Adam Redcay's Farm (e-i-e-i-ooooo)

Okay, after this, I'm gonna take a break from the Redcay's. It's true, I love researching, but it's good to take a break. Besides, they are always spelling their name different, and they insist on living on the border of various counties and townships and it gets annoying. Is it Brecknock township in Lancaster county or Brecknock township in Berks county? And who made the decision to divide the county up in the first place?

Some old dudes in 1752 were sitting around in Lancaster county Pennsylvania saying hey, I think there should be another county because Reading is getting too big. Let's make it and break townships right in the middle so in 350 years when people are trying to figure out where we live they'll have no idea and have to resort to random searches on some sort of inter-tubes which invariably ends with them back on a time-wasting network of socialness that sucks the hours away.

First off, let's establish the name. It's Redcay. Which can also be found as: Redkey, Retge, Redge, Rettge, Redkee and Retga. That last one gets me, that must have been some think Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

So, the oldest Redcay I can find for my brother-in-law's family is Adam Redge, who was born on Oct. 13, 1799. He was warrantied land in Berks county in 1828. Exactly 23.106 acres. Not 23 acres, not 24 acres, not 23 and one half acres. 23.106.

He died in 1871, his gravestone is at the Allegheny Church graveyard.

I know his wife's name was Anna, and I have all his kids.

But where did he come from? The census's I found state he was born in PA, but who knows where since the older census's only list the father's name, not any other member's of the household.

I've found a few family history's of Redcay's, but they are apparently different lines, because they don't match up with mine. A mystery.

And I found a farm on an 1864 map that belongs to a John Redge (Adam did have a son John), but it's in Brecknock township of Lancaster county, not Berks county. There's an 1876 map of Brecknock Township in Berks county, but there is only a T. Redcay listed as owning property. "T"? Who is this "T" imposter? There are no good pennsylvania dutch first names that start with T! There should only be Adam's, Martin's, William's, John's, Jacob's, Abram's and Elias. That's it. No T's should pop up until the early 20th century. And how sad am I that I even have a statement to make about such a subject?

And that my friends, is how I know when it's time for a break. Maybe I'll go organize some photos or something. Or maybe go outside and see what the sky looks like. Or not.....


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Adam Redcay and His Job

Adam Redcay is my brother-in-law's great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He was born in 1799 and was deeded land up in Berks County, PA.

By 1870 though, his wife had passed away, and he was no longer farming, but had apparently moved to a house in Adamstown in what is now Lancaster County, PA (Adamstown is known now as the antiques capital of the world, at least according to their website). He was living on his own with a servant. Interestingly, the servants name was Leah, which is a pretty rare name, even back then.

I know all this from looking at census information. Another column on census sheets is occupation. 90% of the time, occupation for women was left empty because it was just assumed that they were home doing housework. Some census's listed it as "Keeping House". If you were a grandmother or grandfather living with your son or daughter and their family, you usually didn't have an occupation listed either. Maybe "widow" or "widower" would be listed.

But for the 1870 census and 70-year-old Adam Redcay, they didn't just leave his occupation blank.

They listed an occupation for him - it was: "old man".

Now that has to be an occupation. I can only imagine that being an "old man" involves being cantankerous, grumpy, and irritated by everyone. Much like the old men driving cars in front of me every day who think it is their occupation to prevent me from going around them. I don't run into angry old men in stores, or on sidewalks or at my job. Only when driving.

Maybe Adam Redcay's occupation is why he isn't living with any of his kids. They probably all got together and were all like, omg, I am not taking Dad in, he trips us with his cane and never likes what we make for dinner. Let's buy a house for him in the next county over and pay some poor sap named Leah to take care of him.

I made it!

Remind me next year when I'm feeling all in the holiday spirit and decide to host parties within days of each other that I'm going to need more time off BEFORE the parties....!!!!!

But I survived and I think all went well. I was very excited to host christmas eve this year, I had a blast setting up a pretty table and making fun little menus for everybody. My christmas party this year seemed to go well as well, it went by in a flash which usually is a good thing!!!

And now, my real vacation! A week of playing with genealogy until I'm sick of it and am glad to go back to work. (Yeah, right).

I already spent all day yesterday doing more on the Redcay's, that is my latest interest, it's my brother-in-law's family. I was reading through this book on germans in berks/lancaster counties and this guy made a comment like, oh, and the Redcay family, which is obviously Rothke....

Rothke? I didn't think that was obvious, is there something wrong with me? But anyway, I was glad to find it, google does something right, and that is the posting of old books. Remember the old days when if something was out of print, it was out of print and you were screwed? Now you really can get whatever you want whenever you want. That makes me HAPPY! I love the internet!

and an update on the new cat, Angel: NooNoo has not killed him yet, though she is working hard to traumatize him. She likes to sit in doorways and growl at him so that he has to sqeeeeeze by in the doorway as far from her as possible. She's all talk, she's definitely getting used to him now. He has turned out to be such a relaxed cat, he loves parties, and loves to place himself right in the middle of the room and hang out. I'm so lucky to have found him!!!

And now, back to the Redcay's!!!!

The Redcay Family

So I'm researching my brother-in-law's family tree so my niece and nephew will have their family tree. Whether they'll be interested in this information is another story, but I'm taking a chance that one of them, or maybe one of their kids, will appreciate my thousands of hours slaving over a hot keyboard.

Redcay is a great name. The best part of it is that you can get it as a tattoo if you wanted to. A big red "K". Like the superman logo. I've tried to tell my brother-in-law for years now that I think getting a red "K" as a tattoo is a great idea. Unfortunately, the fact that I can't help but grin every time I say it takes away from the impact of my opinion I think.

So most of the Redcay's swarm within Pennsylvania, specifically within Berks and Lancaster counties. They were probably part of the big rush of germans that came over for religious freedom in the 1700s.

One of the things I like best about genealogy is watching the evolution of families over time. Favorite names for kids, who moved to another state, stuff like that. And I like seeing how little things like spelling have changed over time. Being picky about spelling is a relatively recent phenomenon, people were much more, shall we say, flexible, in the past.

For instance, in a 1930 census, maybe your name was written down as "Susan". But the 1920 census has it written as "Susanah". And the 1900 census has it as "Susannah". That's a pretty easy example though. I have one person whose name is "Letitia". In some places her nickname is listed (Lettie). In other places, clearly the person writing it down was not familiar with such a la-dee-dah name. They wrote "Ledisha".

So as I researched the Redcay surname, I eventually ran out of Redcays. What happened to them? They had done a spelling change. Lots of people with non-english names changed the spelling of their surnames to what matched the pronunciation.

Eventually I found one of them: "Retga". You might think that "Retga" sounds nothing like "Redcay" but if you do what I did, it actually does. Sit in front of your computer and pronounce "Retga" with a german accent, (Yes, this is what I do in my spare time, I'm not even making it up) the way it would have been as the census taker in 1880 heard it. Imagine going from door to door, getting some annoyed wife and making her tell you the names, ages and occupation of everyone in the house. Or maybe that's just me projecting, maybe they would have welcomed a chance to speak to someone different for a time.

But anyway, "Retga" actually sounds a little like "Redcay". And then I found others spellings, like "Retge" and "Ratge".

I have no idea what this surname means, I don't speak german. But I did find a word "ratgeber" which means counsellor or advisor. Whether it relates or not, I don't know.

Yep, this is what I love doing with my spare time!!!!! :-)