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Folks,
Referring to the arrival of Joseph Billiter in Maryland in 1671 [m Elizabeth Fuller 1674, MD], whom I nickname 'Old Joe', I would like to beg for some corrections.
I have been 'mining' some genealogies on Ancestry.com and RootsWeb in the last few days, and to my great surprise I've found myself and even my wife (among others) cited as sources for what derives from a personal letter from Marsha Bovey in 1981, which said Old Joe was from Mannedorf, Canton Zurich, Switzerland.
By 1981, a Swiss professional genealogist, Julius Billeter dominated the Billiter/Billeter origins thinking with statements like, "... the name Billeter is purely Swiss".
Until recently, maybe 1999, that assertion was accepted as fact by all, but it was questioned by Marsha and Janette Josserand as early as 1985: see Janette's post #47 on this forum.
The evidence for Marsha's and Janett's English origin for Old Joe is convincing to me. RuthAnn Billiter Francis and I have cited additional evidence from the Oxford English Dictionary and from early English documents (msg # 114 here) that places the origin of the 'Billiter' name in England (1247 - RuthAnn) about a century before the Swiss (1382).
So, I ask that those of you who provided 'Mannedorf' as the orgin of 'Old Joe' in the Maryland Colony kindly retract it from your various postings on the Web genealogies, Ancestry.com and RootsWeb mainly. Just change Old Joe's origin to 'Unknown' until we are able to establish an orgin for certain.
Personally, I think the earliest American Billiters came from England, not CH.
We can debate that here.
Thanks, and best regards, Jim Billiter - Jim@Billiter.com
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