Re: JORDANS IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1600-1700´S

BJordan

Hey there,

I know yours is an old message and I´m surprised there are no follow ups. I think I first saw it on another Forum 2 years ago when I began my online research on Pa forums. This one has greatly improved since then and is more like the message boards I go on for other topics like politics. I´ve been off and on family research forums since the summer of 99- and after a while I quietly gave up.
I like Genealogy.com and am doing research on my mom´s family from the Bahamas. But that research is easier since I grew up on that side of the family in Fla.
I had little contact with my dad´s Jordans after age 7 and have only seen my cousins 2 times since then once in Fla in the 60s and then on my own in Pa. in the 70s.

To begin with, my dad´s family is from theburgh area, that´s Pitt of course. More specific, Butler Co. and later Venango Co.
Karns City and Oil City respectively.

I was last there in Oil City in the summer of 73 and saw the sights, the old family farm, school, Drake´s Well monument, everything. It was the 4th and a reunion was taking place. It was great.
Gdad had two wives and 10 children from both. Dad was the oldest son of the second wife. R. Jordan b1916-d1985 was my dad.
You mentioned Ohio. He has one surviving brother Glen who lives in eastern Ohio in the small town of Marietta. He has 3 daughters. Except for one, their whereabouts are unkn to me.
One year ago I recieved an inheritance from a sister of dad´s who died in 98. My aunt´s estate from Oil City was divided between the brother, I mentioned, my sister and several of my cousins with an ample portion going to charity. She had no children.

It is interesting to find you. We have a common heritage and may be distant relatives.
We are all related in some ways, but family names draw us a bit closer- even with the branching off. May I ask where you live?

So your thread title 1600-1700s.
Do you believe that the Jordans arrived in the colonies as early as the 1600s? That would be the late 1600s when William Penn recieved the colonial charter from Charles II or William and Mary.
So the colony was first inhabited by Dutch, Germans, in the farming lands, and English in the eastern cities. When I was growing up I formed the idea that our family was descended from either Dutch or German settlers in Penn,
Dad always talked about Dutch uncles and Western Penn has a considerable German immigrant population. Or so I thought. After doing more research, I have concluded that although many Germans settled in Eastern Pa. around the "burgs" (High German for stronghold or castle). Chambersburg was a stopping off point for many German immigrants in the mid 19th Cen. Some stayed but many moved on to Indiana and South Western Ohio near the Cincinnati area. Michigan and Wisconsin is also heavily settled with Germans. But my clues were the steel mills of Pittsburgh.
But I may have been wrong about my Jordan branch.
Ever since I received several floppy disks from a Mormon family research center. The disks contain valuable records on the earliest Jordans in America dating back to the early 1600s in Virginia, and Nanesmond township comes up repeatedly. The earliest known Jordan on the disks is a woman b. ca 1585 in England and immigrated around 1615 to Virginia. Most of the disk´s content´s reveal Virginia and some N. Carolina, but very few New England settler Jordans and no Jordans settling in Penn. You can contact the Mormons yourself about Jordan family names and you can get the disks for a small fee. And of course there´s the microfilms on view at the centers. Other research turned up evidence of Jordans coming from Germany- I have 3 disks. And earlier research in "books of names" show that the meaning behind the name stems from the 12 the Century occupational trade of weapon maker. Probably tied in with the trade in sword making to arm the Crusaders. Who went to the Holy Land. It is only my theory, but the name Jordan may be Islamic or Aramaic in origin and may stem from the land of Jordan, where the river flows. And the weapon makers may have been named Jordans because they armed Crusaders headed for Jordan. In Germany and England the name is spelled the same. In Holland it is with 2 As as in Jordaan. In France and french speaking Switzerland it is Jourdan and is asscociated with gardeners. The French name for garden is Jardine. There is an area of Northern Paris named Le Jourdan.
Without providing my family names, that´s about all I know. Also you can go to town websites and leave messages there.

Take care,
Robert