ROOTS & BRANCHES

The maiden surname of one of my great-great-grandmothers was Dehart.

And since that woman, Emma Rebecca Dehart, was (along with her husband Wellington B. Machmer) the first family member to inhabit my current home, I’ve always been a little more interested in the Deharts than my average ancestral line.

With relative ease, I traced her Dehart ancestry across Berks County from the Tulpehocken region in the west to Amity Township in the extreme east, documenting five generations back to a Cornelius Dehart born early in the 1700s.

Beyond that, a compilation at Berks County Genealogical Society showed the family’s earlier American generations were among the Dutch who settled New York state when it was still New Netherland, descended from a 1664 immigrant Simon Aerszen DeHart.

This was pretty exciting to me since it was my first line that wasn’t German!

The compilation extended another generation beyond Simon to an Aert Sumonz De Hart born about 1607 in Holland.

This information was as fascinating as was my questioning of its reliability, since I know much less about Dutch genealogy than German.

Enter noted Dutch genealogist John Boeren and his lectures at the recent New York State Family History Conference in Albany, New York.

In his presentation “Records on 18^th Century Dutch Ancestors,” I was given the tools to begin critically evaluating the compilation found at Berks Genealogical.

Parish registers in the Netherlands begin in 1564 for some areas, but the early 1600s is more typical. Also worth investigating are alderman’s registers since in this time period they performed many of what we’d call courthouse functions in America. There are also notarial records that can be investigated.

In the case of both alderman’s registers and notarial records, some of these documents are preserved as far back in time as the 14^th century! Since many of them are online, according to Boeren, I’m looking to get cracking at verifying the information in the compilation and seeing if it can be extended!

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“Roots & Branches” gave a shout out to Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s initial “Rooted” genealogy series earlier in the summer, and the society will debut “Rooted: Genealogy 201,” later this month, which is designed to include coverage of both the skills and tools a more intermediate genealogist should have in their toolkit.

“Rooted: Genealogy 201” will run for four Tuesday evenings (Sept. 27, October 4, 11 and 18) from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Zoom with additional asynchronous instruction (A single make-up class on Sept. 28 will be offered for those participants unable to attend class due to the Jewish holidays on Sept. 27 and Oct. 4).

Instructor for “Rooted” will again be Katy Bodenhorn Barnes, the society’s director of genealogical services and programs.

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler).