[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Przasnysz Parish-Adam Heller family

[Otto]

On May 14, 2012, at 12:50 PM, <kitchur at mts.net> <kitchur at mts.net> wrote:

> these names Heller - Grams - any chance that they might have been spelted as Hiller and Grems/Grimes? and would 
> Tiefensee, Germany  be anywhere near this Przasynsz parish?
> the in laws had family left behind somewhere in Germany father was Eltern George Hiller + Marianna Grems/Grimes
> its been a family line that I'm not having much luck with tracing.


On Tiefensee - use the following URL for Bing Maps.

http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9LlRpZWZlbnNlZSUyNTJjJTJiR2VybWFueSUyYiU3ZXNzdC4wJTdlcGcuMSZiYj02Mi40OTQ4OTA3Mjc4MjkxJTdlLTQxLjkxNjg5MzAwNSU3ZTEwLjg4MjU1MjU1NDU4MSU3ZS0xMjAuNDkxMTExNzU1

Przasynsz (Praschnitz )is approximately 65 miles north of Warsaw.
If I remember correctly Praschnitz was a Prussian garrison town.
(Neu Ostpreussen -1795-1806-3rd Partition)

On the surnames- They may well have been spelled in all of the mentioned forms.
"SOUNDS LIKE" is the rule.  Standardized spelling did not exist.
We are looking at LOW GERMAN/Flatland German surnames, flatland German of which many regional dialects existed, similar to the foothills German known as High German.
Low German speaking peoples migrated east along the shores of the North Sea, Baltic Sea, as far as St Petersburg, then over time southward (the Weichsel) into Poland.
The confusion; 
1525 ce. East Prussia became the first Lutheran State and of course Luther's bible was part of the package so there existed pressure to use the "bible German" instead of the commercial world Lowland German.
1871 Germany became an official country with a selected official German (for commercial purposes) the North already had a textbook for, Luther's bible. 
Add to this the fact many people did not know how to write and the resultant, "Yup! that sounds like it."

Every time a surname morphs history is lost.

My paternal great grandmother was a Heller and Grimms is in there somewhere.

I remember a Grams spelling the end of the 1700's in the Posen areas.


. . .   Otto
         " The Zen moment..." wk. of January 01, 2012-
                _____________________________________
                "The World Is . . . what we make of it."