History and Care by the Church in Local Parishes

Many of the records we can find listing our ancestors, especially prior to civil registration, come from church records, at least in the British Isles. The churches were central to the local societies and, in many respects, governed the habits and deportment of the residents.

Comments can often be found in parish registers, about historical events as well as concerning the behaviour of parishioners. Ministers did not generally hold back when commenting on moral issues in particular. What family researcher has not found a reference to an illicit romance evidenced by a note in the baptism register about pre-marital relations?

The child might well be tagged with the label of bastard, if born out-of-wedlock or before the parents were married. Even the date of conception might be highlighted by clergymen. Such was the case for a 2^nd great-grandmother of a friend of mine where a note was inserted into the 1790 baptism register for Lintrathen, Forfarshire, Scotland, saying the child was “begat in antenuptial fornication.”

I was reminded of the role of the church as well in looking at documents and publications for a course I have just started on Scotland 1750 to 1850: Beyond the OPRs (Pharos Teaching and Tutoring). I found a write-up on Campsie Parish, Stirlingshire (birthplace of my 2^nd great-grandfather), in The Statistical Accounts of Scotland 1791-1845 describing the church, its history and its activities, the author, Rev. Mr. James Lapslie, recorded how the church was involved in the formation and adjudication of all manner of the parish’s social structure:

I have all along been accustomed to consider these public religious meetings as beneficial to the manners of the country. The ecclesiastical discipline of this parish is still kept up. As for discipline against fornicators, two days doing public penance in the church, are required, besides a fine of a crown, for each guilty person, to the poor. There has been an opinion entertained, that this public penance has been productive of very bad effects in society; so far has an idea gone forth of this sort, that, for this reason, some writers have pretended to say, that so long as doing public penance was permitted, no person should be put to death for child murder; I am inclined to believe, that it would be much more the interest of the community, in a political light, that the laws of discipline should be more rigidly adhered to; for if once the vulgar of any country, consider incontinency as a venial fault, they are almost ready for the commission of any crime; and as l can easily see, that the shame of doing penance operates to deter others; in this point of view, it is to be considered as answering the ends of edification.

Publications like the Statistical Accounts of Scotland are great sources of information about areas of Scotland during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The report on Campsie had a lot of information about the weaving and printing industries which employed many of my ancestors.

There are many historical and genealogical publications available now to download. One of the great sites I go to often is Archive.org. A quick search of the site for “Parish of Campsie” in the text of books resulted in 3,378 hits, 281 of them under the sub-category of genealogy. Many were family genealogies.

If you are doing research for your Scottish lines, as I have done recently, don’t forget to look for historical information that can give you important background to how and where your ancestors lived. And do check sites such as the Statistical Accounts and Archive.org for relevant material.

The Protestant Reformation Anniversary

This month marks the 500^th anniversary of the publication of Martin Luther’s Ninety Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences which initiated the break of reformers with the Roman Catholic Church.

I was reminded of this by a recent article in the local newspaper titled Guess why the tiny German town of Wittenberg is expecting two million visitors (Calgary Herald, Eliot Stein, October 14^th). Stein comments on the activities the town has organized to celebrate the occasion. You might be able to read it here.

On 31 October 1517 (possibly 21 October on the current Gregorian calendar), according to legend, Luther posted his criticisms on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Copies of the documents were quickly circulated throughout Germany. By that time printing presses were in operation across Europe, no doubt contributing to the rapid dissemination of information and ideas to the masses.

1517 printing of the Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther

Formation of Protestant churches did not happen immediately but the die was cast and many other activists such as John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli took up the cause.

The reformation marks the beginning, in many European countries, of accurate recording of births, marriage and deaths. Genealogists celebrate this development every day.

The event, of course, happened during the depth of the Little Ice Age when most of Europe was caught up in devastating climatic conditions that made living harsh. Areas throughout the continent were hard-pressed to take care of their citizens, largely led by the Catholic Church. There was great social unrest as people struggled to find employment and food in order to survive. Local parishes were particularly under siege to fund support programs.

In many regions and countries, governments legislated new rules to prevent people from moving around, bringing even more crowds to some localities unable to even take care of their own. I suspect the new laws concerning recording of births, marriage and burials, in many of the newly-established Protestant regimes was really just a way to get a handle on who lived in their areas and who had the wherewithal to help out through taxes.

Anyway, the world did indeed change in 1517. The revolution in religious thought brought with it a great deal of conflict, between religious groups and with the ruling classes who attempted to maintain order and control. Many family historians will be aware of, and have ancestors who may have been a part of groups that dedicated themselves to change – such as the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) – who were the focus of violence, imprisonment and banishment. One such violent event in France was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre during which thousands lost their lives.

 

Le massacre de la Saint-Barthelemy, oil on panel by Francois Dubois, ca 1572-84 (original in Musee cantonall des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne)

Protestantism of course started long before the 16^th century, but the date of 31 October 1571 was a turning point. Family historians everywhere will recognize how the event changed the lives of many of their ancestors.

What do you do when you want to find families named Miller?

My mother was a Miller, not the kind that ground grain, although there were a few members of at least one line who did own a mill in Virginia, USA in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Miller is one of those very common names, probably originated from the occupation, that seem to be prevalent everywhere.

I wrote about the Miller family history in North America back in 2016 (Moving 7 – The Miller Family Goes West).

We in North America are descended from a man named John Conrad Miller, as discovered by my aunt in the 1970s. In her family history summary she said:

John Conrad Miller is the first American of this line we have found.  There were many German settlements, both in Ohio and Indiana, with numerous Millers among them.  But whether John came to the United States with his parents or came on his own cannot be answered.

Since John was a blacksmith, it is easy to conclude that he met Hannah Mayfield through her brother John, also a smithy.  The marriage of John and Hannah probably was performed in Jefferson County, Indiana, but the exact date is not known. It was not unusual in those days for a Justice of the Peace, living in a community, to perform a marriage then fail to record it when he made a trip to the county seat.  This may have been the case in this instance.

After their marriage, John and Hannah remained in Jefferson County for about a year. Their first child, Matilda Ann, was born there in September 1839.  In 1840, they were in Cincinnati, Ohio.

From the time Cincinnati was founded, through many decades that followed, the city was frequently devastated with Bubonic Plague. [Note: I think my aunt might have meant Cholera as I cannot find any mention of the plague as she described.]  This is cause to wonder if he took his family north to Mason in Warren County where their third child, Isaac M., was born, although the family was back in Cincinnati before the end of that year, 1843.  According to all reports available, John Conrad Miller died in Cincinnati in 1846 at a young age.

In 2010 I did finally find a marriage license for John and Hannah, issued in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, USA. John was a resident of Tippecanoe while Hannah lived in Jefferson County at the time. Now these two places are 150 miles apart and it is difficult to envision how John and Hannah came to meet considering people may not have travelled all that far in those times. My aunt might be right in her supposition that they were introduced by her brother. But then how did those two gentlemen meet?

The frequency of the Miller name is currently actually higher in North America (4,544 per million) than in Germany (241 per million) where my family line apparently originated - according to search information from the publicprofiler website. And John is the most frequent forename.

 

World statistics for the surname Miller from the publicprofiler worldnames website

We have only one reference to John Conrad’s birthplace, that on the 1880 US census for my great-grandfather, Isaac Mayfield Miller, one of John Conrad’s sons. It says his father and mother were born in Wertenberg [sic]. We know his mother’s birthplace is wrong – she was born in Maryland, USA – but the place name for his father is certainly interesting. We believe John Conrad was born in 1815 but that has not been confirmed either. His forenames could also have been Johann or Johannes and Konrad; his surname could just as well have originally been Mueller.

We cannot know if Wurttemberg is the right place as it was recorded on the census 34 years after John Conrad’s death, but it is a start. FamilySearch.org has a number of people of that name in its library, but none of them ever left Germany.

There is no Miller or Shepheard research going on with the Guild of One-Name Studies. There is a Miller DNA project though whose participants might prove useful one day.

Before his death I persuaded my cousin, a direct male descendant of John Conrad Miller, to take a Y-DNA test with FamilyTreeDNA. I wrote about that in a blog post, DNA Matches, earlier this year. There have been some matches but no one with whom we can definitively connect our roots. I live in hope!

Common names like Miller have their difficulties in separating families and finding roots, especially when migration occurred before passenger lists were saved. And without specific documents that indicate where individuals came from, it can be most disappointing.