Clinkenbird-1 father of Klinkenberg-96

Question

Hello,

I believe that this Elizabeth, married to van Horn, is the daughter mentioned in the will of "William Clinkenbird" (Elizabeth van Hoorn).

New Netherlands project - please review and, if convinced, add William as father of Elizabeth.

Thanks!

p.s.: I am trying to resolve a number of issues regarding Clinkenbeard/Clinkenberg/Clinkingbeard profiles, and have created an open space page to help keep track of various claims, sources and profiles. Collaboration would be VERY WELCOME!

Editing Working - Clinkenbeard/Clinkingbeard roots (wikitree.com)  

Comments

WikiTree policy (see Help: Name Fields) is to use the names the person was known by in life, and the New Netherland project extends that principle to require (in almost all cases) each person's LNAB to be the name found on the earliest church record that gives the individual a last name of their own (see Project:New Netherland Settlers#Naming Conventions).

The name Clinkenbird is an anglicization that is hilariously wrong for a New Netherland person born in the 1600s, so it needs to be replaced. However, unlike the project policies circa 2014, we no longer guess at what the original spelling was -- we look at records and apply the rules on the project page.

Answer 1

Klinkenberg is surely Elisabeth Horn's maiden surname, and it makes sense in Dutch as a name. "Clinkenbird" on the other hand means nothing in Dutch: it may be a corruption of the name Klinkenberg, or else another surname altogether. Perhaps indeed those more knowledgeable than I of the New Netherlands Project can determine who her father is.

Comments

There are two distinct questions here:

a) was the person in the WikiTree profile Clinkenbird-1, who named Elizabeth van Hoorn as his daughter, the father of the person in the WikiTree profile Klinkenberg-96? I believe the evidence is compelling that the answer to that quesiton must be "yes".

b) was the correct LNAB for either of these individuals "Clinkenbird" (as in the transcribed will), "Clinkenbeard" (as in the transcribed will for one of the sons), or "Klinkenberg" (as considered today to "make sense in Dutch")? I have no opinion on that, and will leave it up to the experts. What I am trying to avoid is the creation of duplicate profiles for the same person. If it is determined on the basis of reliable sources that "Clinkenbird-1" needs to be given a different LNAB and merged into a new profile to make that happen, then so be it.

EDIT: I was just reviewing some "reliable sources for the New Netherland project" which identify Elizabeth as "Van Clinkenburgh" - clearly, the scribes recording early colonial marriages were not as concerned with "what made sense in Dutch". If we are trying to use "what they used" when determining the LNAB, the early colonial period appears to present special challenges.

Record of Pennsylvania marriages prior to 1810. [and,] List of officers of the Colonies on the Delaware and the Province of Pennsylvania, 1614-1776 : Linn, John Blair, 1831-1899 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive - see page 71, or search for Clinkenburgh

2nd EDIT: what source provided reliable evidence for the assertion that "Klinkenerg (or Klinkenberg) is surely Elizabeth Horn's maiden name"? I am desperately hunting for reliable original records of baptism, marriage, residence or death - and have not yet found anything. Please share!

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WikiTree policy (see Help: Name Fields) is to use the names the person was known by in life, and the New Netherland project extends that principle to require (in almost all cases) each person's LNAB to be the name found on the earliest church record that gives the individual a last name of their own (see Project:New Netherland Settlers#Naming Conventions).

The name Clinkenbird is an anglicization that is hilariously wrong for a New Netherland person born in the 1600s, so it needs to be replaced. However, unlike the project policies circa 2014, we no longer guess at what the original spelling was -- we look at records and apply the rules on the project page.

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Hi Ellen (& Albertus)

I fully agree that "Clinkenbird" is a rather funny example of how Dutch surnames have been incorrectly interpreted, recorded and transcribed over the years. This particular profile was apparently created as "Clinkenbird" in 2016.

When it comes to "replacing" the initial LNAB, or determining which spelling is in the "oldest" church record, I am afraid that I lack the experience and confidence to implement those guidelines. Some of the old church records I have looked at appear to use different spellings of the "Klinkenbergh/Clinkenburgh" name (for the same people) from one line to the next!

I have been slowly working through Willem's descendants (who appear to be my distant relatives, according to my late mother's research). I have generally left the LNAB as I found it in pre-existing profiles, and tried to honor project guidelines when creating my own. I have almost certainly made mistakes, for which I apologize. Any assistance which more qualified WikiTreers might be willing to provide in getting the Klinckenberg - to - Clinkenbeard transition straightened out would be VERY much appreciated!

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additional note: The available transcripts of Elizabeth's father's will - which is the earliest record I have been able to locate so far, actually use the "Clinkenbird" spelling. I would GREATLY appreciate any evidence that either Elizabeth or her father ever used the "Klinkenberg" name. Baptism and census records for later generations use all sorts of spelling variations - but I haven't found any birth or baptism records for the earlier generations.

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Dutch spelling was not set in stone at that time. Thus most Dutch names have several spelling variants based upon pronunciation. Dutch g sounds like gh or the hard ch as in German ''Bach''. K and C used to be interchangeable. Hence quite legitimate spelling variations like Clinkenberg, Clinckenbergh, Klinkenbergh, Klinckenberg. The English  misprinounced berg as burg, hence also Clinkenburg, and so forth. Any of those spellings is good Dutch for that epoch - except an ending in -bird or -beard. This ending must have been invented by an English scribe unfamiliar with the word "berg", thinking it was "bird"!! If the first known used spelling of a person's surname cannot be established, then it would seem proper to use the standardised spelling, then include other spellings as alternatives. That is what i do. These people are my half-brother Robert's direct forefathers. I , being the family genealogist, made his and everyone else's family tree. But i have no particular personal attachment to these profiles.  You may become their manager if you wish. For the past three years now i am very busy with my Espenschied line, all descendants of Gotthard Espenschied born ca. 1600, and it is never-ending! Good luck with Klinkenberg.

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If it can be clearly established that the man whose will begins " I William Clinkenbird of the Township of Northampton in the County of Bucks..." was the same man who signed the Oath of Allegiance in New York in 1687 as "off New Uijtrecht Wellem klinckenberg native off this Province off N: York", then I would have no objection to merging the Clinkenbird-1 profile to a new profile with a more "standard" spelling. Cindy created the Clinkenbird-1 profile way back in October 2016 with the spelling found in the will, and she is very active and interested in the family - so I think it would be important for her to review and agree to any such decision. Of course the New Netherland project should be involved as well. 

I haven't been doing this long enough to know exactly how we would determine that the records with slightly different names are in fact referring to the same person - which is one reason I have been hunting down any hints I could which might support or refute various plausible scenarios. 

I think it has been sufficiently established  that Dutch settlers in western Long Island were faced with increasingly "structured" administrative control in the years between 1687 (Oath of Allegiance) and 1688/89 (James replaced by William and Mary, with resulting turmoil and consequences for the colonies). So having the same "William" show up in records from the Burlington/Salem area and then across the river in Northampton is reassuringly plausible - but not yet "proof" that the records refer to the same person. The "bird" and "beard" endings are different enough from the "berg" and "burg" endings - that I find it hard to imagine anyone mixing them up or transitioning from one to the other. But it looks (to me) like that is exactly what happened: no one named "Clinkenbird" or "Clinkenbeard" probably ever got on a ship and sailed for America - the name must have evolved over multiple generations once they got there. Which name to use for which individual profile is a question I do not feel qualified to answer. 

 

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@Albertus: Several years ago, the New Netherland project adopted a policy on LNABs wherein we generally rely on the name and spelling for the person as shown in early-life records. We do not standardize names within a family, but if there are no appropriate records for a particular person we may base their LNAB on recorded names of siblings or other data. 

This means (among other things) that we no longer speculate on a person's nationality in order to guess at the "correct" spelling of their name and we no longer guess at how a child's patronymic name was formed and spelled. (If the father was recorded with a patronymic name at the child's baptism, we typically look at their marriage record to find their LNAB.)

@GM:  Since the subject of this discussion was recorded with the name Klinckenberg when he took the oath of allegiance (and that is also the name most often seen in Germany), that would be my choice for his LNAB. I can easily revise the LNAB [please do not create new profiles for the purpose of revising LNABs], but I haven't revised it yet because LNAB changes are disruptive (we don't do them until we are reasonably sure the name is "good") and I thought it possible that the members who have researched this family might have an earlier record that gives a different name.

Names do change in people's lifetimes and between generations, and we try to document all of a person's names, in appropriate context.

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@GM: Names alone (even if the spelling is identical) are never sufficient to establish that two records belong to the same person.

On the other hand, in my time wrestling with New Netherland genealogy here, I've seen numerous instances where a particular name was recorded with multiple spellings that are recognizable as alternative phonetic renderings of that name. We can recognize that Klinkenberg, Klinckenberg, Klinkenbergh, Clinkenberg, Clinkenbird, Clinkenbeard, etc., are almost certainly variant spellings of "the same name" without reaching any conclusions about whether Wellem Klinckenberg and William Clinkenbird are the same person.

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Dear Ellen, I created the profile some years ago. Thanks for updating me as to the current naming policies. Please do change the name at birth to Klinckenberg instead of the current Klinkenberg, if that seems more authentic to the time and place. I have now removed myself as manager from the profile, and also from the Trusted List. I gladly let others take over this profile, as i have no time for it, since i am totally busy with my Espenschied line. Wishing you a happy Christmas! Albertus

Answer 2

I just found this... which makes me wonder if there might in fact be two different "Elizabeth Klinkenberg" who married two different men named "von Horn"... (leaving the correct spelling of LNAB completely aside, for the moment).

*an Elisabet, child of Wellem Klenkenbergh & Jannetye Klenkenbergh, was baptised on 21 April 1736 in Bucks, Pennsylvania, United States. This CANNOT be the person who married Barent Barentsen van Horn on 25 January 1725 in Philadelphia.<ref>

'''Baptism''':

"Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013"<br/>

Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records<br/>

{{Ancestry Sharing|7699855|7b22746f6b656e223a2252532f6f6b2b636638313378796f4f70624e595045434c6f6177484d6e346d64594550436e47785a6b4e673d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d}} - {{Ancestry Record|2451|2020047330}} (accessed 14 November 2023)<br/>

Elisabet Klenkenbergh baptism on 21 Apr 1736, child of Wellem Klenkenbergh & Jannetye Klenkenbergh, in Bucks, Pennsylvania, USA.

</ref>

a baptism recorded in the "Church register of the Low dutch Reformed Congregation at Southhampton, Bucks County 1737-1880" on 11 Oct 1741 for Johannes, son of "Barent von Hoorn and Elizabeth Klinkenberg" would seem to match "the person who married Barent Barentsen van Horn" - somewhat better. The question remains whether this was the daughter of the "Wellem Klenkenbergh" assumed to be the author of the will signed by "William Clinkenbird".  Another baptism, in April 1746 for an unnamed child of "Barndt van Horn" and "Elisabet Klinkenbergh" (image 2007) would also seem to match - given uncertainties in spelling.