Mary Ruth Holsclaw Andrews
1919-2008
Before beginning my genealogy when I was 16, I never knew my grandmother's maiden name. She had never mentioned her parents, though she had often told me about her childhood. So when I heard the name was Holslcaw, I immediately knew it had to be German. Sure enough, she told me that she had heard it came from the name of a town in Germany. She also told me that the name used to be Grimm before it was changed. I was a newbie to online genealogy research at the time, but I stumbled upon Familysearch and typed in the names she gave me. I was excited to right away find names dating all the way back to the 1400s. But what amazed me the most was that my grandmother was exactly right. The name had gone through several changes, but in the 1400s it was Grimm. That oral tradition had been passed down over 600 years to my grandma. I even discovered a book on the genealogy of the Holtzclaw family, and not once did it mention the name Grimm, so I knew she didn't get it from there. That oral tradition had traveled from so far away. It resided in Nassau-Seigen area of Germany for 300 years, crossed the Atlantic in 1714 with our ancestor Jacob Holtzklau, settled in Virginia, then made it's way to Kentucky and finally to Indiana in the 1840s, where my grandma was born in 1919, and in 2002 it was passed on to me. Genealogy is pretty stinkin cool, folks.
Church at Oberholzklau
from The Genealogy of the Holtzclaw Family 1540-1935
by B.C. Holtzclaw
William Theodore Holsclaw
1835-1930
Jacob Doddridge Holsclaw
Vawter Cemetery, Jennings Co., Indiana
1814-1846
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