Reitz Coat of Arms & Reitz-123 Lineage

Question

This is my coat of arms, and this is my personal lineage back to Reitz-123: ancestry [pdf]

 Can someone help me achieve this connection on the website (between myself and Reitz-123)? I have the GENCOM (and DNA, ideally) to prove it!

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reitz-123

Comments

Kenneth, to get confirmation of the type you seek, it's necessary to know what type of DNA test have you taken, and with which company?

To get good linkage back that far, a deep-Y test is required; autosomal would be really washed out.

On the other hand, I know your line well, but that's not what you were asking.

I'm a descendant of Reitz-123 3 ways, have done ftDNA Y-700, and got a good match to a 7th generation Reitz descendant of Johan Friedrich, Reitz-433.  That validates the paper trail through both clans, even though Reitz-123 and Reitz-433 were not brothers.  The common ancestor is farther back.

Answer 1

Just as a note of caution: It would have been extremely unlikely for a commoner in the early 18th century to have a coat of arms (although not impossible). Commoners having coats of arms would have been the bourgeois elite of their city, certainly not belonging to the class of people emigrating to the Americas.

Comments

Interesting — this is said, of the name:

ORIGIN OF THE NAME REITZ

The Reitz people living over there in the City of Hanau, Germany,have a tradition as to how the name Reitz originated. It is givenherewith for what it is worth. The tradition runs as follows: In oldentimes there were no surnames, and persons were known by only one name,like in the time of Christ we speak of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Butin the course of time surnames were acquired in addition to the firstnames for better designation. Frequently the father's name was used. Thetradition has it that several centuries ago there appeared near the Cityof Hanau an old man with a long white beard riding a noble horse, who hadescaped from somewhere in the East, might have been last from Saxony, onaccount of religious persecution, and who rode on his horse about thecountry, advocating especial freedom of religion and zealously gatheredand admonished the people everywhere in religious assemblies in theirfree country. They knew him as the "Reitczaronitsch" or the ridingczarewitch, that is the riding son of the czar or prince, or a rider ofnoble birth. His children were known as John or Jacob, etc. vonReitczaronitsch or Reitczargeburt, of noble birth. Some time later thehind part of czaronitsch or zargeburt was dropped and only the "z" wasretained and pronounced in addition to "Reit," leaving the name "Reitz,"which thereafter became the common adopted surname of the Reitz clan. Ref43, p16

http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/t/a/tar2/mark/pafn14.htm

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Reitz Nachname Definition:

Reitz slawisch Ortsname/Pommern Als Vorname war Reitz um 1500 in Hessen Kurzform zu Heinrich: Reitz (Ritze, Henritze!) Grebe 1525 Homburg.  (Forebears)

Reitz, Slavic, Locality name/Pommerania. As given name Reitz around 1500 in Hesse as short form for Heinrich: Reitz (Ritze, Henritze!), Grebe 1525 Homburg.

I noticed the year of publication of your source of 1930. Unfortunately, a lot of genealogies published in the late 19th and early 20th century in the US have this tendency to try to prove some connection to nobility or other noteworthy individuals.

I don't want to burst anybody's bubble but as always, show me the source.

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Agree, but consider – Rev. J. J. didn't make these thing up, he just repeated the lore he received from Germans in the Flörsbach - Lohrhaupten region.