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Overlock-Petersen History
A Union of the Daring Danes & the Gutsy Germans
by Isabelle Overlock Hallam © 2010
The trials and tribulations of three families |
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For me, genealogy was not about trying to connect to some famous person. It was all about wanting to know where I came from. I knew none of my grandparents. My mother was institutionalized when I was four. While I was growing up, I was not allowed to ask my father, Clarence Overlock, any family-related background questions. The typical response from my father, when I would ask him about his family heritage, was, "I'm just a Maine Yankee." Much later, after there was only one paternal cousin left to ask, I had the time to delve into my family history and discover my background. I had learned, while in my early teens, that my mother was of Danish descent and that her maiden name was Peters. That was all.
The family research journey, which did not commence until later in life, has been quite an adventure. It all began with obtaining my father's birth and marriage certificates. From those I went back through their parents. I sent for the Family History Library films of Stockton Springs since I knew my great-aunt had been buried there. After joining the Virginia Beach Genealogy Society, my husband and I attended a national genealogy conference in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. This was followed by attendance at two New England Regional Conferences, one in Providence, Rhode Island, and one in Portland, Maine, one NEHGS "Come Home to New England" research event, and the thirtieth anniversary of the Maine Genealogical Society in Portland. We also visited the Maine towns of Stockton Springs, Waldoboro, Wiscasset and surrounding areas. I read Stahl's two-volume history of Waldoboro (would you believe that I had always hated history!) and two histories of Stockton Springs as well as other volumes that would provide an historical context. A year or so later I read two smaller volumes on the history of Denmark. I found out why my father was not proud of his heritage. He knew he came from poor uneducated German farmers, but he did not know about the hardships that the original German family endured for many years after their 1752 landing in Waldoboro, Maine. I suspect that he did not even know that his mother came from Newfoundland. They were true pioneers. I wish I could tell him all of the things of which he could be proud. Over time, I came to understand why he was reluctant to talk about my mother. He probably did not know what to tell me. Either he or my stepmother must have discarded my mother's personal effects which should have been passed down to me. As a tribute to my father, I wanted the Overlock name to appear in print. After a lot of detailed research and writing, I eventually succeeded in having sketches of my Overlock ancestor, John Joseph, who arrived in Maine in 1752 from Germany, and his brother John Henry accepted for and published in Vol. 10 of Maine Families of 1790 in January, 2009. Two brothers, Charles and Francis remain to be documented. They have been researched in detail and written up using circumstantial evidence, vocation and geography, but the birth records of their children are still missing. Turning to my Mother's ancestry, Petersen and Røers, after I had read all of the possible parish films obtained from Salt Lake through our local Family History Center (the records stopped in 1920), we were keen on going to Denmark where we knew we could research in the archives. We had prepared by locating the various archives, noting their hours, writing down their rules and buying a PDA so that we could have all of the family data to refer to on the trip. We had also made two contacts who offered to guide us on our first visits. Only then did we make our plans. During the 2003-2004 time period, we made three research trips to Copenhagen in eighteen months. The first and third visits were short ones, taking place before and after cruises in the Baltic and North Seas. We did what research we could on the families, found their homes and visited all of the churches in the Copenhagen area where they had been christened, confirmed and buried. The second trip of nine days was totally for the purpose of genealogical research. That was when our diligence truly paid off; not only did we find out more about my ancestors, but we found and met my delightful Danish second cousins and their families, even though the man in Copenhagen who helped us said it could not be done. Early on, I bought three books that would become my "Bibles" - Finn A. Thomsen's book on Scandinavian Genealogy handwriting samples and translations of key words on birth, death, marriage and census records; another was Smith and Thomsen's detailed atlas which enabled me to locate all the places and parishes that were important to the family story. The third was the Dansk-Engelsk Ordbog, which is the standard Danish to English dictionary. As you will see, my purpose was not to collect names but to find the family story and tell it. I wanted my two children to know where they came from. Therefore, I made each of them three scrapbooks: one on my Overlock history, one on my unfortunate Danish grandmother (Røers) and her family, one on my colorful "rogue" Danish grandfather (Petersen) and his family. That way, my children had the stories and the documents assembled in book form so they each had something tangible to pass along to succeeding generations. To that end, I wrote one article each quarter for the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society Newsletter, each telling the story of one ancestor. Much of the material in this book has come from those articles. My genealogy research revealed that I am one-half Danish, three-eighths English and one-eighth German. However, my husband likes to say, "one-half Viking, one-half Anglo-Saxon and 100% Proper Bostonian." |