Best way of researching an ancestor that is German Swiss that immigrated toPenn. In 1751 from Rotterdam Holland?

Question

Most details are related in Johan Heinz and his Descendants by Proctor. Johann Heinz I and his family immigrated from Dillenburg, a small town in the province of Hessen-Nassau, Prussia. Sailed from Rotterdam, Holland . He was of both German and Swiss extraction. Maybe his mother was Swiss?

The Swiss project group is dormant. Thank you Kelly

Comments

I see that this name is some what confusing. I have spotted some of the family in different articles, they had been mentioned in connection to a notable relative. Johann (John) Heinz(Hines) III, born 1744 and was 7 years old at the time of passage, eventually marries Gertrude Deitch aRound 1776 after a return trip on the Union also with future brother in-law Johann Jacob Aurand. John Hines has a daughter named Christina who marries Mathew Kennedy of Paisley, Scotland. They leave Georgetown , Maryland with there children and buy a farm in Ohio, where they live there lives and are buried in the Kennedy Cemetery. This MathewKennedy is the son of William Kennedy and Grizzel (Lindsay)Kennedy of Paisley, Scotland and the brother of Thomas Kennedy, the poet, and politician of Washington County, Maryland who also helped create the Jew Bill. It was in the Maryland Historical Magazine vol 106, number 4, winter 2011 edition, from the article “Thomas Kennedy: Washington County’s poet, politician, by Dan Guzy. The article is pg 448-472. At the bottom of pg 467 it mentions Mathew Kennedy and wife Christine Hines. There are more articles and records of the descendants, I’m still trying to pull it together and fill in the blanks with good sources. I’m still looking at the migration and the before and figure out the best course in researching. Thank you, Kelly

Answer 1

He's part of the population that the Palatine Migration Project is focused on. Check out the project pages; you might want to join us.

For people like this man who arrived at Philadelphia between 1737 and 1776, the lists of arriving passengers are often the earliest source we can find. It's great when you can connect an ancestor to their roots in Europe.

It's common to find that a "Palatine" migrant has multiple profiles with different spellings of their name. Simply by finding duplicates and merging them, we sometimes make progress in research, since different members have have different bits of information.

Comments

I think this ancestor of yours might be represented in WikiTree by profiles https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hein-271 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hein-187 , and possibly others.  Both of those profiles mention Dillenburg. They will need to be merged, and work is needed to clean them up, but before they are merged we'll need to reconcile the different profiles for the parents.

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The Johann Heinz and family settled in Pennsylvania and then Maryland. His son Johann Heinz II, bought a farm and died in Maryland with his wife surviving him till 1806. One of his children, his only daughter Elizabeth Christina, married Johann Jacob Aurand , my 4th great grandparents, married, lived and had children and died in Maryland. It was a large family that came from Dillenburg except Johann Jacob Aurand, who came from strassebersbach. Johann the sr. Was a burgomeister. I’m guessing they had nobility. I will look closer at the sight, thank you, Kelly

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A name search here on "Johan* Heinz" turns up many matches. I see you've identified some other Palatine migrant profiles with this same name pattern as your ancestors, and started editing them.

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I looked at the Johann Heinz-187, this page doesn’t exist it says and the-271, it would not be a match as the Johann Heinz I would of been born much sooner. Yes, I am still editing this and his immediate family children’s profiles, I’m trying to flesh out some interesting details. To my original query, I’m looking at Johann Heinz born possibly 1690- 1700 and being German and Swiss, and a previous Burgomeister,i am then looking for possible noble, aristocratic or political. Then I’m looking at two other lines, the German Heinz of his father and who may be his mother, maybe the Swiss element of descendant. I’m trying to find maybe some guidance on researching the Swiss Element. I looked for other Swiss on a project but it’s dormant. So I was thinking I couldn’t be the only one who’s ancestors were of two nations. Thank you Kelly

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https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hein-187 (there was a comma in the link, and no z at the end. the Z at the end is a patronymic indicator (zoon/son))

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Heinz-271 departed from Bremen and landed in Maine.  The person in the query is said to have sailed with his family from Rotterdam, and settled in Pennsylvania.  Perhaps Heintz-19 is one of the immigrants (1751 to Philadelphia)?

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The spellings of names are not a valid basis for distinguishing between individual people in these 18th-century populations. Spellings were not standardized, naming conventions (such as the patronymic indicator Joop mentioned) can produce variations, many spellings in records were created phonetically by people with different language backgrounds from the speaker whose name they were recording, and more recent generations of the family often impose their version of the name spelling on their ancestors' biographies. Thus, we have to consider the possibility that similar names like Hein, Heim, Heins, Heinz,  Heintz, etc., could all represent the same person or family (or maybe not).

It's clear that multiple individual families with names similar to Heinz immigrated to America from Germany, Alsace, or Switzerland (almost always on ships that departed from Rotterdam) in the 1700s. In this collaborative genealogy business we face a dual challenge of (1) not accidentally combining life details for two (or more) distinct people and (2) not treating one distinct person as two or more different people.

And we often have to deal with the challenge of resolving grotesque errors in profiles created from GEDCOMs produced in software and websites where people are encouraged to happily incorporate other people's family trees and "sources" into their family trees without looking critically at the information they are adopted. This is the situation with Hein-187, whose profile is full of incongruous details. He has two birth dates 5 years apart; there are three different stories of his immigration (he supposedly traveled from Bremen to Maine, but ended up in North Carolina; he supposedly arrived in Baltimore; and he supposedly arrived in North Carolina); he supposedly died nearly 200 miles away from where he was supposedly buried; and (most amazingly) he lived in Missouri in 1930, a mere 135 years after his death.  And there are no valid sources on the entire profile. [Added: With profiles like that one, we should assume that there is a valid basis for at least some of the information. By investigating sources and discussing the situation, we try to determine what real person the profile is intended to represent, then create a better profile.]

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There is a Heintz family book that is available for free on Google books.  It begins with Johannes Heintz, who came from Dillenberg, Prussia  to Philadelphia in 1751, aboard the ship Two Brothers. He was accompanied by his father and his son--both also named Johannes.  Heintz-19 is likely the father because he is said to be a former Burgermeister of Dillenberg prior to immigration.  The family book also notes that the earliest immigrant with a variation of the name was Johann Ludwig Heintz, who arrived 1730.   Between his 1730 and 1775, at least 32 individuals with the Heintz family name arrived in Philadelphia.

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The Strassburger book of Philadelphia passenger arrivals shows on page 465 that the ship Two Brothers that arrived in 1751 carried men named Johannes Hein, Johannes Heintz, Johannes Henrich, and Johan Jacob Hoffheintz.

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The passenger arrival records are mostly just names. They don't usually indicate where the person came from, nor their ages or their current or previous occupations. The information on these topics that Michael found in the Heintz book may have come from family lore.

However, the men named Heintz, Hein, etc., who arrived on the Two Brothers all signed their names. That's probably an indication of social status.

See the signatures of the Two Brothers passengers at https://archive.org/details/pennsylvaniagerm04penn_1/page/546