ROOTS & BRANCHES

Back in the days when printed things were the primary source of information for people, there was an outfit named Halbert’s that “specialized” (in strange twist of that word) in the most generic family histories possible.

These volumes would feature a coat of arms or crest on the cover (which indeed would be related to “a” family of the particular surname) and then have a lot of boilerplate information punctuated with a splash of data relating to the particular surname in question.

Most of the pages of the book were made up of a name and address listing of all the people in the United States with that surname, typically culled from city directories and phone books.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the company was sued several times over deceptive practices, one of which was to have solicitation letters appear to be signed by family members (for instance, a letter to my family came from “Elizabeth Beidler Halbert;” for someone with, say, the Smith family, it would be signed by “Elizabeth Smith Halbert”).

Halbert’s went out of business in 1999, but of course the books it sold have remained on many a family’s bookshelves up to the present day.

My late dad bought one for the Beidler family and turned it over to me. I was less than impressed when, in one of those few splashes of customized data, they claimed that the origin of the surname Beidler was a characteristic surname meaning “one who hesitates or is indecisive” (which long-ago coworker Maggie Ryan had fun with—making my name in to the verb “to beidle”).

I was reminded of this all when I was looking an educational blog post from Ancestry.com, which offered the opportunity to fill in your surname to get information about its meaning and origin.

Citing as its source the Dictionary of American Family Names, the entry told me that Beidler is “Probably an altered spelling of German Beutler” or a “habitational name for someone from Beidl, Oberpfalz (Bavaria).”

The “altered spelling” theory was definitely true since my immigrant ancestor signed his name “Beydeler,” which is phonetically similar to Beutler and German records also reflect this spelling.

I had not previously known about the town named Beidl, which may apply to some other Beidler immigrant families.

Ancestry’s “surname origin and meaning” page also gives some ballpark figures on how many thousands of records relating to the surname can be found in its databases and public member trees.

It also features a map showing the number of Beidlers in the American states at various points in history (using U.S. Census data), as well as percentages of occupations and even a comparison of average lifespans.

All in all, this was a well done way to introduce people to some facts about their surnames. It can be found at the URL, https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/what-can-your-surname-tell-you