SENFT (Poland?>England>Germany>US)

Meaning/Pronunciation: Pronunciation – Sen-FT (I believe) Meaning - 1: Means "mustard seller" from the German Senf(t). 2: A nickname for a helpful, kind person from the Middle High German senfte meaning "soft, accomodating".

Origin: The farthest back we are able to trace our branch is the Prussian states somewhere.

Variations: I am uncertain of the exact spelling of this name, as some documentation I have lists the name as Senft, and some as Seneft. There are other variations I have seen online but those are the only ones I am aware of.

Relation to me: My paternal grandfather’s grandfather’s surname. The story on why our name is Hillinger rather than Senft can be found here.

Ancestors: (Most recent to least)
i: Senft (Hillinger), Elias (Alex), 1883 – 1947, Germany?, Dora Kresch, 2 sons, four daughters

ii: Senft, Leon – likely born before 1863, died before 1922, unknown birth location, Mindel Hilinger, 3 sons, 2 daughters

Looking for:
Everything here is open to question, unfortunately, as I have previously blogged about. We are uncertain where Leon and Mindel were born, how they met, or why they moved to England. We know they had at least five children, though I have names for only four, all of which appear to be Anglicized: Alex (Elias), Annie, Jennie, and Jack. I have no dates for any of the other children, and only limited information on that side of the family tree, so any help would be more than welcome. Especially when it comes to the Senft ancestors.

4 comments :

Ciara Eirikswif May 13, 2010 at 11:46 AM  

Germanic names really didn't get standardized spellings until very recently. (closer to the twentieth century) Add in immigration officials who tried to spell things as they heard them and you will see some variety in name spellings.
Senft/Seneft or in my family's case: Trissler/Tressler

If you have a location where they lived, parish records could have a full list of children's names, birthdates, etc.

Elf Flame May 15, 2010 at 10:39 AM  

The closest thing I have to where they lived is after they moved to London. We have no clue where the family was located before that, unfortunately.

Ciara Eirikswif May 15, 2010 at 2:14 PM  

It's a pity there is nothing similar to the Ellis Island project for immigrants to London in the 19th century.

I tried poking around a few places and kept getting sent to ancestry.com which is useless for non members. grr.

Elf Flame May 18, 2010 at 1:16 PM  

It really is an annoying site. I would suggest FamilySearch.org for that sort of information. They've been putting all that online for free, as opposed to Ancestry, who want to charge you for every bit of genealogical information they can try to pretend to own.

Post a Comment

About this blog

This blog is maintained by two sisters who have had a life long interest in geneology.
Mika writes here mostly about our family (Hansen, Hillinger, Bordewick, Park, etc), and her search for more information.
Shannon mostly uses this space as a place to make the many stories written about and by her husband's family (Holly, Walker, Walpole, etc) available to the rest of the family, present and future.

Our blog is named Oh Spusch! mostly because Shannon is bad at naming things. The first post I put up includes a story about the time Walker's great grandfather took his whole family out to see a play and the littlest kept saying "Oh! Spusch!" No one ever figured out what she meant by that.