Category: Genealogy

Lazarite Connection

Lazarite Connection

by Justin Durand

A Conrad Hauri or Conrad Horn (Chuondradus dictus Hornus), a Knight of the Order of Saint Lazarus, lived at the order’s house at Gfenn in Dübendorf, now a suburb of Zürich. He was named in a charter dated 13 April 1272, when the order sold the church at Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland to Kloster Interlaken. Conrad might have taken his surname from Höri in Zürich. This is the earliest mention of a possible Hauri and the only reference to imply that the family might originally have been nobles.

Other readings are possible. There were Horn families at Sigriswil and Schüpfen in Berne, and at Riehen in Basel. There were Horni families at Leutwil in Aargau, and at Bärschwil in Solothurn. [Emil Meier, Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz (Zürich 1968-71)]

A charter dated 7 March 1290 names Nicholas, Conrad and Ulrich “of the Hospital” (dicti des Spitals), as among those living at the Manor of Bernensem near Engi when that manor was granted by the Master of the Lazarite Hospital near Bern to another party. The Nicholas, Conrad and Ulrich of the Hospital were probably close relatives, as other persons named in the same document are each given their different surnames.

L'Hopital Coat of Arms
L’Hopital Coat of Arms

It has been suggested, but not proven, that these men are identical with the Hauris of the same name. There is no problem with identifying Conrad Hornus (1272) with Conrad of the Hospital (1290), although the identification rests only on similarity of name. It would be more of a stretch to identify either man with Conrad Hauri (1282-1308), of Steffisburg. Further, there is nothing to support the identifications of Nicholas and Ulrich. If the two Conrads were in fact identical, the mutual connection with Kloster Interlaken might have brought the Hauris from Höri in Zürich to Steffisburg in Bern.

Perhaps coincidentally, the early Hauris used the same coat of arms as the French family de L’Hôpital, who claimed descent from the first royal family of Naples.

On the whole, these theories of relationship might merit further investigation but cannot now be taken as more than a curiosity.

Quarmby

Quarmby

by Justin Durand

The Quarmby family takes its name from the manor of Quarmby, near Huddersfield in Yorkshire. At the time of the Norman Conquest the manor was part of the barony of Pontefract, which the king bestowed on Ilbert de Lacy, who in turn gave it to one of his retainers, who took the surname Quarmby. In 1311 the manor passed with the heiress Alice de Lacy to her husband Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and in 1399 passed with the duchy of Lancaster to the English crown.

In 1307 a jury was impaneled to inquire into terrible deeds happening at the castle and reported that “a certain stranger had been murdered in the dungeons and his body thrown outside, that his body when discovered was a ‘complete mass of corruption’ as if it had been ‘devoured by worms, birds and dogs.'”

In 1341, in the reign of Edward III, the Lord of the Manor, Sir Hugh de Quarmby quarreled with the Sheriff. He and his allies John de Lockwood and Sir Robert de Beaumont were all murdered by the sheriff in a single night, and the castle at Quarmby was utterly destroyed. In the words of a local ballad:

He rais’d the country round about,
His friends and tenants all,
And for his purpose picked out
Stout sturdy men, and tall:

To Quarmby-Hall they came by night,
And there the Lord they slew;
At that time Hugh of Quarmby hight,
Before the country knew.

Lineal Genealogy

1. Joseph Quarmby (c1766-?), of Huddersfield, Yorkshire. He married Elizabeth “Betty” Gledhill (c1768-?).

2. John Quarmby (1801-1845), a music teacher in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire and Nauvoo, Illinois. He married Anne Wagstaff (1802-1846). They converted to Mormonism about 1842, came to America in 1845 and settled at Nauvoo. John died soon after of the swamp fever. His widow then died, leaving an orphaned daughter Annie who was adopted by Joseph Bates Noble, the man who performed the first plural marriage.

3. Anna Quarmby (1842-1904), of Salt Lake City, Utah. Annie went with the Noble family to Salt Lake, and in later life received a Golden Jubilee pin as one of the pioneers who came the first year. She grew up in Salt Lake as Annie Noble. She left home when she was 15 because her foster father wanted to marry her. After a brief marriage to William Washington Camp, she married Wilford Woodruff Luce (1838-1906).

Coat of Arms

The Quarmby coat of arms are canting arms: Argent two bars and in chief a Cornish chough Proper. No crest is recorded. A Cornish chough is also called a “corbie.”

Swedish Soldiers

Swedish Soldiers

by Justin Durand

Sweden was once one of the superpowers of Europe but by 1672, when Carl XI came of age, its power was beginning to decline. The country was too poor to maintain the troops it needed to defend its borders. It had become a client state of France and was expending its energies in foreign wars to serve French interests. In 1680, Carl XI reorganized the Swedish military.

Under the new system, called the indelningsverket, each province was required to maintain one regiment of foot soldiers. For the cavalry, the government contracted with wealthy individuals to provide riders and horses. The new system gave Sweden an army of 25,000 foot soldiers (18,000 from Sweden and 7,000 from Finland) and 11,000 cavalrymen (8,000 from Sweden and 3,000 from Finland). As part of the reforms, roads were improved and hostelries were built for the mobilized troops.

The system was created just in time. The period following the death of Carl XI in 1699 was a bad time for Sweden. There were bad harvests, starvation, and unrest in the countryside. Denmark, Saxony, Poland and Russia signed a treaty under which they proposed to attack Sweden. In the spring of 1700, Sweden faced war on two fronts, in Holstein and in Livland. The Dutch writer, Justus Van Effen, after traveling in Sweden the year following Carl XI’s death, wrote:

I can even ensure, that in the whole of Sweden I saw not a single man between 20 and 40 years, other than soldiers. The cruel war that was so long and had so many battles and sieges in so many different lands had taken all the youth from this unfortunate land. In the north, it was even worse, we had young boys, 11 and 12 years old, who were driving the wagons we traveled with; they did the work as fast and well as their father and grandfathers should have done. In more than 20 stages, we were transported by young girls, who did their duty very well.

The resulting war lasted 20 years, until the Peace of Nystad in 1721. Toward the end of the war, the front line was no longer in Sweden’s overseas territories; Russian Cossacks were plundering and burning farms on the Swedish mainland. The war reduced the population of Sweden by 15%. Despite the horrors of the war, the new military system was successful, and endured for over 200 years, until 1892/1901.

The Rota System

To create the regiments of foot soldiers, each province was divided into rota (service lists). The farms in each rota were required to join forces in order to equip a soldier and provide him with a croft and house (the soldattorp). The soldier had to support himself and his family from his work on the croft, but also had to attend military drills and, in time of war, had to report for duty, wherever that might be. These soldiers were called indelta-armen (”tenement soldiers”).

Each of the farms in the rota was assessed a percentage of the soldier’s upkeep. This assessment was called a mantal (”man-count”). For example, two farms that were each assessed at one-half mantal were each required to contribute one-half to the support of the rota’s soldier. The mantal of a farm might be as low as 1/32. Farms smaller than 1/32 mantal could not feed a family, contribute to the upkeep of the rota’s soldier, and pay taxes as well.

Every rota had a name and number, often an animal name as Korp (raven), Dufva (dove), Myra (ant), or some item associated with the army: Kanon (cannon), Haubitz (howitzer) or Wapen (weapon).

The Rusthåll System

The system for cavalry soldiers was similar to the system for the infantry. The cavalry equivalent of the rota was therusthåll. A rusthållare, or farmer in a rusthåll, was the proprietor of an independent farm. He had a private contract with the government to provide a cavalryman, with horse and uniform. The cavalry soldier (ryttare) received a croft (ryttartorp) and land to farm, like the soldattorp of the infantry.

Soldiers

The rota chose the men who became soldiers, although the soldier could be rejected in the genaralmönstringen (”general-inspection”) that took place every year and often was attended by the king. Soldiers could be anyone. They could be from some other part of the country or from the nearest village, but often they came from the same village. Typically, they were drängar (farm-hands) or some other low status but handy person in the village. When the soldier was killed in war or was unable to serve for any other reason, he was replaced as soon as possible. When there where many wars in a short time, villages sometimes had to replace the soldier with the farmer himself or with one of the farmer’s sons.

When a soldier died or retired, the rota was responsible for the support of his widow. The new soldier was often pressured into marrying the old soldier’s widow. Because of the poverty among the peasantry, it was easier on everyone if the new soldier married the widow instead of some other. That way, the soldier’s croft only had to support two people instead of three (not counting the children). There were cases where the widow was 16 years older than her new husband. The same custom was common among priests, where the new priest was pressured to marry the old priest’s widow. The custom was called änkekonservering (”widow preservation”).

Whatever the soldier’s background, he acquired some status in the parish. The soldier was a person to count on. The farmers had to loan him a horse and carriage every Sunday so he and his family could get to the church. After church, he would exercise outside the church with other soldiers from the neighborhood. He got an annual salary, a piece of land, seed, cows and sheep, food, clothes, the loan of a horse to transport wood from the forest, and the use of a cottage. Still, although the uniform gave him some respect, he was required to be available to the farmers of the rota for work in the fields, so he once again became a dräng.

Related Information

Swedish Soldiers’ Names

Frame

Frame

by Justin Durand

I am descended matrilinearly from Mrs. Margaret Frame (about 1725-after 1797), of Augusta County, Virginia. The surname Frame was first recorded in Lanarkshire in the 15th century.

  1. Margaret (about 1725-after 1797), married before 1741 John Frame, of Augusta County, Virginia. She might have been Margaret Hogshead, daughter of John Hogshead and Nancy Wallace, but the identification is controversial.
  2. Mary “Polly” Frame (1742-1796); married about 1771 (Capt.) James Kenney (1752-1814), of Stonerside Farm, North Middletown, Kentucky. They were early settlers at Boonesborough, Kentucky.
  3. Mary (Polly) Kenney (1779-after 1850); married 1801 William Hildreth (c1776-1816), of Bourbon County, Kentucky. She told her children that she remembered riding in front of her father on horseback when the family moved from Virginia to Kentucky. After her husband’s death in 1816, she became one of the pioneers of Vermilion County, Illinois.
  4. Angeline Hildreth (1806-1860); married (2) 1842 John Mallory (about 1793-before 1880), of Champaign, Illinois. She and her first husband George Howe were pioneers in Vermilion Co., Illinois. When her husband was killed in the Black Hawk War in 1835, she took her three small children back to her mother’s home in Kentucky. In 1838 she returned to Illinois, settling first in Vermilion Co., where she married John Mallory. She died in 1860 while the family was in the process of moving to Iowa.
  5. Elizabeth Ann Mallory (1846-1860); married 1877 John C. Wilson (1832-1883), a blacksmith and farmer at Tuscola, Illinois. His early death left her in straitened circumstances.
  6. Esseneth Wilson (1878-1927); married 1898 Wilford Woodruff Luce (1864-1948), a rancher at Big Piney, Wyoming.
  7. Vivian Luce (1901-1979); married 1927 Harry William Swanström (1903-1957), a rancher at Farson, Wyoming.
Frame Tartan
Frame Tartan
(No. 1777, Dgn Archie Frame, Ayrshire)

Frame DNA Project

The question of Mrs. Margaret Frame’s ancestry might one day be answered by the Frame mtDNA Project.

Hauri Family in Beromünster

Hauri Family in Beromünster

by Justin Durand

The earliest connected pedigree of the Hauri family begins with the Hauris at Beromünster. There is little doubt that they were connected with the Hauris of Steffisburg and Jegenstorf, perhaps coming from the Aare Valley to Beromünster with one of the von Steffisburg or von Jegenstorf Canons. Hugo von Jegenstorf was a Canon at Beromünster, 1250-1279.

Ulrich Hauri appears as Hörinus in charters at Beromünster in 1313 and 1324. He might have been a descendant of the Conrad Hauri, who was living at Steffisburg in 1282, a generation earlier. Ulrich’s descendants, wealthy farmers, millers and bailiffs (Vögte), spread into the surrounding villages of Reinach, Staffelbach and Sursee.

Beromunster
Beromünster, ancestral home of the Hauris”Pagus et ecclesia collegiata Munster in Argaea”

Stift Beromünster was a collegiate church, that is, it was a monastic-style religious house with priests called Canons Regular. Congregations of Canons Regular had constitutions inspired by the Carta Caritatis. Their superiors were generally called Abbot in France, Prior in Italy, and Provost (Probst) in Germany and Switzerland, but these titles are interchangeable for them. Several of the early Hauris were Canons at Stift Beromünster. Through the 13th century, most of the clergymen at Switzerland’s religious foundations came from noble families but the restrictions were relaxed in the 14th century.

Beromünster was founded about 980 in honor of the Archangel Michael by Count Bero, whose son is said to have been killed by a bear on that spot. The church served as a burial place for Bero’s successors, who ultimately included the Counts of Lenzburg. The Lenzburgs became extinct , and theKastvogtei of the church was inherited in 1173 by the Counts of Kyburg, and in 1264 by the Counts of Habsburg. [Fritz Bossardt, Ein Heimatbuch: Sursee, Sempach, Beromünster(Zürich 1946), p. 112.]

The castle, Schloss Beromünster, was built about 1200. It probably first served as a residence for the klösterlichenmanager. In the 14th century the Truchsessen of Wolhusen,ministeriales of the Habsburgs, lived at the castle. Truchsess Johannes von Wolhusen, and his wife Margaritha von Beinwil, the daughter of the Knight Peter von Hallwil, lived there. Johannes, their son (died 1359), was a Canon of Beromünster. The Knight and Truchsess Peter von Wolhusen and his wife Agnes von Heidegg also lived there. The castle was devastated in 1352 and 1386 by attacks from the Swiss confederates, and in 1415 was conquered by them. Thereafter, the church and its lands were part of Canton Lucerne. In the 1500s the castle came into the possession of Canon Helyas Helye, of Laufen. (Bossardt, 134)