Genealogy

=========================================================

This location you will soon be able to find genealogical data about the Matenaer family.

The idea is to create a data pool that also contains information and family trees of related names like Matenaar, Matena, Matener, Matenaers, Matenars etc.

From what is known so far, members of the Matenaer family mainly live in Germany, concentrated around the Lower Rhine (Niederrhein),

Rhineland (Rheinland), Ruhr Valley (Ruhrgebiet), Heidelberg and District of Esslingen areas.

In 1858, one Matenaer family left the small village of  Neulouisendorf(near Kalkar, Lower Rhine) and emigrated to the United States (Wisconsin). Today, there should be a significant number of descendants of this family still living in North America.

Records of the city archive of Kalkar (Lower Rhine) revealed a significant amount of additional information which was copied and integrated into the existing dataset. Using this data and investing the necessary time and manpower to search further archives (churches, municipalities etc.) will allow to create histories of the various families.

So far, we could manage to trace our family (Matenaer or related versions) back to the year 1650 a.d. In the oldest documents the name ‚Matena’ noticably occurs more frequently, possibly indicating the ‚original’ version of the name. This assumption is supported by the ‚Familienkundliche Vereinigung -Mosaik-Archiv- in Kleve’, a local genealogical society and archive in Kleve (Lower Rhine).

They suggest that a dwelling called ‚Matena’ near the small village of Welver (59514 Welver, near. Lippetal und Soest , North Rhine Westphalia) might be the origin of this family name.

People that lived or came from this place would have been called Matenaer, the suffix -er meaning ‚from’ (as in Berlin-er, Frankfurt-er, New York-er etc.). The different spellings (e.g. Matenaar, Matener, Matenaers) can be explained by the lack of orthographical education of most people in historic times. City clerks were often careless when updating census information and repeatedly varied the orthographic interpretation and pronunciation of surnames.

A very good example is the German word for blacksmith: Schmied. This name is often spelled like Schmid, schmitt, Schmitz, Schmidt...etc.

.......................................................................................................

Post from David Matenaer:

Neuer Absatz

More soon.......  

I will be thankful for every additional bit of information that could help to extend and clarify the existing dataset. Information from and/or aboutour American relatives is here of particular interest.
 

So please do not hesitate to contact us if you want to integrate your data into ours. We also offer to provide data regarding your personal family research (our data in exchange for your data).

.........................................................................................................

You might also want to take a look at http://www.matenaar.de.

Here you will find the excellent genealogy homepage of Ingo Matenaar!!