11 July 2006

June Allyson Dies

June Allyson died Sunday. In 2001, she gave an interview on Larry King Live in which she said her name was originally Ella Van Geisman, a Dutch name. Others have decided, for no apparent reason, that she was Jewish.

The 1920 New York census lists her as Ella, daughter of Anna and Robert Geisman, a chemist. Her parents were married in 1914 at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in the Bronx by the pastor, William Junge. Her grandfather, Henry Geismann, was born in 1864 in Ahsen, then part of Prussia, and christened in the same Catholic church where his parents were married. So again, it appears that the Dutch are really Deutsch.

On her mother's side, Allyson's grandmother's ancestors were from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her maternal grandfather was named James Provost. He may have been a descendant of the early settlers of New Amsterdam, which would make him -- and June Allyson -- Dutch.
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You can view the census records and more genealogy for June Allyson at Ancestry Ancestry.com

2 comments:

Karin W. said...

In Sweden I´m quite alone having a genealogy blog. Out there, in "the blog-world" I´m not. Very few people comment genealogy blogs, I´ve noticed. I wonder why.

Sharon said...

Hi, Karen Irene! You ask a good question. I enjoy reading comments from passers-by.
I have left only a few comments on other genealogy blogs, though I read and enjoy several regularly.
Must be that genealogists are different from other people out there in the blog-world.
~Sharon