Birth and Family Origins in Bohemia (1902) Antonia Heinz was born on May 25, 1902, in Buchau, a small town near Karlsbad in the German-speaking region of Bohemia. Though her birth was recorded in Buchau, her family roots lay in the nearby village of Langlammitz, where her father, Sigmund von Heinz, was the youngest of…
For generations, the Heinz family lived in the quiet rhythm of rural Bohemia. Their world was the village of Langlamitz, a German‑speaking community tucked into the northern hills of the Sudetenland. Life there was simple and steady: the farm, the seasons, the church, the neighbors, the land. It was a world built slowly, over centuries,…
After the death of her husband, Lewis Barney, from pneumonia in 1908, Anna Barney faced the difficult challenge of raising three young children on her own. Clara, born in 1898, Charles, born in 1900, and Lee, born in 1903, were still very young when their father died. With few options available and needing time to…
From the windswept coast of western Finland to the silver mines of Colorado, the story of Charles Holm and Johanna Erickson is one of courage, hardship, love, and endurance. Their journey reflects the experience of many Scandinavian immigrants who left behind poverty and rigid social expectations in search of opportunity in America’s West. Charles J….
Generation 1: Frederick Hendrickson Van LeeuwenJamaica, Long Island • Arrived c. 1670 Frederick crossed the Atlantic at a moment when the Dutch colonial experiment in America was already ending. Six years before his arrival, the English fleet had sailed into New Amsterdam’s harbor and taken the colony without firing a shot; Peter Stuyvesant wanted to…
The Van Leeuwen story in America begins not with one journey but two, separated by a century. Fleeing Persecution (~1570) Around 1570, the Van Leeuwen family fled the Southern Netherlands — the area around Leuven (Louvain), a city in what is today Belgium. In the 1500s, the entire Low Countries were under Spanish Habsburg rule,…
Originally written by Lorraine, my first cousin once removed, in 2015. I have modified her original email story to smooth out the transitions while keeping the warm, personal tone of her memories. Avis Clinton Royer Jackson was the youngest of four daughters born to Perry and Grace Royer in Marion, Ohio, in 1917. She grew…
Bohemia, where the Heinz family lived, is now part of the modern-day Czech Republic. In the 1800s, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and after World War I, it became part of the new country of Czechoslovakia. In villages like Lang-Lammitz, people of different backgrounds lived side by side, including German-speaking families like the…
The Block Wall of Evans Van Lew’s origins has been broken through! The Van Lews of Glens Falls, New York, always knew they were Dutch. They thought the family originally came from New Jersey. But for over two hundred years, no one could prove it. Two published genealogies documented the Van Lew family in meticulous…
Lee comes from a long line of Barneys in the United States. The Barney’s originally were Quakers living in England and came to America in the late 1600’s. They originally settled in Massachusetts. Later generations moved to Rhode Island and New York. Lee was born 3 March 1903 in the Town of Johnsburg, New York To Lewis and…