The Background of Gathering
The Frazee Family History
and The French Connection
Robert M. Frazee
15 Aug 2015, and June 16, 2010
My father, Russell L. Frazee, Esq. of Bird Island, Minnesota, Renville County Attorney, started gathering information about the family history as early as 1940, after he received the following letters:
R. 4
Mr. Russell Frazee
Dear Sir:
Your name was in the paper under a news item from Hector, Minn. I have a state map but could not determine the name of the country nor the county seat, so I'll try Hector.Stillwater, Minnesota April 9, 1940
My maiden name was Frazee, from Washington, Pa. That is near Pittsburgh. Do you know anything about the Frazee's, either historical or any interesting personalities or personal facts? I know quite a bit and the ting I wish to know most is were the "zee" comes from in our name. Do you know? I think Frazee, Fraser, Frazier, etc., are all from the same family but my grandfather always insisted on emphasize the "zee" so it must mean something but I doubt if he knew what himself. Fraser was originally French and means strawberry. You know how family names originated. It is fascinating to me to read ancient history, if that comes under the heading of history. My husband comes from Fraize, France. I tell him we may have the same blood way back. He don't know why Fraize, France is so named but says there is also a town "with some kind of a Fraser name" up by Lake Constance in Switzerland. Can "zee be Swiss? He says it is not French. A Frazer was sent as ambassador from France to Scotland in the feudal days. It is not Scotch either. My Aunt says the first Frazee's in America got a grant of land from the Crown of England. It is not English either. What is it? Please do not laugh at me. I am trying to write a historical novel based on the Frazee history. Who knows, it may be "the Great American Novel." The reason it has never been written is because all American novels are based on some one phase of American life. The story of any colonial family would surely bring out all the phases and developments of American life. That is why I am interested in the lives and loves of the Frazees. They are strong, colorful characters. Hey? I am fifty eight years old and this has been in the back of my mind since I was a small girl so it is not just a happy thought that struck me. Mrs. Maud (Frazee) Etienne |
Stillwater, Mn
April 30, 1940
Mr. Russell Frazee
Dear Sir: Since writing you, my sister sent me a history of the Frazee name and Family, compiled by the Media Research [Bureau], Washington, D.C. Since you were kind enough to answer my letter, I am sending it to you for what it is worth. Some time ago the Reader's Digest sort of belittled this Research. Please send it back, if you think it is authentic you can get a manuscript for two dollars. I think I know where the "zee" comes from. There is a Fraisse and a Fraiss'e in the list of French names. My husband pronounced all the names for me. These two do not sound alike. Fraiss's sounds exactly like our grandfather taught us to say Frazee. Were you taught toe pronounce it so? I have never read a history of the Frazee's, all I know is family tradition. I never knew where to get a history. I knew families could be braced by legal documents, but I have no idea where to look for them. A distant relation of ours told my sister there is a "History of the Frazee Family in America" in two volumes, selling at twelve dollars a volume. I don't know where it can be obtained, nor the name of the publisher. She paid [sic] it was in the public library in some city in California. My grandfather maintained the name is French but said he was partly Scotch. I may have gotten the idea that Frazee, Fraser, etc. are all the same name. I am sure now they are not. He always said they are not the same. My Aunt told me the Frazees came from England and Wales and got a grant of land near New York City. I suppose in New York State. It must have been in New Jersey. The Jersey side is as near New York City as the York State side. It must have been they left France and went first to England. It may or may not account for some Frazee's saying they are English. If they stayed in England any length of time the ones who came to America may be part English. When you come to think of it we are not French or Frazee either any more. All that is left is the blood or nationality in the name. It takes a lot of imagination to piece this out but it had to happen some way and it may have been this way. More than likely it was this way. Do you hear a better place for getting them over here? In the list of wills my sister underscored Stephen Frazee 1766. We have known for a long time we are his descendants but did not know where he lived. Our grandfather died before we became interested in our ancestry and no one else seemed to know very much. He may not have known either. In this will Stephen Frazee mentions his sons Stephen, Joseph, Benjamin, David, and Jonathan. The four last named came to Pennsylvania. David was the father of Colonel David Frazee. Colonel David was an only Son and he had two sons, David and Andrew. I can just remember David and Andrew. We were descended from Stephen. either he or his descendants went west. We know it was he on account of what relation my grandfather was to Colonel David. My Aunt has a letter written in 1861 from Francesville, Pulaski Co., Indiana by her grandmother asking my grandfather to come and get her as her children were all gone and her husband had recently died. (he went) It seems my grandfather and his brother had gone to the Frazees in Ohio. One brother was killed in the Civil War. then my grandfather came to his uncle Colonel David Frazee in Pennsylvania. My grandfather was a drover. These Frazees owned all the land from the National Pike to the Village of Lone Pine so my grandfather was the "poor relation." But he made out all right. Colon David could not have been his first uncle. He called him that anyway. My grandfather's parents were both Frazees. His mother was a Frazee too. My father's name was Thomas, his father's Jacob, his father's William, don't know his father's name but he must have been a son of the Stephen who made the will in 1766. Perhaps you may have heard of the swamp land around New York City where the Brooklyn Bridge (all Wall St?) now are. that was leased out around the 1800's for 99 years. When Davy Freazee, Colon David's son, was on his death bed he confessed he burned those papers. Etienne (not Ettiene) is another French name hard to pronounce. It means "Stephen" but this manuscript has it "Edward." It is used as a first name more often than a last name. I hope this is all interesting enough to not bore you.
Maud Etienne You have legal training. You may be able to dig out more than I. |
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Office of the Secretary WASHINGTON 12 March 1956
Mr. Russell L. Frazee
Dear Mr. Frazee I saw your name on some correspondence that went through our office the other day and art that time I made a mental note to write you. My wife and I have for years been interested in tracing the Frazee family history and, since we live here in Washington where most of the records are available, we have spent considerable time at it. In addition to this hobby of ours we are both professional genealogists. This is a sideline to my regular occupation as an attorney on the staff of the Secretary of Agriculture. I assume you are a descendant of Randolph Lafayette Frazee who migrated to your state and was the founder of the town that now bears his name. Is that correct? I am a descendant of Jehiel Frazee, who was a brother of Randolph L. Frazee. These two men were sons of Hezekiah Frazee who was born about 1750 and who died near Hemden, Jackson County, Ohio, in 1821 If you are a descendant of Randolph L. Frazee I should certainly like to hear from you and to know if Randolph L. Frazee left any data that would show the parents of Hezekia Frazee, his father, or the place of his birth. this data we have been unable to locate anywhere altho we have searched all known sources. With kindest regard and best wishes. Sincerely yours,
Harry W. Frazee |
Tombstone Records
Reported tombstone records from the Casstown Cemetery, south of Casstown, Ohio Charles W. Frazee 1868 -1930 Harry F. Frazee 1840-1917 Anna Dye Frazee July 30, 1811 - December 27, 1893 Reported tombstone records from the Lost Creek cemetery, north of Casstown, Ohio, near Troy, Ohio
James Frazee, died June 26, 1851 at the age of 76 years. Paul Frazee, died September 5, 1839, age 30 years. His son James died in the 4th year of his age. Lewis D. Frazee 1810 -1845, September 29. Moses Frazee, minister of Free Baptist Church, died February 17, 1840-3, age 79 years. Sara Bell, daughter of Thos. Newton and Amanda A. Timmon Frazee died March 13, 1855; age four years. Lewis D. Frazee, son of M. and S. Frazee, died July 26, 1849, age 16. Harriet A. Frazee, wife of Jermiah Frazee, October 1, 1837 - December 27, 1890. William Frazee 1849 - 1928 is supposed to have been buried here (possibly at the Casstown cemetery, south of Casstown, but no tombstone is recorded), |
Editor's Note: I was once told that any French name ending in "ee" was of French Huguenot ancestry.
I have always like explanation and, being true or false, have adopted it. Everyone needs some identity and that is mine.
Robert M. Frazee
Plymouth, MN.
A French Connection
By KENNETH C. DAVIS
Published: November 25, 2008, New York Times TO commemorate the arrival of the first pilgrims to America’s shores, a June date would be far more appropriate, accompanied perhaps by coq au vin and a nice Bordeaux. After all, the first European arrivals seeking religious freedom in the “New World” were French. And they beat their English counterparts by 50 years. That French settlers bested the Mayflower Pilgrims may surprise Americans raised on our foundational myth, but the record is clear. Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560. Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of “thanksgiving.” Carrying the seeds of a new colony, they also brought cannons to fortify the small, wooden enclosure they named Fort Caroline, in honor of their king, Charles IX. In short order, these French pilgrims built houses, a mill and bakery, and apparently even managed to press some grapes into a few casks of wine. At first, relationships with the local Timucuans were friendly, and some of the French settlers took native wives and soon acquired the habit of smoking a certain local “herb.” Food, wine, women — and tobacco by the sea, no less. A veritable Gallic paradise. Except, that is, to the Spanish, who had other visions for the New World. In 1565, King Philip II of Spain issued orders to “hang and burn the Lutherans” (then a Spanish catchall term for Protestants) and dispatched Adm. Pedro Menéndez to wipe out these French heretics who had taken up residence on land claimed by the Spanish — and who also had an annoying habit of attacking Spanish treasure ships as they sailed by. Leading this holy war with a crusader's fervor, Menéndez established St. Augustine and ordered what local boosters claim is the first parish Mass celebrated in the future United States. Then he engineered a murderous assault on Fort Caroline, in which most of the French settlers were massacred. Menéndez had many of the survivors strung up under a sign that read, “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to heretics.” A few weeks later, he ordered the execution of more than 300 French shipwreck survivors at a site just south of St. Augustine, now marked by an inconspicuous national monument called Fort Matanzas, from the Spanish word for “slaughters.” With this, America’s first pilgrims disappeared from the pages of history. Casualties of Europe’s murderous religious wars, they fell victim to Anglophile historians who erased their existence as readily as they demoted the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to second-class status behind the later English colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth. But the truth cannot be so easily buried. Although overlooked, a brutal first chapter had been written in the most untidy history of a “Christian nation.” And the sectarian violence and hatred that ended with the deaths of a few hundred Huguenots in 1565 would be replayed often in early America, the supposed haven for religious dissent, which in fact tolerated next to none. Starting with those massacred French pilgrims, the saga of the nation’s birth and growth is often a bloodstained one, filled with religious animosities. In Boston, for instance, the Puritan fathers banned Catholic priests and executed several Quakers between 1659 and 1661. Cotton Mather, the famed Puritan cleric, led the war cries against New England’s Abenaki “savages” who had learned their prayers from the French Jesuits. The colony of Georgia was established in 1732 as a buffer between the Protestant English colonies and the Spanish missions of Florida; its original charter banned Catholics. The bitter rivalry between Catholic France and Protestant England carried on for most of a century, giving rise to anti-Catholic laws, while a mistrust of Canada’s French Catholics helped fire many patriots’ passion for independence. As late as 1844, Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic “Bible Riots” took the lives of more than a dozen people. The list goes on. Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance. Which is why this Thanksgiving, as we express gratitude for America’s bounty and promise, we would do well to reflect on all our histories, including a forgotten French one that began on Florida’s shores so many years ago. Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation.”
Taken from The National Huguenot Society.
Who Were the Huguenots?
The Huguenots were French Protestants most of whom eventually came to follow the teachings of John Calvin, and who, due to religious persecution, were forced to flee France to other countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some remained, practicing their Faith in secret.
The Protestant Reformation began by Martin Luther in Germany about 1517, spread rapidly in France, especially among those having grievances against the established order of government. As Protestantism grew and developed in France it generally abandoned the Lutheran form, and took the shape of Calvinism. The new "Reformed religion" practiced by many members of the French nobility and social middle-class, based on a belief in salvation through individual faith without the need for the intercession of a church hierarchy and on the belief in an individual's right to interpret scriptures for themselves, placed these French Protestants in direct theological conflict with both the Catholic Church and the King of France in the theocratic system which prevailed at that time. Followers of this new Protestantism were soon accused of heresy against the Catholic government and the established religion of France, and a General Edict urging extermination of these heretics (Huguenots) was issued in 1536. Nevertheless, Protestantism continued to spread and grow, and about 1555 the first Huguenot church was founded in a home in Paris based upon the teachings of John Calvin. The number and influence of the French Reformers (Huguenots) continued to increase after this event, leading to an escalation in hostility and conflict between the Catholic Church/State and the Huguenots. Finally, in 1562, some 1200 Huguenots were slain at Vassey, France, thus igniting the French Wars of Religion which would devastate France for the next thirty-five years. The Edict of Nantes, signed by Henry IV in April, 1598, ended the Wars of Religion, and allowed the Huguenots some religious freedoms, including free exercise of their religion in 20 specified towns of France. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in October, 1685, began anew persecution of the Huguenots, and hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled France to other countries. The Promulgation of the Edict of Toleration in November, 1787, partially restored the civil and religious rights of Huguenots in France. Since the Huguenots of France were in large part artisans, craftsmen, and professional people, they were usually well-received in the countries to which they fled for refuge when religious discrimination or overt persecution caused them to leave France. Most of them went initially to Germany, the Netherlands, and England, although some found their way eventually to places as remote as South Africa. Considerable numbers of Huguenots migrated to British North America, especially to the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Their character and talents in the arts, sciences, and industry were such that they are generally felt to have been a substantial loss to the French society from which they had been forced to withdraw, and a corresponding gain to the communities and nations into which they settled. Origin of the Word Huguenot
The exact origin of the word Huguenot is unknown, but many consider it to be a combination of Flemish and German. Protestants who met to study the Bible in secret were called Huis Genooten, meaning "house fellows." They were also referred to as Eid Genossen, or "oath fellows" meaning persons bound by an oath. Two possible but different derivations incorporating this concept can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica:
1. "Huguenot", according to Frank Puaux, at one time President of the Socitie Francaise de l'Historie du Protestantisme Francais and author of the article about the Huguenots in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "is the name given from about the middle of the sixteenth century to the Protestants of France. It was formerly explained as coming from the German Eldgenosen, the designation of the people of Geneva at the time when they were admitted to the Swiss Confederation. This explanation is now abandoned. The words Huguenot, Huguenots, are old French words, common in fourteenth and fifteenth-century charters. As the Protestants called the Catholics papistes, so the Catholics called the protestants huguenots. The Protestants at Tours used to assemble by night near the gate of King Hugo, whom the people regarded as a spirit. A monk, therefore, in a sermon declared that the Lutherans ought to be called Huguenots, as kinsmen of King Hugo, inasmuch as they would only go out at night as he did. This nickname became popular from 1560 onwards, and for a long time the French Protestants were always known by it."
2. The current edition Encyclopedia Britannica offers a somewhat different explanation, although agreeing the word is a derivative of the German word Eldgenosen:
"The origin of the name is uncertain, but it appears to have come from the word aignos, derived from the German Eldgenosen (confederates bound together by oath), which used to describe, between 1520 and 1524, the patriots of Geneva hostile to the duke of Savoy. The spelling Huguenot may have been influenced by the personal name Hugues, "Hugh"; a leader of the Geneva movement was one Besancon Hugues (d. 1532)."
Jump Station
For more information about the Frazee family send me a note
Robert M. Frazee.
Belli at the Grand Titons, June 2015
If you have any questions, or corrections, just write to Belli.
Have a good day and come back again.
