I'm a self-professed history nut, whether it be American, European, world or family history. Learning about the past and the lives of notable people is always interesting to me; it lets me see what influenced their lives and played a part in why they chose to do what they did. Which is why biographies tend to score high on my reading lists.
I've been interested in tracing where my family history came from. Y'know that show that runs on TV, Who Do You Think You Are?, where they take famous personalities and trace their lineage? (Yes, I've seen both the American and British versions of the show.) It's sort of like that journey, only without cameras following me, and...I'm not famous...as least not yet...
I've known ever since I was old enough to remember that our family had its roots in Germany and Italy. Think about it, how much more German can you get with Finkbeiner?
I've scoured a lot of sources on what exactly my surname means and where it came from, and so far, I think I've found my favorite definition, taken from the Dictionary of American Family Names, through Ancestry.com:
"German: altered form of Finkbunter, a habitational name from any of various farmsteads named Finkbunt, from Middle High German vinke ‘finch’ (or perhaps viehten ‘pine trees’) + biunte ‘enclosed plot’."
Interesting; we were named after birds. Awesome.
Another interesting take on it comes from this site:
"One who had frivolous ideas."
Well...I wouldn't say "frivolous"...but sometimes, you have to take it like it is.
Anyway, I was able to find out from where and from whom the current Finkbeiner line started. It started with my three-times great grandfather, John Finkbeiner (whose name I believe might have been anglicized from Johann, just a bit of a hunch), who was born on a farmstead in March of 1829 in the Kingdom of Württemberg in southern Germany. I estimate sometime in the early 1850s he emigrated from Germany, headed for North America. He settled in Canada for a time, where he met and married my three-times great grandmother, Regina Mohrlock. They had their first four children while settled in Canada, then moved down to America shortly after the Civil War, ultimately settling in the town of Sebewaing, Michigan, where they had five more children. Great-great-great grandpa John lived a fruitful life before dying in 1915 at the age of 86.
One of John's sons, great-great grandfather Emmanual, was father to my great grandfather, Leland, who was father to my grandpa, who is father to my dad, who is father to my brother and I. Given that nice, long counting, that would technically make me a sixth-generation German-American. And that is a heritage I'm glad to be proud of. I haven't uncovered much of my mother's side, as of yet, but hers is a combination of Italian and Irish (given her maiden name of McMahon), namely from the Sicilian region. Mamma mia, my friends!
I like to keep in touch with my cultural heritage whenever I can, which I why I find myself gravitated towards things German or Italian.
When it comes to food; easily both. Spaghetti, pizza, ravioli, tortellini...(crud, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!) Hamburgers...oh, those glorious Hamburgers...frankfurters, German sausage...and maybe some sauerkraut here and there.
Two of my favorite novelists, John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut (whose brilliantly-written biography I'm reading currently), were ethnic Germans who had their roots in the same country, but whose families made great lives here in America. A common thing I've found in their writing, more notably Steinbeck's, is that despite their European origins, they wrote of their love for America and their pride as Americans. My family may have come from Germany and as much as I love German culture, America will always be my first and foremost home, because that's who I am.
Anyway, that's a little bit of info into my little journey. I still keep up on it, here and there, and it's always interesting. What about you, do you have any interesting family history stories? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
[UPDATE (5/16/2014)]: When I got back on Ancestry.com and went perusing through some of those leaf hints that they leave on certain relatives, I went back to some that were linked to 3-times-Great-Grandpa John. Even though I still haven't technically paid for full access to all their records as of yet, this little surprising thing popped up.
Although the lead was quite small, I discovered in this "Millennium File Record" hint a Johann Georg Finkbeiner.
So, two thingies here:
1) My anglicized name theory was spot on, like a boss.
2) The irony is delicious, given that in my acting background, I had a lead in my school's production of The Sound of Music; the Captain's first name is, in fact, Georg. Whoa...
ANOTHER THING: I have a few anecdotes on some of my family's military history: my father was an Air Marshal stationed at the NORAD mountain base in Colorado, serving in the Air Force from 1983 to 1987. He told me some wicked cool stories about his time there, from monitoring and tracking Soviet missile signals and intercepting coded messages from the Kremlin, his run-in with the commanding general of the base (whoever was the commanding officer of NORAD for most of the 80s, I forget his name)
On my mother's side, my uncle Thomas "Tommy" McMahon served in the Vietnam War until December of 1969, when he was killed in action. He was 19; the same age I am, as of writing this sentence. It was a harrowing thought, and when seeing his name on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. during my senior year trip, it was the most sobering and reflective moments of the entire trip. It's like a part of this lost uncle, who died when he was still a kid, has always stuck with me, inside me, for some odd reason.
So far, I have not been able to find any relatives who served in either the Civil War or both World Wars. I'll for sure be digging into that one.
