SLOT/SLOAT to LOCK/LOCKE Connection

Profile manager: David Sloat [send private message]

DNA testing has confirmed that one or more lines of SLOT/SLOTT/SLOAT/SLOTE/SLOOT/etc families who are descendants of Jan Pietersen Slot of New York, sometime around the time of the formation of the United States (1770-1790), changed their last names to LOCK/LOCKE. (This can present a real challenge for meeting the WikiTree mandate to list profiles by Last Name At Birth.)

This page is an attempt to collect and present various "opinions" of genealogists who are trying to track and connect a family that

1) is a LOCK/LOCKE "brick wall"

2) have ancestors listed as SLOT/SLOTT/SLOAT/SLOOT/etc in one document, and then find what appears to be the same person being listed as LOCK/LOCKE in another document, and/or

3) have identified ancestors on various genealogy web sites that list the person(s) as "First-name SLOT LOCK" or "First-name LOCK SLOT".

The name change seems to be a simple change from a Dutch word (SLOT) to the English equivalent (LOCK). One theory posits the change as being related to moving from the New York/New Jersey area (which was heavily Dutch) to homestead in the Kentucky/Indiana area (which was primarily English). Or it could be related to the politics of which country "owned" the colonies just prior to, or shortly after, the change from colonial status to being the United States of America in 1776. Hopefully some collaborative historians can weigh in on this.

This Space page will initially focus on the many on-line family trees that present this name change by presenting screen shots of representative family trees found on the internet - some of which seem to conflict with others. Hopefully these can be sorted out and the "real" family tree can be identified.

Note that some of these images/data are from web sites that copyright information that they have obtained from true genealogists who are focused on connecting families (rather than on the goal of making profits - which is implied by enforcing copyrights). The copied images associated with this page are presented here under the allowance provided for copyrighted materials that small extracts from copyrighted works may be presented in critical reviews (mostly seen in academic reviews, but used here in the same spirit and intent).