Hunting History - Finding Family

Holy wow, today's blog is super interesting!  The blog prompt is "At the Library" and this ancestor is perfect  for that.  You could go to any Library and search the Virginia Company, Jamestown, or the First American Colonies and I'd be willing to bet Cicely Jordan's name pops up somewhere.  Between being one of the first off the ships to her legal misadventures to her status usually only awarded to men, Cicely Jordan is famous in her own right. TECHNICALLY I'm not a direct ancestor, Cecily is the second wife of my 13th great grandfather, Captain Samuel Silas Jordan, of who I'm descended from his first wife Frances Anne Baker, who died in or shortly after childbirth in London in 1608.  I would have blogged on Captain Samuel, but there are SO MANY conflicting accounts and so few actual records I refuse to propagate misinformation.  Rather than spread rumor, I'll choose instead his much better known second wife Cecily, who was so interesting I just cou...

I chose William Henry Etter as this week's 52 in 52 challenge, "Unusual Name."  While I have much more unusual names in my tree (Docia Ann White, Margarete Gertraudt Althaus, Leonardas Barker...the list goes on) I ended up choosing William because Etter to me is an unusual last name, and has several meanings; the South German/Swiss is a topographical name, meaning someone who lived near the boundary fence of a village, from the German word "eter" meaning a 'woven boundary fence.'   In High German and Dutch speaking countries "eter" means 'cousin' or 'uncle.'  In 1724, Johannes Hans Etter and wife Anna Marie Siegrist emigrated from Bern, Switzerland to Lancaster county, Virginia, what was then Colonial America.  Three generations later his great grandson, and my 5th great grandfather, William Henry Etter, was born May 6th, 1800, the son of Daniel Etter and Mary Magdalena Reihm, in Evansham, Wythe, Virginia. William Henry was ...