ROOTS & BRANCHES

Between this “Roots & Branches” column and a long-running article in German Life magazine, I’m blessed with many correspondents for whom a particular column here or there spurs a reply.

One of these individuals is David H. Pardoe who wrote to me recently about the immigrant father of his grandmother Birdie Sedicum, who was known as Benjamin Sedicum.

In that great-grandfather’s naturalization papers, the flowery language intoned that, “he doth absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure forever all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State and Sovereignty whatever, and particularly all allegiance to the King of Hanover.” His name was listed as “Benjamin Sedekum,” introducing a different but phonetically similar spelling of the surname.

Pardoe tried to trace the family in Hanover or Germany but said he was getting nowhere. “In Mount Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore there is a Sedicum lot with various members of the family, including individuals named Seddicum,” he wrote. “Elizabeth, the mother of Benjamin, is buried in this lot. According to a Sedicum family Bible, Elizabeth’s husband and the father of Benjamin was George Sedicum, but there was no person by that name in the cemetery caretaker’s record book.”

The book does include in that Sedicum lot a burial for a “Lum Andekin.” Pardoe visited the cemetery, again, and found a gravestone, the flat kind that covers a grave, and it was sinking into the ground and partially covered by dirt and grass.

“I scraped it as clean as I could and brushed the dirt away and I could make out here and there bits and pieces,” Pardoe wrote. “Something in German, the number 1794, Geboren and Zum Andenken.”

He arranged to get a sheet of rubbing paper and returned with tools to clean the stone more thoroughly. After making the rubbing and getting help from a friend who was knowledgeable in German, he was able to see that the tombstone read: “ZUM ANDENKEN / AN / GEORGE J. E. SUEDEKUM / Er ward Geboren / ANNO 1794 / und starb im Jahr 1844 / im Alten von 51 Jahren.”

“Lum Andenken” was really “George Suedekum” – “zum Andenken” means “to the memory” –  and the rest of the tombstone data matched the birth and death date for George in the family Bible.

With that new surname spelling variant, Pardoe was able to trace the family in Hanover and obtain a copy of a ship’s list with the name Sadekum, still another spelling.

“I engaged a German genealogist who found church records for the family, two different locations, and baptism record for ‘Benjamin,’ who started his life as Bernhard Diedrich Johann Suedekum,” Pardoe wrote. “Also records for the parents and grandparents. Bernhard it seems at the time of his naturalization took his ‘American name’ of Benjamin.”

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to james@beidler.us. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler) and follow him on Twitter, @JamesMBeidler.