IN THE BEGINNING OR THERE ABOUTS

In the beginning I had high bound ideas of discovering the source of a family name, Bolsinger. I started this blog to let others see what I found and to elicit comments and input. I then met Richard on the internet and we found out we were directly related but back in the middle of the 1800’s. He was looking to confirm his line from Christopher to Christopher, his grandson. This was a quest he started at the behest of his father Cecil who has passed away this past year. He was over 100 when he left us. 

    Richard has been tremendously successful in following leads and lines. I have a four inch binder with his work sitting in front of me as I write this and am over whelmed by his efforts. However, the first Christopher has still eluded him, us.

Recently another cousin has joined the search, her name is Dona McPhillips and she is my dad’s sister’s only child. She has not only become tenacious and is all consumed with the task, she has joined genealogy classes, societies and groups to become a very productive searcher. She and Richard have become quite a team.

As Christmas is slowly fading, Dona has gone home, and I have found a new energy to blog more about what we are doing. The thread I was looking for has become a huge weaving loom. We have found several different spellings of the name and many different locations from where our ancestors have come. My face book page lists close too three hundred Bolsingers from all over the world and we add new friends every day.

So we invite you to join our search, add your name to our list, included herein is a four page document you can down load, Download Family Questionnaire, fill it out and email it back to us and we will see where you take us. If you have a story or an understanding about family history deep into the past or within your own immediate family let us know what it is and we will weave it into the fabric

 

To further our understanding as it might be I submit an article written by Pat Bristley that was sent along with the other vignettes, some of which were posted in this blog in the past and will be post in the near future.

 

The George Balsinger Senior Family

by Pat Bristley

In the United Statesrecords, the name Bolsinger is also often spelled ‘Balsinger’ or various other spellings, so it is difficult to find records for the right Bolsingers. It is unknown whether George Bolsinger Sr. was born in the United States, Germany or Switzerland. In one record I found long ago it said he was born in Switzerland. However, a DAR record said he was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and the Cambria County, Pennsylvania, History said the family came from Germany. I do know that in Kirchenthurnen, Canton Berne, Switzerland, where my son-in-law used to be a minister, here were a lot of Balsinger families. I met several of them while on visits there.

From my long search into the history of the people that came to America from Germany in the middle of the 18^th century (circa 1840-1860) since I have many German ancestors that came in that period, I have found out several historical facts that follow.

First, Germany was not a country at that time. It was a group of duchies ruled by separate rulers, who had complete control over all the people living in their duchies. If the ruler told a young man he was to be a mercenary and fight for a certain ruler, then he had to go. Often selling his peasants as mercenaries to other rulers was a way for a ruler to make money, because the wages due the mercenaries went not to the men, themselves, but to the ruler. This was one of the reasons; so many German peasants were willing to go to America – in order to save their sons from conscription into mercenary forces.

Most Germans of the time had two given names, the first was a baptismal name from the Bible, and the second given name was the one they went by in ordinary life. So if a boy’s name was Philip George, he usually went by George in everyday life.

Another German tradition was to name the first two sons and first two daughters after the parents’ parents. If George and Elizabeth (Keener) followed that pattern, then their parents’ given names were John (husband’s father), Mary (wife’s mother), George (wife’s father) and Elizabeth (husband’s mother).

Also, besides being farmers, all German peasants of the period were trained in a trade, such as cooper (maker of barrels) or cordwainer (shoemaker), that they practiced in the winter, or at other times when they were not busy with farm work.

Those with needed crafts in the colonies, had a shorter bond service time because of their trade, and most Germans then were Redemptioner’s (which meant their services were sold for the price of their passage to America, while they were still in Germany) or they were bond servants, which meant they and their families were sold by the captains of the ships they came to America on, once they came into an American port, such as Philadelphia. In fact, most of the Germans in the western duchies such as Hesse, came into the port of Philadelphia, and from their they moved out into parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Maryland, according to the person who bought their services.

Most of the German peasants from present-day western Germany, took a river boat or walked north along the Rhine River, carrying their few possessions, to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, where they waited to be able to board a ship for America. In Rotterdam, at the time, there were many merchants, and others, whose main goal was to get any money the immigrants did have away from them before they set out for America, so by the time they set sail, they often had no money left at all.

For most adults, their bond service lasted for seven years, and at the end of that time, men were given by their owner (by law), an ax, a new suit of clothes and 50 pounds of money (the currency in middle America at the time). Their children were kept in servitude until they were 21 or 22 years old, and part of the law concerning them was that boys had to be taught a trade, girls had to be taught housework, and all of them were supposed to be given some "book learning." This is why the tradition persists, that Barbary (Brandenburg) Franks, who went with her husband’s family to Fayette County, PA, from Frederick County, MD, circa 1765, was able to read sermons in Jacob’s Combined Lutheran and Reformed Church in German Township, until they had a permanent minister. She also taught the children of the neighborhood, and it is true, that most of the second generation children in the near area to Jacob’s church, could all read and write, whereas, their parents could not.

It is uncertain if George Bolsinger actually did spend time in New Jersey, but he was a militiaman in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1775. There were also Keener families in Frederick Countyat the time, and later there were Keeners in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, so the part about Elizabeth’s surname being ‘Keener’ is quite likely.

Also it is probable that the family, or at least George Sr., followed the National Road that started at Frederick County, Maryland, and ended up (at the time) in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. That was because the road was originally built in order for General Braddock and George Washington, to get their supply wagons from Maryland to Pittsburgh, where they fought the British with such disastrous results. Many people from Maryland later used the road to get to western Pennsylvania.

Also it is true that during that period, Virginia and Pennsylvania were fighting to see who would own the southwestern area that is now Pennsylvania. Since both states claimed the area, often records for people in the area can be found in the Virginia Archives, where I found the record for Conrad Brandenburg/Brandeberry, and his service in a Revolutionary War battle fought in the territory that later became Ohio.

I was unable to find George Bolsinger (under any spelling) in the 1790 census. So far I have been unable to find any records for Catharine (Bolsinger) Messmore. I believe from the census records of German Township, Fayette County, PA, that Elizabeth Bolsinger was the second wife of Nicholas Weston. No proof however, but Nicholas Weston was on the same page in the 1830 census as Elizabeth’s brother, John.

Jacob Balsinger was not always an idiot. When his mother made her Will in 1841, she named his Executor, a job unlikely to be given to someone who could not think. He was probably just an odd, old bachelor. Perhaps he was in an accident in which he hurt his head between 1841 and 1850, when the census called him an idiot.

I do not believe that Conrad (or the German "Cunrod") married, since he died in 1835, and in 1832, when his father died, he said in his will: ‘And to My Son Cunrod Bolsinger, I give and bequeath one Feather bed and bedding, the same that he now uses’ so he was still living with his parents in 1832.

---

Comments

[leslee blume]

I am boli bolsingers grandaughter I am tring to find out if anyone in the bolsinger line has croh'ns disease?? my e-mail is belmonts@comcast.net