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Topic: German grandfather (Read 324 times)
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kennasmum
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Posts: 6
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Hello all, I have been reading a lot of the posts tonight on all sorts of topics as I am new to this and had a little heart flutter that you all might be able to help me with my husbands maternal side of the tree (my side's been fairly easy...need a new challenge).
My husbands great grandfather was a man named Richard Herman Smid and according to his marriage certificate dated 1909 he was a seaman and states his birth place as, what looks like, "Staddin, Germany". He was 40 at the time of his marriage and his parents Carl SMID and Louisa VETHENHEUVE (I think thats how its spelt) were deceased.
I have done a google search for "staddin, germany" and "staddin" and also a map search and cannot find it.
At a loss where to go now...there is no record that I can find on how he got to NSW, Australia (I was hoping such a record would give me further clues to his birthplace) and I cannot find his death certificate either.
I attach part of his marriage certificate for you to see, perhaps I am reading it wrong...
Many thanks
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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Berlin-Bob
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by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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Hi Kennasmum,
Welcome to RootsChat 
What we don't know is, whether the certificate writer said "how do you spell that ?" or just wrote down what he thought he had heard.
I also read it as Stadden, but I'll hazard a guess that it might have been Stettin.
here is some info. about Stettin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stettin
Anything there that ties in with anything else you may have seen, or heard mentioned ??
Good luck,
Bob
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site. All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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kennasmum
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Posts: 6
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I cannot thank you both enough!!! I dont think I would ever have found this...unfortunately my husbands grandmother, the daughter of Richard, was very much against family history research "thats not your business", "dont worry about that, its in the past" etc, etc, which has lead me to believe there may be something a little unsavory in her past...unfortunately she passed away in April last year and her secrets with her!!
Thanks for the site information Bob, and you also Tati, but it seems I found something out only to be confronted with more confusion...ie: changing borders and political stuff!! It seems Richard was born Prussian but ended up Polish!! Am going to have to read all this much more carefully, but you have both given me a major boost...thanks!!!
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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WoodElf
RootsChat Member
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Posts: 211
Biggest brickwall broken! Thanks Rootschatters!
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Hi Kennasmum,
You mentioned that you weren't able to find a death certificate for Richard Herman Smid in NSW. Is there a possibility the surname changed? If so, there may be a possible match in NSW BDM.
8322/1930; SCHMIDT, RICHARD H; (77 YRS HOSP NEWCASTLE); NEWCASTLE.
His parents aren't listed and his age may be incorrect for the time frame. However, this could be an error.
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McKinnon, McLachlan, Cameron (Fort William area, SCO; SA, Aus); Mewett (Sussex; SA, Aus); Parker (Somerton, Somerset; SA, Aus); Walsh/e (Bouladuff, Tipperary; NSW, Aus); Hill (Northampton; Middlesex, ENG); Hughes (Northampton, ENG); Madrers (ROM; Yorkshire, ENG; NSW, Aus); Knoblauch, Schürle (Kocherstetten/Braunsbach, GER; Yorkshire, ENG), Pratt (Cullompton, Devon; Brighton, Sussex, ENG; Aus); McGrath (Sydney, NSW)
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kennasmum
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Hi there, thanks for the information, I hadn't yet gotten around to looking at the SCHMIDT surname...have been looking at SMITHs and SMITS as I believe I found the death certificate of his wife under the name of SMITH (am awaiting receipt of certificate as we speak)...it's possible this could be him...however the Newcastle Hospital is a bit of a worry, this side of tree to this day hates to leave Sydney... and Newcastle is an easy 1.5 to 2 hours away...and the dates are slightly off...information from his grandson said he died after 1933, buts its the closest one found to date, so will check it out.
Thank you very much for looking.
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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JustinL
RootsChat Veteran
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Both Smid and Vethenheuve strike me as Dutch (or Flemish) rather than German.
Smid is the Dutch equivalent of Schmidt derived from the German word Schmied = a farrier or blacksmith.
Richard may well have been born in a border town, perhaps one that was part of Germany at the time, but is now in the Netherlands or Belgium even.
My ggf was born in east Holstein which was part of Denmark in 1853.
Justin
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JustinL
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I was just checking on the origins of Schmidt, etc. and a German website specifically mentions that the following surnames from northwest Germany retain 'sm' as the spelling for the original initial sound.
Smidt, Smid & Smitt.
NW Germany is the region bordering the Netherlands.
WNW of Hamburg, nearly on the Elbe estuary, is the town of Stade. I wonder if a German saying he was from 'Stade in Germany' could be misinterpreted by an Australian registrar as Staddin, Germany?
It would not be surprising that a man from this part of Germany went to sea; Hamburg. Bremen and Bremerhaven are all nearby.
I would rule out Stettin. 'D' and 't' at the end of words are phonetically indistinguishable in may dialects, however, I cannot see that a German-speaker pronouncing 'tt' in the middle of a word as 'dd'.
Justin
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kennasmum
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Justin, thank you so much for your efforts in finding and relaying this information...it certainly gives me something to check out...I am also going to chase Richards grandson my husbands uncle and see if he remembers hearing whether his grandfather was dutch or german. Unfortunately, this side of the family is really NOT interested in this sort of thing and have been less than helpful in the past...but will keep trying.
Do you know what the records are like for these countries...I haven't yet ventured out of the UK and Australia in my searching.
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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JustinL
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Germans were and are meticulous record keepers. For vital records of events before 1874 there are no restrictions; these are genearally held at a state archive. However, you would normally need to be specific about the birthplace.
It would be very useful indeed if you gather more details from your husband's uncle.
I shall investigate the archives.
Justin
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kennasmum
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Thanks Justin, will hopefully be speaking to Uncle over Christmas period and will pick his brains then.
Hope you have a great Christmas full of fun and laughter!! ;
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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loo
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Posts: 1225
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I'm going to hazard another interpretation on the place name. To me it looks like the name might have been abbreviated, e.g. first letter followed by apostrophe followed by "taddin". I realize the first initial looks a lot like the S in Smid, and that the tag at the top could be part of it, but it didn't really strike me that way at first. I'm not positive what the first initial is - D or S? I have sometimes run across abbreviations, e.g. place names ending in "-dorf", which say something like "S'dorf". ??
Maybe there is some site where you can "wild card" the first part, and put in the second part?
Just a thought...
Other than that, I think Justin may very well be dead-on with some version of "Stadt in Germany". Again, there may have been another syllable uttered on the front end, which the transcriber couldn't make any sense of, so it was omitted. Sometimes it's helpful to imagine this information being delivered in a thick German accent, and see what it sounds like.
I too was thinking that these names looked sort of Dutch. Bearing in mind very frequent boundary changes in Germany, perhaps you would find this place in another country, as perhaps has been said.
Just keep plugging away at it. Just yesterday I finally got my hands on my German great-grandfather's baptismal certificate, and it turns out that his surname at birth was different than the one he was later known by, because he was illegitimate! (His parents later married each other.) As it was the mystery of this man that originally got me into genealogy 3 years ago, I can hardly contain my excitement! I would never ever have found him without a lot of help from others.
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kennasmum
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Hi Loo,
Thanks...all information and opinions are appreciated as I am completely clueless searching in this part of the world!!! Hopefully a Christmas get-together with my hubbies uncle will help solve some of the mystery.
Cheers
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Stoneham - Essex, London, Victoria, NSW
Green - Yorkshire, England
Barlow - Manchester, England
Robinson - England
Byrne - Australia, Ireland
Belgre - Australia, unknown
Browning - Australia, USA, England
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Smid_-_Richard.jpg