ROOTS & BRANCHES

“My jaw is on the floor … gobsmacked!! Wow!”

Even after all but 40 years of doing genealogy, your “Roots & Branches” columnist never tires of enthusiasm such as that expressed by Karla Kirchman-Gray about finding documentation about one of her German immigrant ancestors.

Kirchman-Gray have a little bit of history that’s relevant. She and I emailed a bit when I was promoting registration for “Pennsylvania’s Genealogy Event” (PaGE), the all-virtual event held last month, and when she was supremely interested in registering but needed some help, I found a way to “scholarship” her registration.

She then spent the eight days of the event as one of the most involved—in a group of many highly motivated genealogists—registrants to attend PaGE.

Our conversation continued after the event and I was so happy when Kirchman-Gray found the documentation of a maternal ancestor Johann Adam Saull’s arrival on the Neptune in Philadelphia on Sept. 23, 1753, noted as a Palatine German immigrant from Rotterdam.

What Kirchman-Gray found for Saull is his oath of allegiance upon arrival in Philadelphia, which was required of male “foreigners” age 16 or older (nearly all of them Germans in Colonial times) beginning in 1727. These lists have been published under the title Pennsylvania German Pioneers.

I was able to furnish Kirchman-Gray with some additional information about the lists:

• Originally there were three lists for each ship, starting with a captain’s list (called the “A” lists in Pennsylvania German Pioneers) that sometimes list every passenger but more routinely just the men. The iterations on this list are the least accurate because the captain or a mate was rendering the names for the men.
• The lists that Pennsylvania German Pioneers calls “B” and “C” are taken from the oaths of allegiance (to the English king) and abjuration (forswearing foreign allegiance) and show the actual signatures of the men aged 16 and over. I attached a facsimile of Saull’s signature for Kirchman-Gray.
• In addition to these facsimiles (which are essentially tracings done in the 1930s), the originals have been digitized and are now on Pennsylvania’s Power Library.  

Another thing I noted to Kirchman-Gray is that even though they call these folks “Palatines,” it doesn’t necessarily mean they actually came from the Palatinate (Pfalz in the German language); this was a shorthand the British used because indeed many of the 18^th century German-speaking people did come from the Palatinate, but some came from other states in southwestern Germany.

Showing Kirchman-Gray the signature was what led to her being “gobsmacked” all over again. I always think of signatures and tombstones as the closest we get to representing the people from the pre-photography era, and now she has that signature for Johann Adam Saull.

Which, come to think of it, “gobmacks” me, too!