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Stout collection
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Held at: Historical Society of Pennsylvania [Contact Us]1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Stout-Staudt-Stoudt family numbering system was developed and refined by RADM Herald F. Stout (1903-1987) (K-7-11-2431). The system generally continues in use, at least when referring to those Stout-Staudt-Stoudt family members to whom RADM Stout and subsequent published researchers assigned an identifying number.
Non-emigrating German ancestors were assigned Roman numerals to indicate their generation, and a letter to indicate their known or assumed birth sequence. Thus, Johannes Abraham Staudt was assigned the designation "VIa," indicating that he was a sixth generation descendant of an identified progenitor, Hans Staudt (1535-1590), and was the eldest son of his family.
Each immigrant ancestor was assigned a letter designating that particular branch of the family. Thus, Johann Mathias Staudt (1725-1795) was assigned the letter "D" and the numeral "1" to indicate that he was of the first immigrant generation. Dual designations sometimes occur; for example, when it was discovered that the immigrant, Johannes Abraham Staudt, who had been assigned the immigrant letter "A," was the same person as the German ancestor who had been assigned the German generation numeral "VIa," both designations ("VIa" and "A") were retained.
Sons of the immigrant were given the same letter as the immigrant, and a generation number "2" followed by a number indicating the sequence of their known or assumed birth (when there were more than 9 children in a family, the tenth child was assigned the letter "a" etc.). Daughters were assigned a decimal number by RADM Stout. Thus, Johann Mathias Staudt's daughter Anna Elizabeth, who was born next after Abraham Staudt (D 2-1), received the number D 2-1.5. Researchers adding descendants of these "daughtered out" lines to whom numbers were not assigned by RADM Stout generally do not distinguish between sons and daughters; female descendants who have not already been assigned a number by RADM Stout are given whole numbers determined by their birth sequence. Thus Anna Elizabeth (Staudt) Miller's seventh child, Hannah Miller, would be assigned the number D 3-1.57. The middle group following the generation number and the "-" (here, "1.57") is kept intact, and indicates a closely related family group descending from a particular grandchild of the immigrant ancestor. Thus, Hannah (Miller) Swalm's seventh son, Joseph Miller Swalm, is assigned the number D 4-1.57-7.
An important and helpful feature of this system is that numbers assigned to members of the Stout-Staudt-Stoudt family by the earliest published researchers have been maintained substantially intact. Where a reference number is given for a member of the family, it will always refer to the same person to whom the number originally was assigned, or (for newly added descendants) it will be a unique number assigned by following the same pattern developed by the early researchers.
Gift of Rev. Edmond B. Stout, 1990.
Gift of Alfred Achtert Jr., 2003.
Gift of Scott Nay, 2003.
People
Subject
- Publisher
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Kate Heaney Marshall and Cary Hutto
- Finding Aid Date
- ; 2013
- Access Restrictions
-
The collection is open for research.