Remembering the Heroes - John Zinn (1827-1897)

On Sunday afternoon, after finishing my post on "Mrs. Fytton's Country Life," I had a few minutes to kill and innocently did a google search on my name. To my surprise up came John Zinn followed by Hackensack Bergen County. Since my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were all named John Zinn and lived at least part of their lives in Hackensack, this was of no small interest to me. I immediately went to the site and found that in 2007 someone had posted on a genealogy board about a picture that they had of John Zinn and
Philip Shafer recognizing them as the last surviving charter members.

The person who wrote post confirmed that Philip Shafer had lived in Hackensack and he surmised that John Zinn did too. The post said that the picture was from around 1880 which suggested pretty clearly that this had to be my great-great-grandfather, John Zinn who was born in the village of Maar in the province of Hesse in Germany in 1827 and died in Hackensack in 1897.

Since I had never seen a picture of this ancestor I was more than a little excited and e-mailed the person who wrote the post as quickly as these aged fingers could type. Since the post was from 2007 all kinds of horrible thoughts went through my mind, suppose the person had a different e-mail address, suppose they had moved or even worse died. Fortunately my e-mail did not bounce back which was a good sign and I then waited more or less impatiently.

After 24 hours my patience was rewarded with an e-mail and the attached picture which I think has to be from the Bergen Record. The person who had made the original post had gotten the picture from his mother who didn't know what it was that the two men were surviving charter members of. Based on the research I had already done it seems pretty certain to me that this refers to the Third Protestant Reformed Church of Hackensack which was formed in early 1858. Surviving minutes of the church's initial meetings name both men as founders - in fact, the first officers of the church. There is no small irony to the fact that my ancestor was the treasurer of the church since I spent about 25 years as the Treasurer of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark and am still the Treasurer of St. Paul's Church in Paterson. The fact that my maternal grandfather, James W. Winder was also a church treasurer adds even more evidence to the idea that there is something hereditary at work.

Obviously I would have been very grateful to find a picture of any ancestor, but this John Zinn is no ordinary ancestor. Born in Germany in 1827, it appears that in the spring of 1849, he endured a seven week ocean voyage in a wooden ship arriving in the United States on July 3rd. I have never discovered why he left Germany, but it seems reasonable to believe that after the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848, he decided to seek a new life in a new land. By 1850, he was married and the father of another John Zinn and the rest as they say is history.

About five years ago I attended a conference on genealogy where the keynote speaker was John Colletta, the author of "They Came In Ships: A Guide to Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record." A very engaging speaker, John made two important points. The first is that we should try to find pictures of the ship our ancestors came on or of at least a similar ship so that we can ask ourselves - what were they thinking about spending all that time in a ship like that. More important was his second point, when he said that the ancestors who made the fateful decision to come here, endured the journey and the hardships of a new life in a new land are the heroes of our family histories. All too frequently we think heroes have to be great warriors or leaders who did big things on a big stage. It is nice to know that every family has its own heroes.

While it wasn't on my immediate agenda, this find, no not a find, but a gift, has got me thinking about some trips to the municipal library in Hackensack where they have old issues of the Bergen Record on microfilm. Thinking about it the picture probably marks some anniversary of the church's founding so it probably makes sense to start around 1893 and work backwards. However long it takes, I am confident I will learn more about my family's history and for this gift and what it can lead to, I am very grateful.