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What's in a Name?

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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 9 – February 26th - March 3rd, 2024

Changing Names


As names go my family tree has some quite common surnames. Since that is the case, I decided to write about one of my ancestor’s names that changed when she married into the Smith family. I have so many Smiths in my family that perhaps by writing about her I can give back some of her individuality and uniqueness.


Elizabeth S. Brenneman Smith


My ancestor began life with the surname of Brenneman, an Americanized form of the Swiss German Bronniman, probably a variant of Brenner. In the year 1800, according to Geneanet.org the location in United States with the most individuals with the surname of Brenneman was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with approximately 1070 people bearing that surname. Lancaster is the county in Pennsylvania in which my ancestor was born on 18 June 1846. The name she was baptized with the name Elizabeth S. Brenneman, she was one of my 2X great-grandmothers on the paternal side of my family tree. It appears that the Brenneman surname was fairly common in the Lancaster vicinity but not quite as popular as Smith.


Prussian Landscape

In order to find the name of the area from whence her family had immigrated from Europe I had to go back to one of my 6X great-fathers, Adam Brenneman, son of Melchior Brenneman and Elizabeth Jane Stehman, and born in 1700 in Griesheim, Prussia. Four generations of Brennemans separated Elizabeth from her original Prussian immigrant ancestors, Adam Brenneman, and Mary Stuart.


In November 1742 Adam Breneman received a land warrant of 150 acres on Conestoga Creek, Lancaster County, in the colony of Pennsylvania. He agreed to pay monies to


Ephrata Cloister, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

John Farrer, a neighbor who did not comply with his conditions of the former warrant. This was the same land on which Elizabeth S. was born in 1846 to Christian Brenneman and Catherine C. Smeltzer Brenneman. It is interesting to note that Elizabeth and all of her siblings had the middle initial of “S” causing me to wonder if their middle name was Smeltzer named after their mother Catherine’s original surname. This information came from the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, U.S., Mennonite Vital Records, 1750-2104. Elizabeth was a Mennonite.



Elizabeth came of age during the U.S. Civil War living in the northern part of the United States. But as Mennonites her family’s main concern was probably to be allowed to worship God according to their conscience and pacifist tradition. During the U.S. Civil War, rather than fight, some hired substitutes or paid an exemption fee of

Civil War Battlefield

$300 in the North and $500 in the South. Those who fought in the war were usually excommunicated for doing so. That being said, I do not know how she would have socially mixed with former U.S. Civil War veterans, as her husband was one. Was she excommunicated because she married a veteran?


She obviously met him somehow, although his family lived in the center area of Pennsylvania and her family resided in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in the southeast section of Pennsylvania, one of the locations in Pennsylvania in which the Amish and the Mennonites live.

Mennonite Woman with Quilt


Once Elizabeth married Joseph Speck Smith in approximately 1865 when she was nineteen or twenty years old, she moved to Duncannon, Perry County, Pennsylvania. This is how her surname changed from Brenneman, a German/Prussian surname to Smith, one of the most common



surnames in America, making my genealogy research ever so difficult! According to my research, she was no longer of the Mennonite faith but then she became a Methodist, having her children baptized as such.


Difficult genealogical research


19th century family on the move


Joseph was the Postmaster of Duncannon, Pennsylvania, later working for the U.S. Arsenal, and by 1870 Elizabeth was the mother of three children, one of whom was my paternal great-grandmother, Florence Brenneman Smith. I had the privilege of meeting Florence as a young girl of eight years when my parents took my brothers and me to visit her and her brother, Uncle Ralph, a.k.a. Uncle Bud, where they lived in Philadelphia. She was 93 years old then and spent most of her time in her favorite chair, yet I remember her as a happy, elderly lady. I never asked her about her parents when I was so young, but I wish I had. Florence was born in 1868. How interesting her life would have been!

Christ Church, Philadelphia

At some point in Elizabeth Brenneman Smith’s life, she and her family moved to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania and then to Philadelphia. She had at least eight children that I have been able to find. Elizabeth’s final resting place, along with Joseph’s was in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia. Elizabeth was only 49 years old. Her youngest child was just eleven years old. Her husband, Joseph, lived until 1917. He never remarried.


Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Did I add some valued information about Elizabeth’s ancestry? Yes, but not enough. I have learned that it is often difficult to find records regarding women who lived in the 19th century, add that difficulty to uncovering the correct information about people with surname of Smith and it may take a while. I will continue, however, to add more information about her in my family tree as there are always new records that are being digitalized and posted to many genealogical websites.


19th century woman


 

 

 

 

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