Fun Facts! vol.1.3- Hookanson

This will twist your brain up…

In 1732 a man named Gerthon Jönsson was born.
In 1757 he had a son and named him Håkan Gerthonsson.
In 1791 HE had a son and named him Carl Håkansson.
In 1832 Carl had a son and named him Håkan Carlsson.
In 1878 that Håkan had a son and named him Carl Håkansson.

At least four of these five generations also were born and died in the same small town of Almundsryd, Sweden.

As upset as I was over the Frese name changes, I’m almost grateful for the name change Carl Håkansson undertook… He became Carl Hookanson.  He (or his wife!) also decided to select a different name for their son.  Anton Hookanson is much easier to trace.  🙂

Fun Facts! vol.1.2 – Fraza

There are simply so many things that I could share that fall into this category, it’s hard to pick just one!  But today’s Fun Fact comes to you courtesy of the Fraza clan.

In the spring of 1889 a small extended family of West Prussians boarded a boat called the SS Lahn in Bremen, Germany.  At the dock, the basic statistics for the families were noted.  John and Caroline Dummer together with Pauline Dummer boarded and they were followed by the Frese family- Martin and Hulda with their small sons Gustave, Robert and Ludwig. Caroline Dummer and Hulda Frese were sisters.  The small boys were aged 5, 4 and about 3 months.

What is of interest here is that “Ludwig” never got off the boat. Young Hattie (a nickname for Harriet), however, did.

WHAT?  You messed up, Amber. No, no I didn’t.  Plain as day the name Ludwig is noted on the ship manifest and recorded at Castle Garden in New York.

So, what happened to Ludwig?  And where the heck did Hattie come from?

The answer is, they’re the same child.  Ludwig Frese IS Hattie Frese.  All of Hattie’s records closely match a birth date that puts her still in West Prussia at birth and with only minor variations she stated her country of birth as Germany (West Prussia).  To clinch the deal, I learned a couple of weeks ago that Hattie (or Hattie’s daughter) created a crewel work (embroidery) of her family tree which gave her birth town and date- in West Prussia.  The icing on the cake is that the Lahn’s ship records make no mention of deaths or births on that particular journey.  Ludwig never existed.

I’ve made up a few stories about why or how such a mistake would be made on the Lahn’s records.  My favorite one is that the scribe was harried and in a hurry to process all the passengers… that maybe little Hattie was upset by all that was going on and fretful, and with the noise of the crowd it made it impossible to hear her name, so the scribe made one up for the baby (any German name was good enough, right?) and off they went up the gangway to a new future.

Perhaps, for some reason, the family didn’t feel secure traveling with the steerage class folks knowing she was a tiny girl?

What’s your best guess for this mistake?

Fun Facts! vol.1.1 – Cole

There are many crossroads and interchanges in this genealogy adventure…

Things need to lighten up around here!  It’s all well and good to contemplate my navel and write novels about the emotional part of this journey, but I know folks want fun tid-bits too, right?

Right.

So, on today’s lunch break, I’m starting this category “Fun Facts.”  It’s my intention that I’ll keep the title for each one but note also what family it pertains to.  Today, we have the Cole family.

This weekend I learned allllllllll over again how keen folks were to name their kids after (I assume) respected loved ones.  The Cole family was no exception.

Several of the Cole sisters (see Who’s Who) were named this way.  In trying to figure out a mystery I noticed that it seemed we had a few bad entries between the John F Cole family and the Florence L Polen family… Names repeated in ways they usually shouldn’t.  Long story short, this is how it worked out in the end…

Florence Polen married John Cole in 1912.  The year before, Florence’s brother Melvin Polen had married Nellie Cole… John Cole’s sister!

When you work from oldest dates forward, it makes sense… but I was very confused how Nellie B Cole, born in 1915, could also be the Nellie Cole born in 1893.  It’s dizzying!

What’s in a Name?

What’s in a name?  A lot of confusion if you’re me…

I was born with the surname Fraser, a solid and storied Scottish clan name.  I somehow got to skip the time-honored tradition of a school project to trace your roots and I spent many happy summer afternoons at various Highland Game events and haunting the aisles of tartan shops when possible.  I was Scots!  The belief was never challenged.  Then, somewhere in my middle teens, I began paying attention.  How could I be of German heritage but have a Scottish name?  I had not understood the act of “anglicizing” names during the immigration process and the washing away of culture that many immigrants felt was needed when they arrived to the United States- at least not in a personal way; it was academic facts only and a phenomenon left in the history book at school. (Never mind, too, it’s still happening today.)  When my “true” surname was revealed to me my conscience was bothered a bit but my identity as “A Scot!” was firm… I didn’t want to give it up.  And I didn’t, and I won’t.  What’s in a name, after all?

For more than two decades, I’ve let the sleeping dog lay in it’s shady spot.  But it’s awake and in the full sun now.

As I’ve researched my patriarchal lineage, this is what I’ve learned…

Frese– the name the family “got on the boat” with and at least one child kept.
Freese– the name that Castle Garden electronic records keep this family under- that was a pain to figure out.
Fraza– the anglicized and/or phonetic spelling of the surname.
Fraser– the chosen, similar-ish, but *completely* different culture name the younger siblings adopted.

And this does not touch on the census, marriage, divorce, phone book and other official documentation misspellings of the name!  Variations I’ve found include Freze, Fresa, FROZE (that one fried me), and more.  Martin Albert Fraza’s Naturalization application has two spellings and a struggle visible on it.  In the typed area, it says “Freze”, *after* something was XXXX’d out.  In this document signature, it says Frese quite clearly.  On Martin’s signed photo, though, it looks like he could not decide what to write… I swear he wrote an “a” over an “e” and it’s not clear if he made an “s” or a “z”…

I doubt any of this meant they didn’t know who they were.  It was just part of their “American Story.”  But it does seem to express some frustration and, in later years, some shame. Yes, they knew who they were and where they came from.  It breaks my heart a little bit that they found reasons to change that even a little bit.

Do I dishonor these people by keeping and valuing my variant and the alternate history it offers me?  I cling so dearly to my name that I’ve tattooed it’s representation on my body… Does that mean I don’t honor what I now know of the Frese/Fraza/Fraser clan- that I’ve ignored the vast adjustments and changes a couple undertook to, ultimately, bring me into this world?  Was Martin saddened by his children’s choices to leave their heritage behind?

A family member once announced to me their intention to change their name back to the original Fraza.  I got piping mad.  I waxed poetic about the idea they were about to dishonor their personal history and challenges that their forbearers had faced and were going to separate themselves from the ones who love them.  I regret that moment now.  Their idea feels more honorable now, that they somehow knew the truth of it better than I did, even before the evolution of the name was clear to any of us.  This family member was setting out to honor their own truth and I stomped on it.  I am sorry.

In the end… I am a Fraser.  A fake Celt and a proud descendant of the Frese family of West Prussia.  I will wear my tartan proudly, proclaim my American Story of change for the sake of finding a home in a new place, and- perhaps- add another tattoo in the years to come.  Indeed, what IS in a name?