Any Other Name...

L to R: Edith Hunt & Rosannah Palmer

Tonight I decided to get back to work tracing a few family lines using the hints on ancestry.com. I've run out of hints for the Hunt family line. I'm convinced they were hatched from eggs! 

Alright...not really, but their names are absolutely the worst to try and trace. William Hunt...Isaac Hunt...and another Isaac Hunt...1804 Ontario, Canada is as far back as I'm able to go at the moment. The names are just too common. 

Abandoning that family for a time, I decided to turn my attention to another line. And here is where this evening's post began to take shape. I am the great great granddaughter of Edith Jane Hunt (nee Vanidour). She was married to William James Hunt and had three children, Horatio, James Ray, and Merrill. Merrill was my grandpa's father. 

Fun fact of the day: My great aunt Betty's middle name is Jane. My mother's middle name is Edith. Now where do you suppose they got those names?

However, as much as I'd love to tell you more about Edith I don't really know much about her at the moment. What I do remember is going to Canada with my parents. I don't remember how old I was, but we went for a Vanidour family reunion. I wonder if this is what sparked my interest in genealogy?

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

You see, someone started researching the Vanidour clan. And we're talking long before internet and ancestry.com made life WAY simpler. The farther back they went the more convoluted the names became. There was Van Naarden, Van Naerden, Van Norden, Van Order, Vanorder, VanIdour, Vanidor, and Edith's family line which used Vanidour. Where these people somehow all related? Yes!

Martin Luther & John Calvin

Now if you're into studying the heritage of surnames you're probably thinking "Oh, this sound like Dutch or Danish or something over in that part of the world." Am I right? Not so, my friends. The Vanidour family is in fact...French. Seriously...here's the story...

There was once a man named Pierre Gaspard Mabille of Nevy, France. He is reported to be the progenitor (big, fancy word meaning the beginning of the family line) of the VanNaarden family. Way back in the 16th he served under Admiral Gaspard de Coligney. At this time France was in the middle of religious turmoil. Much of Europe was. Why? Oh, this just happened to be the same time period as our dear friend Martin Luther, one of the fathers of The Reformation. There were others of course. In France the protestants were referred to as Huguenots. Many of them followed the writings of John Calvin. 

Naarden, Holland

Like Germany, the French aristocracy aligned themselves with either the Roman Catholic Church or with the Protestant Reformers and the people within those territories were subject to the whims of their nobles. France has one of the worst histories of religious massacres during this time. The Admiral was assassinated and Pierre decided to get his family out of there.

They fled, like many Protestants, to the Netherlands. Two generations later, around 1623, his family, led by his namesake, made their way to New Amsterdam with a new name: VanNaarden. It means from Naarden, the area they were from in Holland. 

The Fall of New Amsterdam

The family thrived in the New World but after just a few generations in New York (formerly known as New Amsterdam), the politics of the American Revolution forced the family to choose sides. By this time they were known as the VanNorden. In order to maintain their religious and cultural heritage, some chose to side with the British and leave America for Canada. 

It wasn't until the early 1800's that the surname Vanidour began to be used. The French influence in Canada helped to shape the name just as the English influence in New York had changed it to VanNorden and then later to VanOrder. Isaac Vanidour appears to be the first with the new spelling. He married Sara Howe in 1829. All together they had 11 children; 2 girls and 9 boys. 

Isaac John Vanidour

Eventually their son Peter would marry Louise Ann Bailey and he carried the name into Ontario, Canada where in 1879 my great great grandmother Edith was born. The family eventually settled in Bay City, Michigan and the name Vanidour was carried on through Peter's 3 sons.

It amazes me how often and easily names can change. All it takes is a misunderstanding, a poorly read document, or in this case the influence of the area. If you're going to take the time to research your family history, don't become discouraged. Think over all the different ways a name could be misspelled and eventually you'll find someone in your line. 

Unless of course their name happens to be Hunt.