Published October 25, 2022
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyLast week’s “Roots & Branches” column mentioned correspondence from my distant cousin Pernell Staudt, who was seeking information about a Shrader/Shradern/Schroeder family in the western Berks County area and the Lieb family there stemming from a Hans Michael Lieb who died in 1754, leaving a widow named Anna Margaretha who soon after married Johann Mathias Staudt in 1755.
We went back and forth by email a number of times. Information he had indicated that Anna Margaretha’s maiden name was Shrader or Shraden. I added to the mix that Hans Michael Lieb, who was an ancestor of mine, had married a woman named Anna Margaretha Gräter in Sulzdorf, Wuerttemberg, in 1748 before emigrating in 1750.
Because of other bits of data we’d found separately in research, there was some doubt whether Hans Michael had two wives named Anna Margaretha or if there was an error somewhere along the line.
Then I asked quite innocently what further data he had on Anna Margaretha “Shradern” Lieb Staudt such as where she was buried.
Which was when Staudt told me that this Anna Margaretha was buried in none other than the Berks Church Historic Old Graveyard.
Which, studious readers of this column will remember, is only a mile from where I live.
Which is where I have many direct-line ancestors buried.
For which I had many years ago published a transcription of its tombstones.
So I dug out that transcription—completed with my late mother Mildred H. Beidler and with assistance from noted German genealogist Laurel Miller on the really tough stones in the late 1980s—and looked up Anna Margaretha.
And then a memory from way beyond when my mental hard drive filled up came flooding back.
This Anna Margaretha was listed in the tombstone transcription list with a maiden name of “Chrädern,” a surname the likes of which I had never seen before or since … always wondering casually about it but never overly curious.
Well, that changed when I figured out that there really is only one Anna Margaretha and therefore a new direct-line ancestor of mine had been identified on that old graveyard, something I never expected.
My supposition is that sources that named her surname as “Schradern” were simply trying to make sense out of a surname spelling that didn’t make sense.
But what they really needed to do was account for German phonetics, in which a “Ch” is often pronounced like an English “K” and in which the leap from a “K” to a “G” sound is very slight (as is likewise with D’s and T’s in German). The final N is a variant of the -in feminine ending used in German.
So, in a heartbeat, “Chrädern” became an understandable variant of “Gräter.”
Since Anna Margaretha’s tombstone offered an exact birth date of Oct. 15, 1728, I went to the German Protestant records site to see if I could find a record that jived. And indeed I did!
What a great solve using German phonetics!
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Donna
2 years ago
What wonderful research and discovery. It is a great account about how you solved this and thanks for sharing it.