Policy on "correcting" LNAB on New Netherland profiles

Question

I believe that I understand (and do my best to comply with) the New Netherland Project guidelines concerning LNAB when I create a new profile. But some existing profiles make me less sure of myself. I assume that "Project-managed" profiles are good examples of how to comply with the guidelines, so I would appreciate confirmation of the  following, using this the profile of Barent Barentson van Horn (1691) as a case in point. 

The guidelines state:

"The first surname (or patronymic) that appears in church records for a person will be used for the Last Name at Birth (within reason). Other last names, including names later adopted by the family, are placed in the Other Last Names field where the names can be found through searches and profile creation forms."

They also state:

"The project does not use patronymics derived from baptism records that don't include a surname, as the Last Name at Birth. These patronymics should be added after the given name in the First Name field."

To begin - my understanding is that the "Van Someplace" phrase found in baptism and marriage records often simply indicated where the person was born (or "came from"), rather than being what we would consider a surname. The surname should be documented by an official document (court record, land grant etc.) preferably with an actual signature showing that the person actually used that name.  

So in this case, we look first at the baptism.

The baptism record cited in the profile (Evans: Baptisms from 1639 to 1730 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New York : Evans, Thomas Grier : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (vol. 1., page 202, image 410 of 680) has an entry for 5 April 1691 which reads "Barent. Christiaens-Barentzen, Geertie Dircx".  

I believe this qualifies as a reliable source for church records, but there is clearly no surname - in this case not even a descriptive "van somewhere" 

The given name, "Barent" is rather obvious. His father is listed as Christiaens-Barentzen, which appears to be first name and patronymic. So the first impulse would be to use the "first surname (or patronymic)" - in this case the first patronymic - as the LNAB. That would be "Christiaenszen". 

That name does appear in the "other last names" field of this profile, but it is NOT the LNAB. My understanding is that the second part of the guidelines is applied here: Christiaenszen would be a patronymic derived from a baptism record "which does not include a surname", which the "project does not use" as the LNAB. 

I am a little unclear on why the secondary source (Williams) uses the given name Barent Barentson/Barentsen instead of Barent Christiaenszen, and I wonder how one would know which LNAB to use if the creation of the profile had to be based solely on the baptism record, but so far, so good.

The more important issue (because it can't easily be changed later) is the LNAB. Particularly, I don't really understand how to know (a) whether a surname was being used at the time of the child's birth and (b) what spelling of the surname should be entered in LNAB. 

The profile  for Barent's father Barent Christiansen van Horn (Van_Hoorn-59) lists a baptism for son Barent Chrisiaenszen in 1697 (not 1691). It does not include any surname. The baptism record cited in 1705, for son Benjamin, appears to use "Van Hoorn" - at least in the sense of "van wherever this person was born". Would that suggest that the use of a surname started somewhere around 1700? How do we determine whether transcriber might have simply misinterpreted the recorded "place of birth" as a surname? 

If the use of a surname at the time of a child's birth cannot be established using reliable sources, should the "first patronymic" become the LNAB after all? 

I understand that the family - and this individual - used some form of "van Horn" as a surname later in life. But does that qualify for entry as LNAB? Or should all encountered variations of "van Hoorn" be considered "other last names", as indicated in the first part of the guideline?

In a transcription of his father-in-law's will (1741), which is available online and reported in that profile (Clinkenbird-1),  Barent's wife is referred to as Elizabeth van Hoorn, and he is apparently referred to directly (as executor) as "Barnard Van Horne". Secondary sources and other documents use van Horn, Vanhorne and other spellings. 

I'm not at all certain that I would have picked "van Horn" as the LNAB for this profile if I had been the one who created it. What am I missing?

Comments

Your first assumption is wrong. "Project-managed" does not signify anything about the quality of the profile.

It means that the person is deemed to fit in the scope of the project; that the project will receive trusted-list requests and profile comments for the profile: that the project's resources found on the project page and other project resource pages may be helpful; and that project leaders and members will try to help with the profile, as our capacity permits.

Many pathetic profiles have been adopted into the project, and you might note that many of them are in maintenance  categories such as "Unsourced," "Needs LNAB" and "Needs More Records."  Those categories are supposed to indicate needs for improvement (potentially by anyone who can edit the profile).

The profile you cite is in "Needs LNAB." Read the description of this category tge category page. (Can't paste the link because G2G won't let me paste from my phone.)

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Thanks again, Ellen!

I can see that there are a LOT of profiles marked with that category. If you find a minute to consider the case outlined above and let me know what other assumptions I may be wrongly making, maybe one day I'll be able to help out.

For the moment, I'll just leave corrections up to the experts and try to avoid creating any new LNAB errors!

Best regards

Gary

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The category description explains what members can do to help identify an LNAB and move things forward. As the first few words of the description say, "The profiles in this category need to have their earliest church records located and transcribed..." Those records are needed on most of these profiles not only to support the identification of the LNAB, but also for purposes like confirming that the person existed, confirming the names of their parents, and identifying dates and places of birth or baptism. Any member who can edit the text of the profile (this may mean that you need to have pre-1700 certification, but these are Open profiles with no other restrictions on editing the text) can look up records and document those records by quoting them and citing sources.

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OK. Anyone can look up records and document them. But isn't it a rather involved process to correct an LNAB once the profile has been created?

In the case mentioned above, my question involves the next step - after a baptism record has been located and transcribed. Is the current LNAB correct? The baptism cited for Barent is one of those which only mentions patronymics. Should the first patronymic have been used as the LNAB? The second part of the guideline quoted above would seem to suggest that it should not have been. But then how does one determine whether the parents were using a surname  when the child was born?

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It is not hard to change LNABs, but many profiles managed by the project are project-protected so that LNABs cannot be changed willy-nilly. Once a need for a change is confirmed, a Project Leader can easily adopt a pre-1823 profile in order to easily change the LNAB. Note that Members should not create new duplicate profiles in an attempt to change LNABs.

The category description on  Category: New Netherland Settlers Project Needs LNAB explains what to do when you have determined what the LNAB should be:

If research determines that the LNAB is something other than the LNAB currently on the profile, please add a note to the profile to identify the appropriate LNAB (and the reasoning for it) and place the profile in Category:New Netherland Settlers Project Needs LNAB Correction. 

If you find that profiles are languishing in Category:New Netherland Settlers Project Needs LNAB Correction, it's OK to send a reminder note to the project requesting action.

As for determining the LNAB:

The "Naming Conventions" section on the New Netherland Settlers project page indicates that when the father was recorded with his patronymic name at a child's baptism, we cannot determine the child's LNAB solely from the baptism record. This is the situation with Barent Barentsen Van Horn. At Barent's baptism, the father was recorded as Barent Christiaenszen, wherein Christiaenszen was his patronymic name. Barent could have used a patronymic based on his father's given name of Barent or he could have used a new family surname derived from his family's ancestral place in Europe,  his own birthplace, his father's patronymic name, or maybe a family nickname. Some siblings used different family surnames, and sometimes a person was recorded with different family surnames on different occasions. To find out what last name Barent was known by (Barentsen? Barentsz? van Hoorn? Christiaenszen? or ???), we need to look for later records and document the details, including how his name was recorded. The profile doesn't help in this regard; it says "he" married Jannetje Pietersen Hassels, citing only an online gen (not a reliable source). Can the records be located and quoted? If folks have been unsuccessful in finding the original record, it would be nice to add a research note telling what sources you have searched or perused without success -- that info may help the next WikiTreer in their search for the record.

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Further comments regarding some of the other topics you raise here:

You are misreading the baptism record for Barent. Perhaps it would be a good idea to enlarge the page so it is easier to see the spaces between words and columns. His father was not recorded as Barent Christiaens-Barentzen. Rather, in the column for "Ouders" (parents) the entry is split into two lines by a hyphen:

Barent Christiaens-

zen, Geertie Dircx

The column for "Kinders" (children) has:

Barent

If we ignore the spacing between the two columns and string the two lines together, the entry may appear to say

Barent Christiaens-Barentzen, Geertie Dircx

But that is a misreading of the record. The record is correctly reproduced in the Church Records section of the profile https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Van_Horn-179 .

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And more....

You wrote: So the first impulse would be to use the "first surname (or patronymic)" - in this case the first patronymic - as the LNAB. That would be "Christiaenszen".

That name was the father's patronymic name, derived from Christiaen, the name of his father. Dutch children did not inherit their fathers' patronymic names.

You wrote:

That name does appear in the "other last names" field of this profile, but it is NOT the LNAB. My understanding is that the second part of the guidelines is applied here: Christiaenszen would be a patronymic derived from a baptism record "which does not include a surname", which the "project does not use" as the LNAB. 

I am a little unclear on why the secondary source (Williams) uses the given name Barent Barentson/Barentsen instead of Barent Christiaenszen, and I wonder how one would know which LNAB to use if the creation of the profile had to be based solely on the baptism record, but so far, so good.

Because Barent's father was named Barent, his patronymic name would have been Barentsz or some other form derived from Barent. If this name appears as the last name on Barent's marriage record, we would use it as his LNAB.

You wrote:

The more important issue (because it can't easily be changed later) is the LNAB. Particularly, I don't really understand how to know (a) whether a surname was being used at the time of the child's birth and (b) what spelling of the surname should be entered in LNAB. 

The profile for Barent's father Barent Christiansen van Horn (Van_Hoorn-59) lists a baptism for son Barent Chrisiaenszen in 1697 (not 1691). It does not include any surname. 

The format of that 1697 Bergen baptism record is different from the format that appears in the New York church records.

In "1697 May 25. Jannetje, Barent Cristiaense, Geertje Dierckx," 1697 May 25 is the date; Jannete is the name of the child, Barent Cristiaense is the father (with his patronymic name), and Geertje Dierckx is the mother.

Cristiaense was the father's last name.

You wrote:

The baptism record cited in 1705, for son Benjamin, appears to use "Van Hoorn" - at least in the sense of "van wherever this person was born". Would that suggest that the use of a surname started somewhere around 1700? How do we determine whether transcriber might have simply misinterpreted the recorded "place of birth" as a surname?

Entries like that one can indeed be problematic. It's uncommon to see a father's place of birth in a baptism record (places of birth are common in marriage records, but not in records of children's baptisms), but it might have been included to distinguish him from other men named Barent Christiaense.

I'd be inclined to treat "van Hoorn" as the father's last name.

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Hi Ellen!

Thanks once again for taking the time to address my questions - I greatly appreciate the explanations and instruction!

Answer 1

I can't really answer the question but I can add something to your account. English record-keepers demanded that Dutch families in New York adopt surnames. As you've already noted, some families adopted the "van <something>" suffix as their surname. The English first took New Netherland in 1664 and the conquest was acknowledged by treaty in 1674. It seems to me that this edict might have become common practice by 1691. In any case, the Project Manager, Ellen Smith, makes the ruling on cases like this one. It's better for consistency to have one mind making the decision in tough cases.

Comments

Thanks for addressing that part of the question, Jim.

I think the mandate to use family surnames was issued in 1687, but it's evident from the records that the New Netherland population did not comply immediately. I think compliance happened sooner around the city of New York and in some of the New Jersey settlements than in more out-of-the-way places like Albany and Kingston, but that's not based on close study.

The gradualness of adopting surnames is one of the several reasons why we need to document the names that appeared in the actual records, rather than the names that we think should have been in use.