Pennsylvania
Dutch Genealogy
Tombstones
can be
very enlightening. The one in the picture is located next to
Salem Shalter's Lutheran Church between Fleetwood
and Reading on Mt. Laurel Road. That church was the site of my
confirmation ceremony. Many of my relatives are buried in the
cemetery. On Sundays when the service ended, we would often walk
through the graveyard on the way to our cars, stopping at the grave
sites of various family members. I always visit the cemetery when
I go back east for a visit. Also, most of my older living
relatives still reside close to
where
they were born, showing the allegiance to family and the hesitancy to leave
Pennsylvania
Dutch-land which I witnessed as I was growing up. It was very
hard to
leave home!
Salem
Shalter's Church is a beautiful stone building
with a huge bell tower -- it is very, very fancy! The road bends
when it comes to Salem Shalter's Church, as though the church was there
before the road. The first building was erected in 1860 by a
group of German Lutherans and Reformed Christians who pooled their
resources (a common occurrence). The current building replaced
the old one on the same site in 1929. They burned the mortgage in
1955.
I grew up with Pennsylvania Dutch friends named
Hinnershitz, Biebenderfer, and Stoltzfusz, but I also had some named
Smith, James, and Jankowski. Your father's last name doesn't
always tell the whole story. In any case, here's a glance at a
few of the
things I learned about my own roots on my father's side of the
family. According to one source, my name Schmeck used to be Von
Schmick and the family apparently came to Germany from Hungary where
they dropped the Von and changed the "i" to an "e." Then, some
relatives came to the US where we find Schmeck, Schmick, Smeck, and
Smick used interchangeably on many documents. Sometimes two
brothers would spell their last names differently. Apparently,
the recorder wrote it down the way he or she heard it.
If you look into the specific
genetic
stream of which you are a part, you also may find some Pennsylvania
Dutch
roots. There are many genealogy sites on the internet. I
would strongly recommend
the Berks County PAGenWebsite (http://www.rootsweb.com/~paberks/)
and the Family History, Genealogy, Culture and Life Website (http://midatlantic.rootsweb.com/padutch/).
If you go there now, don't forget to come back here. There is
more!
©2005 (email)
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