16 May 2019.
Dear Ian,
I do a lot of genealogy to keep me busy while at old age and retired since 20 years.
My family lived in what is now the Baltic States for over 600 years until the Russian revolution in 1917/18.
Therefore I concentrate on other German families who also lived there.
During my work I recently came across your family.
One of your ancestors "John" born in the 17th century served in the Swedish army under King Karl XI as a lieutenant.
That was back when Sweden was the Super-Power in the Baltic Sea. He was captured and imprisoned by the enemy Russians and died in 1710/11. I strongly suspect that you don't know where John came from.
But he had 5 sons, etc. The last Cairncross in the Baltic States died in 1777.
The attached doc shows what I found. Unfortunately it is in German.
Most of the data I found in the churchbooks of Livonia and Estonia which nowadays are all online. They were kept by the German Lutheran priests since about 1700. That's why the spelling of the last name changes.
I finally added one of the family crests I found on your site, probably the wrong one.
Have fun.
I'd be glad to answer any questions.
Best regards from Germany,
Peter.
17 May 2019. My reply.
Hi Peter,
Fascinating email, quite different from anything I have received in all the time I’ve had the dealings with Cairncross family trees.
Also, I have to admit a total mystery to me as I do not have any German. Not wishing to give up too early, I found a German to English translation site on Google. I used it to attempt to get a more English slant on the information in the .pdf document. However, this was only partly successful as a lot of the text did not translate very well. There may have been some abbreviations used which did not translate.
Anyway, the result of all this, is that I could not get a sufficient handle on the text to do any searches of my master files.
Here is an example of what I mean – I reproduce here the translation of the initial paragraph:
“Ev. - Scottish aristocratic family with the same name headquarters in the Gfschaft Forfar (Angus), from which John Cairncross as Kgl. Oh, my God. Fähnrich im Rgt Cronström 1657 urkundl. (National archives, Stockholm) and since 1664 as a Lt in the Rgmt Grothusen and son-in-law of the Kgl. Oh, my God. Riding master Berend Sonnenberg (schwed. It is located on the banks of the River Daugava, on the banks of the Daugava River.”
Looking at the above, I don’t know what Ev. means. Other terms are Gfschaft, Kgl., Fähnrich im Rgt Cronström, urkundl. I think Rgmt means regiment. Why the term ‘Oh, my God’ appears so often I have no idea. Then looking at the actual tree format part it gets very much worse, and I cannot fathom most of it. I cannot create a tree based on this, I am very sorry to say.
It is clear this tree goes back a long way, there are many references before the year 1700.
Have I even got your name right – is it Peter Zoege von Manteuffel?
Tried doing a search using Swedish Army and Sweden, both with no results.
Don’t know how you will respond to my reply, as I have been almost completely useless.
Regards, Ian Cairncross.
17 May 2019.
Dear Ian,
yes absolutely right, Google cannot handle the abbreviations.
Here is the opening paragraph:
Ev. (abb for Evangelical meaning: family of Lutheran, Protestant confession) - Scottish aristocratic family with the same name family estate in the county Forfar (Angus), from which John Cairncross as (abb.:) Royal Swedish cadet in the regiment Cronström, documented 1657, (National archives, Stockholm) and since 1664 as a lieutenant the Regiment Grothusen, son-in-law of the Royal Swedish Cavalry captain Berend Sonnenberg (raised to Swedish nobility in 1655), (owner of Korvenhof and Hoppenhof = 2 estates in Livonia) where his descendants carried the name (v. [=von, designating nobility] Cairnkors.”
Yes, you got my complete last name right (last name is a "double-name"). My first ancestor in Estonia showed up in 1325, when the "Christians" exported christianity to the Eastern countries "with fire and sword", as we say, and on horses . . . .
As regards the early Cairncross serving in the Swedish army, there is a thick dictionary (800 pages!) with all the names of the officers in the Swedish army of Karl XII. (1682-1718), King of Sweden (1697-1718), thousands of them. Karl XII. was at war in the Great Northern War with Denmark, Saxonia/Poland, and Russia with Livonia, and since 1715 also Prussia. Estonia was still Swedish!
The peace treaty of Nystadt ended the Swedish era, and Russia followed them.
In this book the members of your family show up as "Gerngross" which is the "germanized" version of Cairncross, because there were so many Germans there, both from the Baltic States and from Germany. And the spelling of the writing commonly followed the sound . . .
I attach clips of the title page and the pages Cairncross and Gerngross f.y. info.
The 4 Gerngross-entries comprise John (Johann) the father and 3 of his sons: Alexander, Niklas-Wilhelm and Rupert (=Robert).
All are also in the genealogy, at the very beginning.
That's all for the moment.
Regards, Peter
18 May 2019. My reply.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your email containing some useful additional information, plus translations, and further background information on the whole subject of the Cairncross family that you have discovered. Thanks also for the attachments which all add weight to the general subject.
To update things, I tried again to get somewhere with more translations. There were two successes: ‘vid’ stands for ‘at’ in Swedish, and ‘overste’ stands for commander in Dutch.
However, I failed to find the meaning of ‘lotjn’ and ‘darst’. I found these terms in the attachment of the three sons, and was interested to know what they meant.
So, Peter, what else have I done. Two things mainly: 1) saved all the attachments you have send, all in one folder created under your name, and 2) created a Word document of your two emails plus my replies, having copied and pasted these.
It can be very useful to have all the communication in one place, especially where the content is complex.
It is still the case that I cannot do much about the thought of creating the tree in the .pdf document, as that would normally be my intention. This is because of the translation thing. I have also found it difficult to pluck of the most important dates in any family tree, those of birth and death. There are dates quoted in your attachments, but it is unclear what these refer to.
There is an idea forming in my mind; and that is to add a section to the on-line family tree site. These would include your emails to me, plus my replies, and it would also feature all the attachments you have sent. I could add to these if you send any more.
Would you have any objection to this?
Regards, Ian Cairncross
18 May 2019.
Dear Ian,
I have decided to convert my doc completely to English.
At the same time I will not use signs and symbols, but - following your tree site - write born, married died etc.
Your numbering system is also very simple.
This will take some time, as I have some other projects.
So I beg your patience.
Regards
Peter
19 May 2019.
Dear Ian,
here is my English version, - very minutely simplified here and there.
I have omitted the long opening paragraph, because on a Cairncross homepage we don't need to explain that family.
But I left the numbering system.
If you need anything else as regards formatting, please let me know.
E.g.: should I take out the line breaks and make long lines like you mostly do?
Or a smaller font?
However, I failed to find the meaning of ‘lotjn’ and ‘darst’.
The original Swedish löjtn means lieutenant, and "därst" means just there, right there, same place, in this case "same regiment".
Swedish often is not too far from German, Fältväbel is Feldwebel = sergeant.
Best regards and have a nice Sunday, Peter.
20 May 2019. My reply.
Dear Peter,
Your email of the 18th May tells me you intend to translate the tree, although this may take time because of other projects. So I was surprised to see your message of the very next day having completed the task. Obviously I am thrilled with this, and straight away took a look. What you have done is great. It will take me some time and effort to get my head around some of the ‘format’ used in the tree. A couple of things jump out at me right away. I am confused in the first line the word ‘als’ after the name John Cairncross. Plus I’m not quite sure of the relevance of the double commas – or speech marks - used in the format „upper society“. In my Word version, I could not put these marks in that way, as they are placed automatically by Word, and appear “like this”.
If I am to reproduce this tree from all your hard work, my first task would probably be to copy and paste the tree from your document into my master Word document. Then I have the usual method I have set up to create the tree which has all the correct formatting and hyperlinks to connect the various documents. My thoughts are heading in the direction of creating a specific link on the Index page for the Swedish and Livonian Cairncross family tree. That was I could also include your emails as background to this additional material.
Like you, I have other projects and appointments to distract me, so it will be done. But as you said to me, I beg your patience.
Regards, Ian Cairncross.
20 May 2019.
Dear Ian,
1. the word als is German and here it means ‘as’.
2. the quotation marks in upper society can be set your way, both up.
The rest is up to you.
Regards Peter.
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