A one-name study can be a tedious activity. The effort is to identify every individual with any of the included surname variant spellings and any other interesting related bits of information that turns up; everywhere in the world. It's not enough just to identify them, it's necessary to record the names, locations and any other information that gives a picture of the history and spread of the surname. So, there's a spreadsheet. The details of each individual will not be shared but, at various points, I will share information like how many people with any of the variant spellings live in the U.S. or elsewhere; how many are female, male, etc. I will share a few things in this blog, from the Beismer One-Name Study because that's what I've been working on for the past few days.
One of the web sites that I came across, again, in my search was the Surname Datebase. This is a great web site, based in Ireland, that researches surnames and writes articles giving historical and other information about the surname and some of the individuals who have that surname. Searching on the spelling Besemer, I found their article on that surname. I won't share the article here because of copyright but I have shared the link to the home page and to the Besemer page. I will also tell you that two people named in the article are in my family tree: Hans Bessamer who may be the same Hans Jurgen Besemer in our family and, Johannes Christian Besemer who is the brother of my ggg grandfather, Casparus Besemer Jr. The article also indicates what I had learned previously that the name Besemer is derived from the German word besem for broom, indicating a possible historic occupation of broommaker.
The Wormuth surname is not represented in the Surname Database, so far.
Variant spellings of the surname found, up to now:
- Beismer,
- Beesimer,
- Beesmer,
- Beasmer,
- Beasimer,
- Besimer,
- Bismer,
- Bezemer,
- Besemere,
- Besemeyere,
- Besemer,
- Biesemeyer.
I will not include the surnames: Bessemer or Beisner as they are pronounced differently which I believe is significant.
There are some interesting places that have turned up in the research as well. More about that later.
So far, people found in the research have lived in: NY, MN, IN, SC, NE CA, Germany, NJ.
I attempt to contact each person who appear to be living to let them know what I'm doing. So far, nobody has responded.
Right now I'm just doing Yahoo searches for each spelling of the name, for 10 pages of results and recording various things about the individuals I find: name, general location, gender, web address. I photocopy obituaries. There are many, many web sites and browsers to search and many, many variant spellings.
More to come.
