# Old Family Letters Need Translating



## Dugout (Jan 12, 2012)

Yesterday my Uncle brought some letters to show me that were found in my Grandmother's old wash stand. There were no envelopes with them. And there is a whole stack of them. As we were sitting there looking them over I noticed a crest imbedded into the paper in the upper left corner. That had not been noticed before. So he is checking to see if any of the other letters have it. I brought 3 home with me. Can anyone read this??? We have had Germans look at it and they can only read a couple of words. A guy at the library said he could read Russian and he said it wasn't that, but he guessed Finish or Dutch. My lineage on my Grandfather's side is Miller, my Grandmother is Jonas, and their is some Hornstien stuck in there too. Any help would be way cool!


----------



## Dugout (Jan 12, 2012)

The back side of the first letter.


----------



## Dugout (Jan 12, 2012)

Here is the crest.


----------



## surfaceone (Jan 12, 2012)

Hello Renee,

 I'm pretty lame at Heraldry. It looks like you've got a Lion Rampant up top, a Lion Passant to the left, a Flory (?) Cross, and a castle...

 What's that spell... Don't know yet...

 There didn't appear to be enough umlauts in that letter for it to be German...


----------



## surfaceone (Jan 12, 2012)

Hey Renee,

 I'm assuming all the while that those are umlauts. Take a look at last word of first paragraph over the "a"




From.

 The previous word has what looks like a Nike swoosh doing a flyover. Is that a tilde? I'm not coming up with the proper name of this symbol.

 Not much help, I know, but maybe a way to figure out the language...

 So, any Norwegians or Maori on the tree?


----------



## cyberdigger (Jan 12, 2012)

I am pretty sure it's German.. those flying-saucer-shaped accent marks were put a-hovering over the letter " u "  (without umlaut) when scribbling a letter like this out in an effort to differentiate i's from u's from n's and m's.. something to do with the handwriting style popular in its time.. and faster to produce than it's successor:


----------



## surfaceone (Jan 12, 2012)

Hey Renee,

 It being a diacritic thing, if that other swooshy symbol is a caron, you may have found the Finn or other Baltic type in the woodpile. I'm having real trouble with the handwriting, which is par for my course. Noone can read mine either...

 Ç place to peruse further: 

 "A caron ( Ë‡ ) or hÃ¡Äek (English pronunciation: /ËˆhÉ‘ËtÊƒÉ›k/) (from Czech hÃ¡Äek, pronounced [ËˆÉ¦aËtÊƒÉ›k]), also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages." From.


----------



## ironmountain (Jan 14, 2012)

Definitely not Finn. A caret or caron in Finn is rare. Mostly umlauts.  Such as my last name MÃ¤nnistÃ¶. Used to have a jÃ¤ at the end in the old days to denote "of Mannisto". Usually referring to the name of the farm you owned. In this case, there's a town named after my ancestors in northern Finland. 

 I spoke Finn fluently when I was a kid, but have lost most of that ability due to the fact that my grandfather and father (who both spoke/read/wrote fluently)have passed, and with nobody to communicate with, I lost the ability other than a few sayings and cusswords. What used to be Suomi College (now Finlandia) is the only place in the US that teaches it. I spent a year there to relearn, but had to leave the 2nd year due to medical issues in the family.
 Plus it's only 1 of the 2 Uralic languages.... Finno-Lappic would refer to the Finns way north. Where reindeer come from. They are dark haired and dark complected and resemble Eskimo vs the typical high cheekbone, blonde hair, blue eyes that ppl generally associate with Finns.


----------



## ironmountain (Jan 14, 2012)

found some info about the coat of arms:

 the top lion, is called lion rampant (rearing up) for strength/bravery etc...

 the left lion is lion passant (striding/walking) no idea of the meaning in relation to your crest/coat of arms. It can mean guarding, bravery, strength, loyalty...many things.

 the cross on the right is a mobile cross patonce...the 3 prongs on each end stand for faith, wisdom and chivalry. The 4 equal arms means that those qualities be carried to the 4 points of the compass.

 the chevron with the 3 circles is a chevron with 3 gold pieces (bezants). Means wealth.

 The most info I had about that style chevron with the bezants was from Capbreton, or Landes. SW France...

 cant figure out what the bottom thing is..looks like either a tree or a turret/tower....

 I'll keep working....


----------



## andy volkerts (Jan 14, 2012)

[8|] Hello Dugout, I think it may be Dutch or Danish....Andy


----------



## ironmountain (Jan 15, 2012)

the lower symbol/charge looks like a tower...which stands for safety and grandeur...
 so according to my know nothing about heraldry interpretation :

 So your family crest (in my unreliable interpretation):

 shows (the lions) Strength, Honor, Loyalty, (the cross)Piety and faith enough in those beliefs to stand by that faith no matter where one travels. And the person who created this crest must have had some wealth(chevron with 3 gold pieces) and(tower) social status.

 but that's just my opinion and translation which means about 0.


----------



## Dugout (Jan 17, 2012)

Thank You Surf, Charlie, Andy and Mr. Mannisto for taking the time to look at this. I am a bit slow at getting back do to the fact we were visiting out of state. I just talked to my Uncle on the phone and he was shaking his head as he said there were more letters with a crest but they were all different. I will check it out tomorrow when I go to town. Again, Thank You.  Renee`


----------



## cyberdigger (Jan 17, 2012)

Hi Renee.. I did some more staring/deciphering and I am certain the letter is written in German.. I've identified enough words and phrases to be sure of this, however it's a tough chicken scratch to make out in entirety.. but I get a feeling someone was trying to borrow $1500 from someone..


----------



## Dugout (Jan 17, 2012)

Now that is interesting! That would have been a rather large amount back then. Can you read any names?


----------



## cyberdigger (Jan 17, 2012)

Any way you could get me a higher resolution copy of this letter? I might have more success.. it's addressed to "Lieber Freund und Freundin" which means "Dear (male) friend and (female) friend"


----------



## Dugout (Jan 20, 2012)

I had an exciting time at my Uncle's! I stood for 2 1/2 hours looking through this box of old letters.First of all many of the letters have a different crest in them, and there are many different people which wrote these letters. Many letters were written in English. One letter written February 6, 1860, mentioned this at the bottom "You must write me a letter to and put my name on the outside, but english Dutch i cant read."   Matilda E. Borger   
 I think you are right about the money thing , Charlie, as one letter was telling about a guy that had borrowed money and was supposed to take it to the lender. But since he didn't have it he didn't think it would be worth the trip. He thought he should have it in the spring and if not in the fall.
 Many of the letter's first paragraph was wishing the receiver good health and then they would go on to say how the senders health was. (A great concern by the amount of letters mentioning this.) And many told of the deaths of family and friends. It was very touching as the feelings of these people jumped out at you. In one letter a guy was asking his friend to see if this girl had a boyfriend and if she didn't he was to tell her that he loved her and he would come out and get her.
 There was a bill in the box for $135.00 for printing the copies of all of these letters at The Little Print Shop in Rapid City. So that gives you an idea how many letters there are. 
 I noticed 2 letters were written in purple ink. And some were folded and the letter served also as the envelope. One was dated 1855. And at the top of the letters they contained the town and county in which the sender lived and mailed it from along with the date. We also looked on the map to see where these places were.  But I came home without a letter in hand. But maybe I can borrow them and make my own copies. My Uncle just shook his head and said" If we had just known they were there we could have ask Mom about them." He had an attitude like it was all over and I have the attitude like it is just beginning!!! Wish me luck next week!


----------



## cyberdigger (Jan 20, 2012)

That's extremely awesome Renee!! []  VIEL GLUECK !


----------

