The Records of the Van Every Family

For the past couple years, in my genealogical travels around the web, and in surname messageboards on various genealogy sites, I’ve seen references to the following Family History:

The records of the Van Every family: United Empire Loyalists, New York State, 1653-1784, Canada, 1784-1947, by Mary Blackadar Piersol, T.H. Best (Toronto), 1947.

It’s been on my list of resources to find, though it’s out of print. I may have been able to retrieve a copy through Inter-Library Loan, but I wanted my own personal copy, and every place I found references to it said there were no copies available.

A week ago, Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings wrote about the GenalogyToday, GenWeekly and LiveRoots trio of sites.

I started browsing around, searching for surnames, and discovered they were selling copies of the book for a reasonable price.

I put an order in immediately. The site said there could be a 6-8 week wait, so I knew not to expect it in my mailbox the next day. I also didn’t expect it to appear in my mailbox 7 days later. But boy was I happy to see it there last night.

I had lots of fun browsing through it. I found some interesting information about the Van Every immigrant forebears, my 8th great grandfather, Myndert Fredericksen, and his brother, Carsten.¹

Some of this information will appear in later entries, but Piersol fortunately included a good number of footnotes, so I am going to see how many of the original sources I can find.

The existence of this reprint got me thinking. The reprint appears to be 'print-on-demand' with 8.5 * 11 pages, softcover, fastback tape binding. I'm interested in the content, so this didn't bother me. However, the publisher, Higginson Books, focuses on reprinting out-of-print local histories and genealogies. I wondered if the book was no longer under copyright. Because if it were still under copyright, I would watch how much of it I quoted in any post I wrote. Otherwise, not so much.

It was published originally (in 1947) in Canada, which became a full signatory to the Berne Convention in the 1920s. Therefore, copyrights in Canada last at least the life of the author, plus fifty years. I'm not sure when (or if) Mary Blackadar Piersol died, but unless it was before 1960, the book is still under copyright . I expect Higginson Books went through official channels to republish the work.

So I won't quote in detail, but as I said, Piersol does include footnotes, so perhaps I'll be able to quote from her sources.

Note 1: There are two traditional Dutch naming patterns, one based on the father’s name, and one based on locality. The former is similar to traditional Hebrew naming patterns in that children only get one name, and their surname is derived from their father’s name. Myndert and Carsten’s surname was Frederickse or Fredericksen, because their father was Frederick Van Iveren. Frederick's surname was derived in the second fashion, from a town, possibly Everinge or Evere. Myndert and Carsten’s descendants reverted to that surname, and it mutated to either Van Every or Van Avery, depending upon the branch.