Dad has traced our collie lines back to Sunnybank and beyond! It is interesting to see him trace his pedigree… er… ancestry too. He is fascinated by his ancestors who came from the Palatine of Germany. He wrote about Anna Regina Halm Volland and how her husband Wilhelm died on the ship coming over leaving her alone in a New World with 3 little children in 1709! Folloeing the paper trail has been interesting since he found out Wilhelm was a Weaver!
He also found that Anna Regina Halm moved with her new husband and his children and her children to the area around Kingston, NY. Imagine his surprise to find out the church they attended there still exists. He even found their Baptismal and Marriage records online in a Kindle format!!! The church is the Old Dutch Reformed Church in Kingston, NY. This fascinates dad for as far as he knew all his ancestors were Lutherans. But, the Palatine area of Germany through the Heidelberg became Reformed. He contacted the church and they are looking for some more information for him.
Looking into the records he has found he found Anna Regina was last mentioned as a sponsor to her granddaughter Anna in 1733 making her 63 years old at that time! What happened to her after that he is still trying to find out. He does have some church information on her children and descendents and he thinks she may have moved with them and will be contacting those churches also. Interestingly some moved on to another Reformed Church others became Lutherans. Interesting says dad.
Dad found some free history books for his Kindle at Archives.org, which dad calls the greatest resource for free old books int he world. He has read about the Palatine Germans and he now sees why they left for the area was ravaged by war, famine, the plague and more war. That his ancestors survived is a miracle he says and he has a new found respect for those of the Calvinist Reformed Church after reading the horrible events his ancestors survived.
One of the oddities he found on the church records was that his grandmother when she signed the baptismal form signed it as follows… Regina Halm. Not Anna, not Anna Regina, not Anna Regina Halm with Volland or her 2nd husband’s name… just Regina Halm. He says in that period of time she had to be one strong willed woman with a strong identity for in that time period this was unusual. He finds it interesting she uses her middle name which tells him she was known as Regina by her friends and family.
These were tough people whose problems in life makes our modern problems seem small in comparison to what they went through.
While he loves to find out more about our ancestors, it is interesting to see him learn about his ancestors. By the way, he has found some of his ancestors were Puritans, others Reformed and most were Lutherans. However, his Great-Grandmother on his mother’s side was named Kozak. Reportedly from Czechoslovakia he is interested in finding out more… but his Grandmother would not talk about it and was not religious…. so who knows. Catholic? Anabaptist? Who knows? That is another challenge for another day…
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Hmmmm. me thinks he should stick to collie pedigrees they are so much simpler…..
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Ya know, I Ginger can take care of this… lets burn those records.. MUWAHAHAHAHAHAH Better yet we can threaten to burn them unless we get treats and more cash for my world domination plans!
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Collies Of The Meadow 