I love history.

Along with science and technology, it’s one of the pillars in my Pantheon of Eternal Geekdom.  I read books on American and world history, collect historical pictures of my hometown, and watched the History Channel religiously until they followed MTV’s lead and replaced everything with reality shows.

History is about learning how (and why) we climbed from the humble origins of Homo Sapiens to the dominant beings that we are today.  It’s about learning from all of those souls who have gone before us; about revering the heights that humanity has accomplished, but also learning from humanity’s past mistakes… or at least trying to.  I wish more people felt this same appreciation.

History can be viewed on a grandiose scale, but just as equally on a more intimate level.  A personal side of history, going beyond one’s own checkered lifetime, is genealogy.  It’s the study of your family line, your ancestors and descendants.  Everybody at one time had a father and mother, whether they knew them well or not.  If you trace back your parents, their parents, and so on… eventually you will likely get back to some interesting people.  Some of them may have been royalty, some of them criminals.  But regardless, each has their personal story to tell… what life was to them.

My father has in recent years taken on the unofficial role of family historian.  He has been tracing back both of his father’s and mother’s lineage.  He’s made direct connections back over 200 years, and some indirect ones going back nearly 400!  It never occurred to me that I potentially had relatives that were in the American colonies before the Revolution… perhaps as early as Jamestown or Plymouth.

Of course, like many of us, most of my ancestors came here after that… coming from old Europe in the 19^th century to the great land of opportunity.  Together, my mother and father’s family lines are a near-total representation of Western Europe: German, Dutch, Irish, French, Italian, English, Belgian… and perhaps even a little Scandinavian in there somewhere.  My last name is German, though, and the male lineage traces back to there.  My great, great grandfather Joseph Steinebach came to America in 1868 and settled for some time just south of Grand Rapids before making their final move to the Traverse City area.  He came from Härtlingen, Germany, in the Rhineland.  Apparently there’s some ancestral history there; a town named Steinebach an der Wied is located nearby, with ruins of a Castle Steinebach on site!  It makes me wonder if the family was nobility at some point in the past.

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People have asked me over the years what the last name means.  When I was little, my father used to tell me it meant “mug of beer”.  Supposedly “stein” meant mug, “e” was of and “bach” was beer.  He said we came from a long line of brewers.  Of course, German for beer is actually “bier”, so that did not hold up for long.  I’m assuming it was my dad’s little joke, or maybe his way of saying “beer is good”.  What it actually means is, approximately, “stony brook”.  I could assume that means my ancestors came from somewhere near a rapids, making it an interesting coincidence that I was born in Grand Rapids.  Someone once translated it for me as “Stones in the Stream”.  I rather like that one.

Being it’s a long ethnic name, I’ve seen numerous misspellings of it in my lifetime. Steineback, Stieneboch, Stinabark, Steinbrenner, etc.  The most common mistake is Steinbach, just missing the middle ‘e’.  It’s actually a real name with probably just as many owners as my family line.  I thought it may have been a name change at Ellis Island, but it appears that there are folks in Germany with that spelling as well, so I don’t know why.  Somebody must’ve been a bad speller a few hundred years ago.

(If you’re wondering, John Steinbeck is not even remotely related.  His family name was Großsteinbeck before coming here.  I checked and was pretty disappointed.)

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Once in a while I Google myself.  That may sound vain, but it’s actually a good way to make sure you know what is out there about yourself that people would find out if they looked you up.  The interesting thing is that there seems to be only one of me out there.  One Lee Steinebach.  Nobody on the Internet has that name but me.  So I am unique.

Well, almost unique.  I have an evil twin.

If you look for me and miss that middle ‘e’, you get him.  Lee Steinbach.  Lee lives in the Grand Rapids area.  Lee is very close to my age.  Lee had the same childhood dentist as I did.  To top it all off, LEE IS A COMPUTER PROFESSIONAL.  I don’t know how many times people have tried to find me and got him.  A client called him once (he’s in the phone book, and I am not).  They asked for the Lee that knows computers and could not figure out why Lee pretended not to know them.  Other people I’ve talked to say they know the guy, and I think we know of each other, but in my whole lifetime I’VE NEVER MET HIM.  Not once.

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We each have our own unique ancestry, and while your lineage does not necessarily define you, it may be an enlightening exploration to see all of the people who led up to you.  I plan on doing more digging in the future, and someday I hope to finally make the trip to Europe to see some of this family history for myself.  I just need to get back to learning German… currently at best I can ask where the bathroom is.  Danke für das Lesen!