Wednesday, July 16, 2014

True birth location for my Van Horn immigrant

This one has been battered around for literally decades. Early family histories and a series of article published in The American Genealogist, had Christian Barentsen Van Horn (this is one version of his name) as Hoorn, Holland. Then things shifted to another location. Now we have this from Van Horn cousin Del Van Horn, was has pursued this to a final resolution listed below. Thank you cousin Del for taking the time and energy to get this information as we say in the Navy -- "squared away."

Sent to me via a FAG correction from Del.

"Christian Barentsz was born 1625/1626 in an area of East Friesland today known as Horum that is located in the German District of Friesland on the northeast corner of the East Friesland peninsula.  There is a town called Horumersiel that is probably the closest we can come to locating the original Hooren.

"The mix-up was a result of originally using a translation of the marriage register instead of the actual scanned record which changed some of the punctuation that resulted in mis-identifying Hooren as the one in North Holland and not the one in East Friesland.

"Christian Barentsz marriage register of 1647 states he was from "Hooren in Oostland" which was identified back in the 1960s by Mr. Simon Hart (Chief Archivist for Amsterdam) as "Horum, Niedersachsen".

"I have a scanned copy of the original marriage register as well as a copy of Mr. Simon Harts book with all of his notarial document notes (complements of Mr. Cor Snabel in Amsterdam) if anyone is interested.

"Bottom line - Christian Barentsz was not originally from Holland but rather from East Frisia which at the time was part of the County of Oldenberg which in turn was part of the Holy Roman Empire."

Again thank you Del.