11 Johanns
Wow.
I am working on getting a bunch of information into my account at Ancestry.com. I haven't worked on the family tree for a few weeks, mainly because once I get into it, it's so hard to drag myself away, and I don't have that many free hours to devote to hunting up the past. I told Hans that I'm back to the late 1700s/early 1800s on one side of my family and now back to the early 1700s on the other side. He wondered if I will do more digging to go further, but I'm plenty happy with what I've got.
I have a big pile of information here documenting my relations on my grandmother's father's side of the family. They all appear to have been from the same area of Prussia. There's a lot of repeating of names. People back then apparently didn't name their kids Apple or Pilot Inspektor (both of which are real names, Gywneth Paltrow and Jason Lee's children, repectively). There are a lot of Annas, Catharinas, Charlottas. All good, respectable names.
Here are the two things of particular interest:
I found a child named Anna Elise...I've never seen this paperwork before. I thought that was interesting as we had planned to name Annika, Anna and her middle name is Eliese. We decided at some point during pregnancy to name her Annika because we had heard of several people naming their girls Anna and wanted her to be slightly different.
Just now I started entering in the names of the children of my great-grandfather Harries' great-grandfather (don't try to think about it, just go with it). I entered Johann once. Twice. Three times. Huh? Stopped and counted the number of children born to this couple--15. Eleven of these children were named Johann. Huh?
Then I figured it out. The first eight Johanns all died within months of being born. Four of them lived between six and 10 months of age. Two of them, eerily enough lived for 16 days each and two lived for 1-1/2 and 2 months of age. Of the total of 15 children that this couple had, 12 of them died before age 18.
Still, the three that lived were all named Johann. I guess they didn't have a lot of faith in any one Johann surviving.
Wow. It's just mind blowing.
I am working on getting a bunch of information into my account at Ancestry.com. I haven't worked on the family tree for a few weeks, mainly because once I get into it, it's so hard to drag myself away, and I don't have that many free hours to devote to hunting up the past. I told Hans that I'm back to the late 1700s/early 1800s on one side of my family and now back to the early 1700s on the other side. He wondered if I will do more digging to go further, but I'm plenty happy with what I've got.
I have a big pile of information here documenting my relations on my grandmother's father's side of the family. They all appear to have been from the same area of Prussia. There's a lot of repeating of names. People back then apparently didn't name their kids Apple or Pilot Inspektor (both of which are real names, Gywneth Paltrow and Jason Lee's children, repectively). There are a lot of Annas, Catharinas, Charlottas. All good, respectable names.
Here are the two things of particular interest:
I found a child named Anna Elise...I've never seen this paperwork before. I thought that was interesting as we had planned to name Annika, Anna and her middle name is Eliese. We decided at some point during pregnancy to name her Annika because we had heard of several people naming their girls Anna and wanted her to be slightly different.
Just now I started entering in the names of the children of my great-grandfather Harries' great-grandfather (don't try to think about it, just go with it). I entered Johann once. Twice. Three times. Huh? Stopped and counted the number of children born to this couple--15. Eleven of these children were named Johann. Huh?
Then I figured it out. The first eight Johanns all died within months of being born. Four of them lived between six and 10 months of age. Two of them, eerily enough lived for 16 days each and two lived for 1-1/2 and 2 months of age. Of the total of 15 children that this couple had, 12 of them died before age 18.
Still, the three that lived were all named Johann. I guess they didn't have a lot of faith in any one Johann surviving.
Wow. It's just mind blowing.
Comments
But they called him Dick.
Interesting stuff.