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| Ubrecht ca. 1500's |
In my husband's line is a fascinating name, Van Scyoc. That should be easy to research, said I in my naive early years of doing family history research. Ha! The gods are fickle and they proved it with this fascinating name. A wonderful elderly researcher named Melwood VanScyoc communicated with me and helped me with some information to get started.
He assured me that despite the variety of spellings, all the names represented people who were descendants of the same person who had arrived from Holland to the "New Amsterdam" of the old New York area. This ancestor came from Ubrecht in the Netherlands in the early 1600's.
He assured me that despite the variety of spellings, all the names represented people who were descendants of the same person who had arrived from Holland to the "New Amsterdam" of the old New York area. This ancestor came from Ubrecht in the Netherlands in the early 1600's.
Tracking the same family across seven states, I found over sixteen spellings of the name in official documents. Sometimes middle names were used as first names, officials misspelled names, and left off the "Van" in the last name all together.
A note about official records such as census, deeds, marriage papers, etc. The custom was for the officer to write the names of the person. Some were better at spelling, some had more knowledge of one language than another, some sounded it out, some guessed, and some actually asked! Accented speech, speech impediments, and poor writing skills converge at times to create sheer havoc in records. While present day families may attack much meaning to a specific spelling, a researcher cannot assume all instances of the name in a record were the work of the person involved, that the name was consistently spelled, or that it is the one "correct" spelling. In one family they had a family Bible kept for generations, but then discovered the person who had begun it was terrible at spelling and had misspelled words all of her life!
SOME variations of this name: VanScyoc, Van Scyoc, Van Seyeo, Van Scyre, Van Schyhock, Shyhock, Syoc, Van Lykowk, Van Schoiak, Van Sayoc, Van Schoiack, Vanscharack, Schoiack, etc.
Moving out of the New Amsterdam area, some went into Pennsylvania and Virginia, some into Ohio, some into Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Oregon, California, Kansas, Arkansas, etc.
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