My Dear Hasselbacher Cousins.
A Happy New Year to all of you. (I no longer know whether to celebrate or bemoan the passage of another year.) I feel I own you an apology for not having added more Hasselbacher family material to the site these past few months; not even records and stories I already have. Fortunately a couple of you have taken up some of the slack and allowed me to post information of yours, an opportunity I heartily encourage. Read the rest of this entry »
I have already lost the sense of name permanence as I learned to dig in old family history. I have enough personal experience now with old church and immigration records to know that there was a certain amount of creative spelling and name evolution. Specifically, as I looked early-on for places named Hasselbach from which Hasselbachers might spring, I did not know what to make about the significance s, ss, or ß in my name. (I still do not fully understand, but I no longer worry about it.) There is a however, a certain amount of non-randomness in the geographic variation of the spelling. The old scientist in me wants to find meaning in non-random events so I continue to investigate.
For example, if one enters place names into Goggle’s Map function for Germany, there are 9 Haselbach locations and 8 Hasselbach locations. However, if one enters the same names for sites in Austria, there are 10 Haselbach locations and no Hasselbach ones! I did not have to dig out my old statistics book to tell that this was not a random variation. Read the rest of this entry »
I started this thread to make it easy to contribute to a discussion of points of the oldest family history that are raised by recent additions to the website. I am still hoping for more interaction from those with information to share!
Simply add a comment to this post.
Peter
If you have a name like Hasselbacher or something close, you no doubt have heard many pronunciations, seen many misspellings, and have developed your own method of helping people over the phone. This problem has probably been with us forever, and was accentuated when our ancestors were funneled through the ports of America and into its workplaces. Some of us chose, or had chosen for us, new ways of spelling or pronouncing our names. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello Peter,
I just want to thank you for this great website and all the hard work you have put into it. I especially appreciate all the information you have included on the Hazelbakers of Penna. since this is my line.
Thanks again for all the hard work. Good luck with your upcoming trip to Germany!
Anne Richardson
Since this site was launched Jan 24, 2007 it has been viewed by over 1000 unique visitors for a total of almost 7000 page views. It is “findable” by Google and other search engines. I hope it has been informative for you. Nevertheless, I have not heard back from a single individual. Please take the time to contact me using the email link below or try the Blog page. I promise that I will not reuse the information or “spam you.” If you want confidentiality, use the email link. I will not make personal emails public.
+ How did you find us?
+ What were you looking for?
+ What was useful or should get higher priority?
+ What is not helpful?
+ What would you like to see?
+ How much individual information is appropriate, especially for living people?
+ Most of all, do you have knowledge of our families that I do not have?
+ Can you help with any of the puzzles that are presented?
Thank you,
Peter Hasselbacher
March 3, 2007
If you want to add a comment to a post, click the “__ Comments” button just below this text block.
Newly registered Blog users may be allowed “Author” privileges. That means you can publish and manage posts of your own. Unregistered users can still comment on existing posts. (Note! This is a different registration and login than in the “Interactive Tree” section. They use different software.) Click the “Site Admin” button on the lower right to access your privileges and post a new public contribution. You can change your password and modify your personal information there as well. No one has done this yet, so I am not sure I have ti set up right. Give it a try and let me know how it is working.
Peter