Re: Possible English origins, part 2
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In reply to:
Possible English origins, part 2
Johnny Mize 9/25/09
I've done a lot of early colonial genealogy and it is common that religious refugees (of the "reformed" churches of Germany, Belgium, and France) who ended up in the Americas often found Britain as a "waystation" from where they left to travel directly to the British colonies.
If you study the history of the reformation in Europe you'll find a common pattern of German reformed fleeing persecution or oppression in Germany going first to France and living as part of the Huguenot community in France (often over a period of more than one generation); then moving northward into Belgium as conditions becaume inhospitable in France, adding to their group the Belgiun Waloons, moving then to the Netherlands where relgious diversity was much more tolerated; thise that did not immigrate directly from the Netherlands movedon to Britain as a jumping off point to the Americas.
A few families may have remained in Britain (this is a general statement not specific to Mize)just because the married there of otherwise grew roots and settled down.In Britain the German and French names were most often Anglicized; in the case of the Germans in between there may have been a French form of the name.Plus, this diaspora did not occur quickly as it did would today so each way station included some degree of enculturation and a form of the family name consistent with the culture in which the group lived.
Theres no "right spelling " for names, especially surnames; they changed according to the phonetics of whatever native language the families absorbed at any given geographic pause along their journey. And, they were transcribed and spelled phonetically, this is why we use soundex when doing genealogical searches.
This is why knowing the history of the times is important in doing family history work as is understanding a little of the linguistics of names and why you cannot restrict a search to one spelling of any name. In one branch of my early colonial immigrant German reformed family (not Mize) there are five different spellings of the surname in one generation well after they are in the colonies; in another, with the same probable path to the New World as the Mizes there are countless variations with Gernam, French, British and Americanized versions. Some other names of German or Dutch origin are Americanized within the first couple of generations in what is now the US in ways in which they only slightly, if at all, resemble the original German surname.
So, Joel Mize's scenario is history based, he knows what he is talking about.
The fact that there are no remaining Mize clusters in Britain is actually interesting in that many other early colonial German or French families that passed through Britain DID leave behind enough family members through intermarriage, etc that there are clusters of these names, in an anglicized version still in modern Britain who trace their ancestry back to groups who were fleeing to America.
FYI and for the record: the time period in which the out migration to the Americas of reformed church/Protestant religious groups is several hundred years AFTER even the last wave of plague would have decimated their numbers in Britain or anywhere else in Europe.
More Replies:
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
Nathan Mize 7/06/10
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
Laura Davenport 7/06/10
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
Nathan Mize 7/07/10
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
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Re: Possible English origins, part 2
Nathan Mize 7/05/10