focus and that extends across both time and space.
Even today. I grew up in Bayside, Queens. My mother stayed there. One day the Post Office decided Mom’s address was in Flushing, not Bayside, consolidating dozens of villages into only 2 entities: Flushing and Jamaica. We refused to use it. I’m from Bayside. That’s the address.
Thank you. This is precisely what I told something just this Christmas. Even the town names, the place his ancestry is from had six different names. If one is a linguist you can see the similarities in the different dialect, but this fellow thought he had ancestors from all over Europe.
Now that Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping is becoming more available, does anyone know of groups working on historical maps of Europe? I would love to have a map of Europe where I could choose a year from a timeline and the boundaries would show!
Does anyone know of a group working on this?
A little bit like Wikipedia, but with maps!
That is a great idea!!! Omg. Any response. That would be so helpful.
If I had a dollar for every match with someone from just “Prussia”!
Unfortunately it gets worse. Nevermind that my ancestors came to get away from the latest Emperor FW whose troops had occupied their land not more than a generation or two before, and was now telling them what to think (as they saw it), their descendants were accused during and after each World War of siding with the regimes that followed those people they despised. So they changed their first names, some of their surnames, and their places of origin. Suddenly instead of from Silesia/Swask, they came from Schleswig-Holstein or Alsace. Up to 4 generations have perpetuated that myth and it can take a bit to dispel it.
I recently work on an ancestry case regarding a woman who was born in “Peine” Germany in “1921” and whose surname was given to me as “Ludwig.” But then, she also used the surname Knabe (a father), Himmelbach (?), and Zerbing (Her mother’s maiden surname) (Serbing?); these surnames are all over the map there! It’s like putting on different shoes for a different occasion. It is very confusing for me and it must have been very chaotic for them, too.