When I was getting started with my research, I relied heavily on a stack of family trees and notes on my maternal lines. For the most part, these have been highly accurate and have been very helpful. These trees took our Dutch line (the Striening family) back to my 3x great-grandparents, Matthew Striening and Ann Barrington Creveau (spelling per the notes I was handed). The notes also indicated that Ann had a brother named John. In the 1900 U.S. Census, I find an Ann Striening living in Santa Rosa, California, with her brother, John. I was then able to locate Ann and her three sons (without her husband, but that's a whole other post) in Santa Rose in 1880. I was able to locate Matthew and Ann as far back as the 1870 U.S. Census, living in San Francisco with their three sons.
Prior to 1870, though, I was at a stand-still. And honestly, I was so focused on some of our other lines that I didn't give it that much thought. A few months ago, I mentioned to a "genealogy buddy" that I had some Dutch ancestry, and she kindly pointed me to the fact that FamilySearch has digitized and published the Netherlands Civil Registrations, 1792-1952 (births, marriages, deaths). The records are not indexed, but I located a fabulous Dutch site for genealogists, genlias.nl, that offers a free index to Dutch civil registrations. That index combined with the FamilySearch records turned out to be an absolute gold mine for me. Yippee!
The first thing I did was look for the birth record of my great-great grandfather, John Striening (son of Matthew and Ann). In the records for The Hague, I find a Johannes Mattheus Striening born 10 Sep 1860, son of Mattheus Striening and Johanna Maria Christina Crevot. Bingo! Except wait...where's the Barrington? Going back a year in the records, I looked for the birth of John's older brother, Marinus. On 7 May 1859, I find a record for the birth of Johannes Marinus Striening, son of Mattheus Striening and Johanna Christina Maria Crevot. Again, no Barrington. So maybe that just got tossed in with no basis? Hmm...
Taking a step even further back in the records, I looked for the marriage record of Mattheus and Johanna. On 26 Jan 1859 (women in my family have miraculously short pregnancies, don't question it), I find a marriage record for Mattheus Striening and Catharina Johanna Maria Crevot. This record lists Catharina Johanna's parents as Jan Hendrik Crevot and Catharina Johanna Sprinkstok. Both parents are listed as deceased, but it does list Catharina Crevot's birthplace - Zwolle.
So I turned to the civil registrations for Zwolle and searched for any records of other children (especially one named John, or some form thereof) born to Jan Hendrik Crevot and Catharina Johanna Sprinkstok. My search turned up two brothers for my 3rd great-grandmother - Gerrit Jan Crevot, born 21 Jan 1836, and Tobias Francois Crevot, born 9 Apr 1833. So now I had two more relatives, and still no trace of the Barrington name.
After entering those names, though, I did get a hint on Ancestry - a link to an alien arrivals list in England from 5 Aug 1859. On the passenger list for the ship Concordia, arriving in London from Rotterdam, I find a listing for a 'G. F. Crevot'. Could this be Gerrit? Or maybe Tobias, with the T miswritten as a G? Here's where it comes in handy to look at the actual record and not just the transcription, though. Because guess who I found on the line immediately before G F Crevot? None other than a...drum roll please...George Barrington! I did a little happy dance when I saw that. We didn't pull the name out of a hat! It clearly had to have come from this Barrington fellow who was traveling with our distant uncle. We must have just "borrowed" it. Right??
Fast forward a few months to this week, when I was contacted by a woman researching Marinus Striening's wife. She wanted to let me know that she had found an obituary for his mother, Ann, that she thought I might be interested in. From the San Francisco Daily Call, 24 Nov 1908, here is Ann's obituary:
This was most definitely my Ann (or Catharina or Johanna, depending on which record we're looking at)...and suddenly we have both George Barrington AND John Barrington as her brothers. (We'll set aside the sister, Caroline, for now, other than to mention that her obituary also mentions a brother, John Barrington.)
Again, this is clearly the George who the brother of Ann (Crevot) Striening. If there were any doubt that these Barrington brothers were actually the Crevot brothers, I think the fact that George's son was (per census and draft registrations) named George Crevot Barrington would eliminate that doubt.
At this point, I think it is safe to assume that the arrival record in England was for George Francis Barrington and Gerrit Jan Crevot (who later adopted the name John Barrington). Based on the age in his obituary, George Barrington would have been born on 6 Apr 1836. We know from records, however, that his brother Gerrit was born 21 Jan 1836, which means that the obituary likely had the wrong year. I searched the civil registrations for Zwolle for any other Crevots in that time period, but come up with none other than Gerrit Jan and Tobias Francois. Based on the April birthdate, it is currently my working assumption that Tobias Francois Crevot was the same man as George Francis Barrington.
But why would the brothers change their names at different times? For that matter, why would they change their names at all? And where the heck did this Barrington name come from?? So many questions...as I commented in one of my genealogy groups earlier today, these ancestors of mine, they got some splainin' to do!
