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The Montz Family of Louisiana 1721 - Present |
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by Monty Montz |
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Page 31 |
IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT OF ALL THE EMIGRANTS WHO
landed on the German Coast to begin their habitat, many were illiterate. Most were farmers, blacksmiths,
or common laborers. Of the very few were those who could read French or German, and who, were able to
write both.
IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT THE MAJORITY OF CITIZENS of the German Coast were descendents from the ravages
of the Thirty Years' War. These people came from parts of Europe where society and education had ceased
for the most part. As a result, they ventured to Louisiana to start anew.
MANY PERSONS WHO SETTLED ALONG THE GERMAN COAST AND WHO originally came from Europe could not spell their
own names. They had to rely on the writing of priests or census takers to write it down the best way they
could understand the pronunciation. In many cases, officials making records
misspelled the surname. A German priest taking the name of a French farmer
by the way the farmer pronounced his name would have wound up with a different spelling. When the first
Catholic settlement was formed, educated French, and later, Spanish priests found it hard to write a
person's name just by the sound he gave. Deiler devotes much attention to this fact in his work.
IT IS BECAUSE OF THE AFOREMENTIONED FACT THAT THE NAME "Manz" was changed to "Montz." A few
excerpts from Deiler's work are appropriate here:
"Without exception, all names of the first German colonists of Louisiana were changed, and most of the
Creoles of German descendents at the present time no longer know how their names of their ancestors
looked. Sometimes they were changed beyond recognition, and only by tracing some thirty families with
all their branches through all the Church records still available (1909) by going through eighty boxes