Hi, list,
There seems to be a lot of conflicting info out there on wives of Arnold
Custer. Here are some of my notes and thoughts, but I'm not making ANY
definitive statements and there are certainly others who know much more than
I do!!!! All I want to do is to communicate the various things I've seen in
case they may provide a clue for further research. WFT=World Family Tree CD
Vol/Tree #. I have not pulled submitter info on either of these trees, but
could if someone wants the contact. I do NOT want to add to the pool of
misinfo, but I also believe that if someone shows something, they must have
seen something that led them to the belief. Certainly some of this is in
error, if only by virtue of the contradictions shown.
WFT 4/2705 shows Elizabeth Rebecca Sellen and shows Paul as her child as well
as Conrad.
WFT 9/0893 showing Rebecca ? as second wife of Arnold with a marriage date of
about 1699.
RECORDS OF GRACE FLORY SHOW WIFE REBECCA NUZAM SCHULER AS MOTHER OF CONRAD
CASTOR (abt. 1695-1772).
I believe that Conrad's mother is Gertrut Conrads because of the Conrad name,
but the way the old records were written, particularly with the s at the end
of Conrad, she could very well have been Gertrut CHILD OF Conrad somebody or
other with an entirely different last name.
An explanation of the use of s at the end of a father's FIRST name in place
of an actual surname is given in "The Ancestry of the 13 Krefeld Emigrants of
1683" by Wilhelm Niepoth. This was a Dutch practice in various churches.
Add to that the practice of naming a child after his grandfather, in this
case presumably the maternal grandfather. If, for example, a Conrad Sellen
or Schuler or Nuzam or any other known allied name turned up who had a
daughter Gertrud, that would be worth looking at.
Elizabeth Rebecca Sellen v. Rebecca Nuzam Schuler may be due to misreading of
the old script. Elizabeth Rebecca could have been called Rebecca. I do not
mean to infer that there was only one wife though, it's hard to turn Gertrut
into Rebecca. This is more an overall concept, that the early naming
practices were often misleading or the script difficult to read.
Incidentally, a good webpage on naming practices (German tho) is
www.kerchner.com/germname.htm and /nickname.htm.
All for what it's worth,
Cris