Americanization of Foreign Names

 When I first began to research my family history, I started with a branch on my mother's side of the tree. Her father's side of the family had been in the United States since the 1600s. They were Dutch. As I found records of births, marriages, deaths, etc. I found the name of an individual recorded using different spellings.

This was largely due to the fact that the people recording the name wrote the name phonetically. For example, I have relatives who were named Anneke. I often found the name written as Annetje, Annetie, Anneken, Annatje, Antje and Anna. The last spelling was the beginning of Anglicizing the Dutch names in America.

It was easy for me to guess at the various ways the Dutch names were Anglicized because I could witness the changes as they occurred in the written records in a given relative's lifetime. However, when I started to research my family history on my father's side, I did not have the luxury of watching names evolve as result of viewing the records because the records were not in the United States.

My great, great grandfather Americanized his Norwegian patronym after he arrived in the United States. That name became his surname in America. When I finally had access to Norwegian records, I looked for records of a Martin, son of Simon. I was wondering why no records would some up when I searched for Simon.

One day I was reading an article in a genealogical magazine about Scandinavian migration to America. The article discussed the letters in the various Scandinavian alphabets that do not exist in the American English alphabet and how the Scandinavian immigrants adapted the spelling of their names. From that aha moment, I was able to learn that Simon was the Americanization of Seming/Semming.

Just as I think that I've unlocked the secret of how one would Americanize one's name, I began to research my husband's family history. The branches of his family came to the United States from Poland and Russia. Since they were Jewish, they often arrived with Yiddish or Hebrew names. Trying to guess what the original names were for his relatives at the time they arrived in America has been a real challenge.

The challenge results from my not knowing how letters in the various alphabets of the Eastern European countries sound. It is difficult to try to guess how Frank might be the Amercian version of Ephraim or Froim. So I am trying to learn the sounds of letters of the Yiddish, Polish and Russian alphabets.

Crystal Cathedral

On my Facebook page I posted a message related to my blog entry of Wednesday. The message illicited some questions regarding my relative who was a clergyman at the Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island, New York.

This relative was a Reformed Dutch minister. As I was writing my responses, I remembered hearing about the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California filing for bankruptcy last fall. Rev. Robert Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral, is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America. The predecessor of the RCA was the Reformed Dutch Church.

A child, I was living in Garden Grove when Rev. Schuller built his church like a drive-in theater. People could park in the church's parking lot, roll down a window in the car, place a speaker and hear Rev. Schuller conduct a Sunday service. At that time, I really did not know that he was a minister of any "mainline" religion and I was not aware of the Reformed Church in America.

I do remember thinking that this was really weird. Over the years there were many people who joined his congregation and obviously did not see anything odd about a drive-in church.

A chicken vs. the egg question: I do not recall if Rev. Schuller's church had moved away from speakers in the parking lot before drive-in theaters became a thing of the past or if the demise of the drive-in theater influenced the changes at his church. Whichever it was, at some point the drive-in speakers in the parking lot disappeared and the Crystal Cathedral was built.

Philip Johnson was the architect who designed the Crystal Cathedral. I was studying environmental and interior design at UCLA during this time. Philip Johnson was a very well-known architect who had constructed some really beautiful and innovative buildings.

Although the building was gorgeous, I had a hard time understanding why a church would spend so much money on a building. My church like so many others in Orange County California was simple. Simplicity was the view of the Reformed Dutch Church in America and the Puritan churches in the 17th and 18th centuries. So I was really surprised when I learned that Rev. Schuller was an ordained minister of the Reformed Church in America.

The other side of me, a marketing executive, saw his brilliance as a salesman.

Socialized Medicine and the Founding Fathers

My blog is generally about history and how past events affected the decisions my ancestors and relatives made about what to do and where to go. However, as I study the events of the past, I often experience a deja vu moment as it relates to current events. The health insurance debate of the last two years is such an example.

This is not a blog about whether I agree or disagree with President Obama's health reform plan. As I listen to arguments of those who oppose Obama's health reform program, I am upset when I hear elected officials attribute things to the founding fathers that are not true. My reaction is one of two things:

1. They know the truth and are lying.
2. They are ignorant.

In either case, it is bad. This is true for this debate as it is true for any debate.

A friend, knowing my interest in history, sent me a link to an article in Forbes Magazine by Rick Ungar concerning the founding fathers mandating health insurance in 1798. It was an Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen. One per cent of a seaman's wages was withheld and turned over to the US government. The federal government built a series of hospitals under the Marine Hospital Service.

As I read the article, it brought back a memory of when I was researching a relative whose husband was a clergyman at Sailor's Snug Harbor in New York. I wondered if Sailor's Snug Harbor was a part of the Marine Hospital Service.

As it turns out, Sailor's Snug Harbor was privately built in 1801 from a bequest of Capt. Robert Richard Randall. I found it interesting that within a few years of the enactment of the law that Capt. Randall, a wealthy seaman, would make such a bequest.

Nonetheless, it seems that the founding fathers were not against requiring private citizens, i.e., seamen, from having to pay into a mandated health insurance program.

Lutefisk

Dick Eastman in an e-newsletter posted an article about lutefisk about December 2010. He paints a very unkind picture of this food. I think that one needs to have been exposed to lutefisk as a child in order to appreciate it. We had lutefisk every Christmas Eve when I was a child. Unlike my mother who married a man of Scandinavian descent, her brother and sister married outsiders.

My mother's sister married an Irish Catholic from New York and her brother married a woman of English, Irish or Scottish descent from Chicago. When my aunt who had been living in New York with her husband and my uncle who had been living in Chicago with his wife moved back to Minnesota, our family Christmas traditions began to change.

At first, we had roast beef in addition to lutefisk on Christmas Eve. But as my siblings and I grew older and had boyfriends/girlfriends that we invited to Christmas Eve dinner, the number of people who would eat lutefisk dwindled to the point that my mom gave up serving it on Christmas Eve. Instead, she had a lutefisk dinner after the holidays. Since my husband was not a fan of lutefisk and I lived 50 miles away from my mom and dad, I was not a part of her lutefisk dinner.

As the years passed, my mother had to special order the lutefisk for her dinner. When my husband and I moved to northern California, I discovered that lutefisk was available at some of our local markets around Christmas. I really wanted to get some to prepare but my husband remembered his one time tasting it and said, 'not in my house!"

Lutefisk, like Limburger cheese and Vietnamese fish sauce, is a food that you must have as you grow up in order to like.

So what makes lutefisk so distasteful for those who did not grow up with it? Conversely, what makes lutefish so appealing to those who did grow up with it?

Based on how fish was prepared to become lutefisk, the process seems to have been a preservation technique that provided Norwegians and Swedes a source of protein during the winter months. I recall my mother telling me that lutefisk was made from dried cod that was soaked in lye.

We all grew up with warnings about drinking lye because lye would eat away ones esophagus. So why would anyone voluntarily eat something that was soaked in lye?

Remember that the Vikings were Scandinavians! -- those tough, mean guys that pillaged and plundered all over Europe and Russia. Well this has nothing to do with eating lutefisk.

The Scandinavians in the 19th century when my dad's family and part of my mom's family came to America knew about lye and the caustic nature of it. The final step before cooking lutefisk is to soak the lye out of the fish.

Lye changes the appearance of the fish. The fish is rather translucent and thus may not be terribly appealing visually. It also seems that Americans in the US Midwest and Canadians are currently the largest consumers of lutefisk and not the people residing in the Scandinavian countries.

Why might that be so?

Refrigeration and preservation techniques changed over the century between now and when many people from Norway and Sweden came to America. The people in the Nordic countries have moved on. But, lutefisk is a nostalgia food for American and Canadian people of Scandinavian descent. It was a food that our immigrant ancestors were able to get that reminded them of home. But shipping this fish to the midwest and interior parts of Canada had a cost. I believe the cost of shipping here was why we only had lutefisk at Christmas. It became a special dish at a special holiday.

Microsoft Strikes Again

A couple of years ago, I took a class on Microsoft Publisher 2007 and then upgraded my copy of Microsoft Publisher. However, I did not upgrade my copy of Microsoft Office 2003 at that time. So for a couple of years, I was able to switch between using the user interface in Office and the user interface in Publisher 2007.

Microsoft Office 2010 user interface is based on the user interface that I had encountered in Publisher 2007, so I thought that upgrading to Office 2010 would be a breeze. Wrong!!!!

Several months ago, my IT guy (my husband) upgraded my operating system from Microsoft's VISTA to Windows 7. It then seemed to make sense to upgrade my version of Office to Office 2010. The application that I use the most in Office is Word. To me Word is one application that Microsoft seemed to have changed the most between Word 2003 and Word 2010.

The default font is Calibri at 11 points at 1.5 spacing. I like Arial at 10 points at 1 spacing. It wasn't obvious to me how to change the defaults so for several months I manually changed the line spacing, font size and the font. I finally reached the point that I was tired of having to change the properties of every Word document that I created.

The help on Word was useless so I turned to Google in hopes of finding a solution. Google did find several suggestions including some from Microsoft. I tried them all and each one failed. In each case, I was instructed to click on the "save default" botton. The formatting defaults appeared to have been implemented. I could open a new document and the formatting defaults that I had changed appeared to be in effect. Once I closed Word and reopened it, everything was back to the state before I tried to change the defaults.

At this point, I was conjuring up evil plots against Microsoft when I called my IT guy in and assigned him the task to get my problem resolved. Soon, my IT guy arrives in my office with the solution. I follow his instructions and the problem is resolved.

In order to change the default font. font size and line spacing, I had to open the default template file and apply the changes there. When I clicked on the save changes button, everything was AOK. My IT guy starts to giggle at my frustration. Since he is my husband, I threaten his life if he continues to giggle.

I also reminded him that I had been a computer programmer and held many roles in software companies so I wasn't the average user of Microsoft Office. If  I am having all these problems, then I can only imagine all those non-technical people pulling hair out from the frustration of nothing working as expected.

Hats and White Gloves

Today I was working on my family history, specifically on the Bogardus branch. I was looking for supporting information for a particular Bogardus on Ancestry.com when I came across a photo connected to a posted family tree. The people identified in the photo were Luella Bogardus and her sister Goldie.

Looking at that photo reminded me of photos that I have of my mother and her female relatives that were taken in the 1950s. In that photo, Goldie and Luella both were wearing white hats and white gloves. So based on the rules that my mother told me regarding proper dress, I believe the photo was taken between Memorial Day and Labor Day sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s.

I grew up with my mother reminding of rules regarding how a proper young lady presented herself. As it turns out my generation rebelled against those rules. But even as women of my age were overtly rebelling, my mother continued to remind me of the rules.

The rules included:

• Only wear white shoes and accessories after Memorial Day and not after Labor Day.
• Ladies wear a hat when going out in public.
• Do not wear sparkling jewelry with the exception of an engagement and/or wedding ring until 5 PM or later.
• Married women with long hair always wear their hair in an updo when in public.

Although I did not adhere to all of my mother's rules, she did have an impact on how I dressed. The impact was mostly how I dressed when I was around her. Her rules and how I lived my life were in conflict thus I became a closet dresser. I dressed one way when I visited my mother and another in my everyday life.

My mother's aunt had possession of the spinning wheel that had belonged to her sister, my mother's mother. My mother told me that her Aunt Eleanor was deciding which of her sister's granddaughters to give it. As my grandmother's eldest granddaughter, my mother was hoping that her aunt would give me that spinning wheel. Aunt Eleanor was coming for a visit so my husband and I made the trip to visit my parents when Aunt Eleanor was there. My mother reminded me how traditional her aunt was.

I came to my mother's house wearing designer jeans, high heeled shoes and a silk blouse. She was mortified and was convinced that I had blown any chance of getting her mother's spinning wheel. Later when I asked my mother what happend regarding the spinning wheel, she told my that her aunt had donated it to a museum.

As much as I would have liked to have something of my grandmother's, her spinning wheel in a museum was a much better place for it.

Domine Hermanus Meyer of Reformed Dutch Church of Kingston

This is a continuation of an article that I posted on December 7, 2010. I had intended to post my final part on the subject the next day, However, my husband and I received word of the death of his father. I have since misplaced my notes. With things settling down and some more research, I am prepared to finish the subject of the Coetus vs. the Conferentie in the Reformed Dutch Church in Kingston, New York after 1754.

Arriving in America in 1720, it was Domine Theodore Jacobus Frelinghuysen who initiated the push to educate and ordain clergy in America. April 27, 1738, the Reformed Church in America held a meeting of clergy and drafted a request to the Classis of Amsterdam to be allowed to form an Association with the power to ordain ministers in America.

It was not until 1747, the year in which Domine Frelinghuysen died, that the Classis of Amsterdam allowed the Reformed Dutch and German churches in America the right to form a Coetus (pronounced seetus). The Classis of Amsterdam imposed enough restrictions that the Coetus was ineffectual. In 1754, the Coetus declared itself independent of the Classis of Amsterdam calling itself the Classis of America.

Following the death of Theodore Frelinghuysen, his son, John, continued to push for the establishment of a college for the training of men for the clergy. In 1754, the charter to establish King's College in New York City (now Columbia University) was granted. Both the Anglican and Dutch churches desired a chair for a professor of divinity. Domine Johannes Ritzema, the senior minister of the Dutch Church in New York City, represented the church's interest in this matter. Although no chair was established, the Anglican Church's interests prevailed.

Domine Ritzema and other Dutch clergymen concerned that the Anglican Church might gain in influence were alarmed when the Coetus declared its independence from the Classis of Amsterdam. They saw that being subordinate to the body in Amsterdam afforded some power over the Anglican interests. So in 1754, Domine Ritzema and four others formed the Conferentie taking the church records with them.

John Frelinghuysen did not live to see a college established for the education of Reformed clergymen in America. He died in 1754. Jacobus Hardenbergh, a man whom Frelinghuysen educated, took up the quest. In 1766, Domine Hardenbergh became the first president of Queen's College (now Rutgers University).

The rift between the Coetus and the Conferentie continued until 1771. A young American, John Henry Livingston, went to Europe to study for a doctorate degree in theology at the University of Utrecht. Completing his studies, he was ordained by the Classis of Amsterdam in 1770. Upon his return to America, Domine Livingston with the support of the Classis of Amsterdam forged an agreement between the Coetus and Conferentie to end the rift.

Just as the factions of the Reformed Church in America were coming together, another, much greater, dispute was beginning to unfold...The American Revolution.

Sources:

James Hastings and John A. Selbie. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Part 20. Whitefish, MT: Kessing Publishing, LLC, 2003.

Daniel J. Meeter. Meeting Each Other in Doctrine, Liturgy & Government. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993.

James Isaac Good. History of the Reformed Church in the United States 1725-1792 Volume 2. Reading, PA: Daniel Miller Publisherh, 1899.

Hugh Hastings. Ecclesiastical Records State of New York Volume VI. Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, 1905.