WAS CAPT. JABEZ AN UMSTEAD?

 

 

One of the speculations about the origin of Capt. Jabez is that he was descended from a 17^th century German immigrant, Hans Peter UMSTEAD. I have recently had some E-Mail correspondence with Cris Hueneke, who is the coordinator of the UMSTEAD family, which I repeat here.

 

            On January 30, 2000, she wrote:

 

“I subscribed briefly to your OLMSTEAD list, mostly to find you or an OLMSTEAD family contact. My name's Cris Hueneke and I'm the coordinator of the UMSTEAD family. I suspect that you run into some confusion of the two just as I do, and I thought it might be smart if we "knew" each other.

 

“There appears to be at least one early World Family Tree submission where someone attached your Jabez to our Hans Peter UMSTEAD. Of course this is incorrect and I trust that the person who submitted this tree has since found that out.

 

“From what little I've looked for, it would appear that the OLMSTEADS came from Ware and Brookfield (England?) and there is clearly no connection between the OLMs and the UMs. It would appear that they settled here and there in New England and elsewhere, but not in Pennsylvania or the Philadelphia area. Would you agree with that in at least an overall sense? 

 

“There ARE several instances of UMSTEADS whose names were spelled OLMSTEAD or OLMSTADT, etc., on various records, for one reason or another. There may also be OLMSTEADs who got called UMSTEADs in error. Perhaps we could share this information with each other as we have it or run into it in the future.

 

“We have a number of variant spellings among the UMSTEADs: UMSTED, UMSTATTD, UMSTOT(T), UMPSTEAD, and UMSTADT, among the most common in use by living descendants, along with UMBSTATT in early German church records and others that are for the most part just misspellings.

 

“What separates the OLMSTEADS from the OLMSTEDS, in particular why do you have two mailing lists? It would help me to know the immigrant's names and places settled for the OLMSTEDs too, if they are in fact separate from your Jabez. If you would give me a brief synopsis on both, that would be really great.

 

“I suspect that from time to time, both of us will have people contacting us who are looking in the wrong family, yours or mine. Might I have your permission to refer any OLMs who come my way to you or someone else you'd prefer? And to whom could I refer OLMSTEDS, if not to you or the same person?

 

“I would of course appreciate your sending any lost UMs my way as well. My email is [email protected]. We have a domain at www.umstead.ORG. There's nothing there yet, but with luck there will be within the next several months. One of the things we will put on the page will be a "Who We Are" and a "Who We're Not" section, and I will include OLMSTEAD in the latter. When I get to that point, that's one place I'd like to be able to refer OLMs to you or whomever, be it by link to a webpage or by an email address. We can talk about that and adding a link to us on your page if you have one.

 

“There are a number of other "iffy" variant spellings, which I suspect you've run into as well, such as Amstadt, Armistead, Humstead, Husted, etc. I'm working on these individually and over time will be putting some of that on our page under "Who We Are" or "Who We Aren't" and listing known cases of misspellings, etc.

 

“I hope that we can do some things together to make it easier for descendants of both families.

 

“Thanks, Cris Hueneke”

 

On February 1, 2000, Cris replied to my E-Mail , saying in part:

 

“I think that I can say fairly definitively that Jabez was not from Hans Peter. There are a number of reasons for this: the UMSTEADs were definitely Germans. They definitely landed and stayed in the Phila area at first. We have very good info on their arrival and children. Definitely no Jabez. The name Jabez is seen nowhere on any extant UM records and, as far as I know, is not a German name ... my husband is German, I've done a lot with old German church records, etc., so I'm in a fairly good position to say this. I am not aware of any records of Jabez in Philadelphia. Our unidentified later immigrants arrived in 1732 or later, so no possibilities there.

 

“That said, IF there were any possibility that his name was not really Jabez ... for instance if whatever records you've seen are old script of some sort and someone didn't read the name properly ... IF it could have been Jacob or Johan, etc., there may be some open possibility of some kind. There is also the possibility of "known as" names v full legal names, which we run into with the Germans quite a bit. There was also the inability of immigration people to understand German accents or to spell what they heard. If you have a copy of a handwritten signature or a record written by someone else, I’d be willing to look at it if you think there’s any need.

 

On March 24, 2000, she wrote:

 

“It has just come to my attention that many records in Seneca Co, OH for Enoch UMSTEAD are listed under OLMSTEAD. We are sure that he was Enoch UMSTEAD, based on the findings of two of my most reliable and dedicated researchers. This is based on wills of Enoch, his son Aaron, and Aaron's wife Elizabeth, which I have only seen in abstract so far.

 

“Please inform the OLMSTEAD people. “Cris”