POINT OF VIEW
by James W. Fulbright

Here is an article about one Fulbright's attempt to trace our family back to Germany. The author is James "Jim" W. Fulbright of Arlington, Texas. Jim was at the reunion, and was overheard telling part of this story. It is a fascinating story and we felt it deserved to be included in our newsletter.

This is Jim's lineage in the Fulbright family:

Gen. I          Johann Wilhelm Volprecht      6 Feb 1717 Mar 1808
                   & Christinah
Gen. II        John William Fulbright            19 Nov 1756 - 1830
                   & Elizabeth Coulter                ca 1763 - 9 June 1863
Gen. III       William Wilson Fulbright        8 Jan 1785 - 22 Sept 1843
                  & Ruth Hollingsworth             28 Sept 1791 - 30 Apr 1874
Gen. IV      Ephriam R. Fulbright              1809 - 1897
                 & Elizabeth Yount
Gen. V       Henry David Fulbright             10 Dec 1833 - 2 Aug 1861
                 & Abigail Mecklin
Gen. VI     Robert Ephriam Fulbright          1860 -1926
Gen. VII    Frank Dabbs Fulbright               27 Sept 1889 - S Sept 1948 
                & Carrie Corine McCrosky        12 Mar 1893 - 5 Mar 1968
Gen. VIII  William Larry Fulbright              2 Sept 1914 - Apr 1988
Gen. IX    James "Jim" William Fulbright     13 Aug 1954 -
 
This is Jim's Story . . . .

"My grandfather was the best tailor in Minsk," declared one of my classmates. She demonstrated some of his tools. She showed us a four-sided top, a dreidl, which had been passed down from her great-grandmother.

Another drew laughter with a nearly identical that his grandfather had going to prison or going when he told us, degree of pride, had the choice of to America.

The teacher greatly underestimated the difficulty of her assignment for some of us. "Find out where your family came from," she'd said, "and tell us about their life before they came here." Suburban New York in the mid - 1960's had no shortage of students for whom the assignment was simple. The so-called "Mayflower families" knew exactly who they were, or claimed they did. Many of the other students were less than four generations removed from Europe or Asia.

Surprisingly, one or the other scenario left only me and an African-American friend the odd men out. I could count back 9 generations and 2+ centuries without either hitting the Mayflower or getting anywhere outside the western hemisphere; Greg was in the 5th living generation of his family, none of whom had even a clue as to which state might have been their ancestors' first residence.

Greg coped. He created the elaborate story of his long-distance ancestor, weaving baskets peacefully by the old family hut, whence he was grabbed by Arab traders for sale to the Portuguese, etc., etc. It had drama, it had horror, it had romance. It had not a molecule of documented fact. Alex Haley could've taken a lesson or two from Greg.

Still, it was a great story, and had what a Gonzo journalist might call "truth beyond accuracy." I wanted to adapt his style - which I suspected was no more fanciful than some of the Mayflowers' -but I had not allowed for my father's enthusiasm on the subject. He told me, at great length, of Pennsylvania, of North Carolina, of Missouri.

"But I have to tell about our life in Europe," I protested at every opening, to no avail. I eventually realized the truth. As promised, it set me free.

"You have no idea exactly where this John William Fulbright came from, do you?" I challenged my poor dad, as only the smart-mouthed pre-adolescent can.

"No," he admitted.

"You're just using this as an excuse to tell me a bunch of stories I'd never listen to otherwise, aren't you?"

"Yes." At least he was honest about it.

I followed his example. "He was probably a farmer here," I told the class. "He was probably a farmer there. 'There' was probably Germany." I got a C+. Greg, by the way, had gotten an A.

I consider Greg and I to be Plain Old Americans. I would not deny anyone the privilege of a Whatever-American self-designation, especially if their family still manifests strong elements of both cultures. My ancestry, however, contains a broad variety of European strains; Greg's contains some of those in addition to an indeterminable assortment of African heritages.

We may not be capital-N Native Americans, as in aboriginal peoples, but after some number of generations you've got to stop looking elsewhere for a cultural identity. I may have a characteristic or two unique to Scots-Irish-English-French-Dutch-German-Americans, and Greg might be positively typical of Hausa-Bantu-Songhai-French-Irish-Americans. How would we know? Recognizing those characteristics which make us Plain Old Americans, on the other hand, is pretty easy.

So. Genetic material from John William Fulbright (the eldest) probably form less than one part in 256 of what I am. At that, I am several hundred times more likely to resemble him than Charlemagne, from whom I can also trace absurdly distant lineage. Neither amounts to much. I might have John William's toenail shape, say, or maybe a characteristic mole. I identify more strongly with Puerto Rico, where I lived as a child, than I do with Europe.

Having found and somewhat discounted, then, why would I seek his parents, each merely 1/512th of my ancestry? Maybe that was still irritating me.

I also sense some indefinable magic in the continuity: I do wish that women also passed down surnames, from mother to daughter, so I wouldn't have to feel vaguely guilty about it. Males do have a succession, though, a formal bond to their particular line of fathers and sons which transcends genetic significance. It cannot be meaningless that amid the sea of Corey's, Scout's and Krshna's who will be his contemporaries, I chose to name my son John William.

Intellectual dissatisfaction also plays its part, I'm sure. Why do we know so comparatively much about that first John William- and seemingly nothing about his parents or his reason for emigrating away from them? Did he never mention them to his children or in any legal record? Accepting 1720 as the approximate year of his birth, he could not have been much more than twenty when he arrived in Philadelphia. Unless he departed under less-than- pleasant circumstances, he must have carried some sentiment toward the family, if any, that he left behind.

Judging by documents my father saw, we might infer John William I was literate, from which we might further infer his family was of some attainment. Allowing for the tenuousness of stacking inferences just a smidgen too high, might not such a family have created some paper trail? Married. Bought or sold some property. Given birth - to Johann Wilhelm, for example. Died. Even if they were all dead before his departure, might John William I not have had some inherited possession we could identify in his will?

Nope. Despite my feigned indifference, I looked, both here and in Germany. I admit failure.

I pass along my adventures, then, for other reasons. First, because I make no claim to being the quintessential re-searcher. Second, because my blind alleys might be avoided by others. Some piece I discarded might fit another's larger puzzle. Third, and perhaps most significantly, because however badly I fared, I may have been the only one to try.

I began my search with the data my late father William L. had accumulated. I felt comfortable with his documentation of the line back from us to the first John William Fulbright, and saw no flaws in his links from that man in North Carolina to the passenger who arrived upon the Robert und Alice von Rotterdam uber Cowes 3 Dec. 1740.

My father had already done research in Philadelphia. The surname on the ship's documents, to my father's eye, read Vol Precht. A trained investigator with the FBI, it was his opinion that the name was written in the man's own hand - many passengers were indicated only by their mark - and that it was written precisely as above, capital V - o - l - space - capital P - r - e - c - h - t. I have never been able to confirm this independently, as many of his records were lost to a thief and never completely replaced.

My father partially confirmed this spelling in a book he found in the New York Public Library in 1970. According to his notes, he found the following on page 143 of the book Thirty Thousand Names of German. Swiss, Dutch, French and Other Immigrants in Pennsylvania. 1727-1776.

Ship Arrival At Philadelphia

Dec. 3, 1740

185 PFALZER KAMEN MIT DEM SCHIFFE ROBERT UND ALICE CAPTIAIN GOODMAN VON ROTTERDAM UBER COWES

Having been unable to locate this book, I can only assume my father correctly copied the spelling, which seems odd. My educated guess at the translation would be "185 Pfalzer came with the ship Robert and Alice... from Rotterdam via Cowes." Among those listed was JOH. WILHELM VOLPRECHT.

[Editor's note: The word Pfalz in German translates as 'the Paliatinate'.]

(For those researching Andreas Vollprecht, my father found his arrival 20 September 1764 documented on page 358 of that same book.)

Though I spent several months in Europe during 1981 and 1982, I never did get to the Isle of Wight, where Cowes is located. I leapt to the brave assumption that, as a way station, Cowes would have borne the imprint of J. Wilhelm's foot-steps lightly if at all.

Nor did I spend enough time in Rotterdam. One cannot, it's clear, hope to arrive in Europe without a plan if one intends to research. Wandering, after all from person to person: by chance, do you know of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather...? Not a high-probability approach.

I reaped precisely what I'd sown for my time in Rotterdam- nothing- and it soon became my biggest regret.

In Germany, by contrast, I had an embarrassment of resources. The best of them came in the form of my friend Anne A highly-educated native Bavarian, fluent in several languages, she also had friends or connections in many West German government agencies.

She immediately began shooting polite but deadly holes in every plan I'd made. She was having so much fun, I finally couldn't resist joining her in the systematic dismantling of my quest.

I'd start, I had thought, with those churches where the Mormon records in Salt Lake City reflected births or marriages under either Volprecht or Volbrecht. Anne pointed out that records from those churches had obviously been researched before. �If the other names are already listed, why not Johann Wilhelm's? Do you think they elected randomly to omit him?' She Dubiously approved my plan to visit the areas, at any rate, hoping to stumble on to a previously unlisted set of records.

"You should have done your homework in Rotterdam, you know." I had that feeling, too, but some masochistic streak demanded that I hear her reasons why. "How do you know Johann Wilhelm was a Palatine? Because some English ships captain said so?" She'd followed my lead in assuming that Robert Goodman was an English name, though in retrospect I'm none so certain.

This started my mind on a whole new line of thinking.

I was aware before my journey that Germany, as such, is of very recent origin. In 1740, all that land was controlled by one prince or another within the Holy Roman Empire. One aspect or another of its name constantly draws ridicule ("oh-for-three," claimed one of my college professors, "hardly holy, rarely Roman, not much of an empire.") By whatever name, that entity or its predecessors ruled what we've considered J. Wilhelm's homeland, and had done so since the three sequential Kings Otto, at the turn of the millennium.

Johann Wilhelm's own sense of nationality, if any, probably stemmed from whatever prince he happened to be under. How much did he care how he was classified on the ship?

In 1990, I had a reasonably polite run-in with the census-taker. To begin with, I was one of those blessed with the randomly distributed long form, which I dutifully filled out and returned. Murphy knows, of course, that mine "must've gotten lost in the shuffle," and I had to endure the whole form again at the hands of a live human being. I found the questions regarding number of indoor toilets amusing, but some other questions were more problematic. Ancestry, for example.

"American," I tried.

"What tribe?" queried my tormentor, skipping not a beat.

"European," I said.

"Which tribe?" he asked, laughing.

"Many." I said.

He was all for putting down "don't know."

"I do know," I protested, "I am an American for at least nine generations in any direction you might choose to search. Why can't I just be an American?"

His look told me he'd taken my measure, and found it wanting. I was obviously some thinly-disguised skinhead fanatic John Bircher with a stock of burnable crosses out back. This would provide great amusement for some who've labeled me a "one worlder," and worse. Taken literally, I've yet to fathom the insult intended thereby.

"I don't mean it like that," I scrambled to recover.

"It's no big deal," he chided, "just pick a couple."

I settled on English and French for me, Belgian and Bohemian for my wife. From this he derived my son's ancestry as Belgian and French.

"More like Belgian and English, I think." England accounts for a plurality of my ancestors, about a quarter, with France a distant second down among the other Heinz varieties. My wife's probably as much Bohemian as Belgian, but the former has connotations unrelated to nationality for my mother. My imaginary coin fell on the Belgian side for her sake.

"Whatever," he said, but I noticed he didn't change it. I cared. I tried. If some distant descendant of my son's relies too heavily upon the 1990 census, however, she may find herself knocking about Belgium and France in search of Fulbrights unlikely to be discovered.

Anne clearly imagined Johann Wilhelm before exactly such an official, with a language barrier to boot. "Suppose the ship held 167 Palatines, and three each of a half-dozen other assorted Germans. Do you think they'd have split hairs? They could all have been Prussians and still end up "Palatines." Anne resisted designating J. Wilhelm as a Palatine: she was certain that Volbrecht was a name derived from Brandenburg or Prussia.

She'd never encountered the name Volprecht, but could think of more reasons than not that it would be a spelling variation of Volbrecht.

Circumstantial evidence leaned greatly toward confirming her guesses. Visits to the churches yielded nothing but a pleasant trip. Laughing at my "Plan B" to search phone books for concentrations of Volb/prechts, she provided a solution far better. A friend of hers at West German Social Security let me peek at their printouts, with the proviso that I take no notes and make no copies. I found not a single Volprecht on their comprehensive rolls. I found rather less in the way of Vol- or Voll- brechts than I'd have expected. Most of those had a notation Anne's friend explained as an indication they were transferees from East Germany.

"Brandenburg and Prussia are both in East Germany," Anne noted, pleased with prior deductions. I couldn't have disputed her if I'd tried. Back in those bad old days, no one in the German Democratic Republic would have been inclined to allow me the sort of access that Anne's friend had provided on the Federal side.

What's worse, I was reminded again of my failure at Rotterdam.

"It probably doesn't matter where the Volbrechts are today, anyway" said Anne. "I mean, where were the American Fulbrights 240 years ago?"

"Pennsylvania," I told her, though she obviously remembered this and was leading to yet another telling point.

"You grew up in Puerto Rico and New York. And your father lives in Texas, and his father died in Missouri, and his father died in California, didn't he? And somewhere in those nine generations, you've also got some Carolina and some Arkansas, don't you?" At the time, I wasn't even sure the flow had been that crooked, but sure enough, she had it right. She'd obviously been studying my notes.

"Europeans may not move as far, as fast, or as often, but in 240 years, they do move. For all you know, Johann Wilhelm has no records in Germany because he was born of German parents in Rotterdam. Or someplace now in Poland. Sure, his name may be German, and the odd spelling might help narrow it down... but alone that won't be enough to get you anywhere. You want to find not just any Volprecht: you are looking for a specific Volprecht who could have come from almost anywhere with reasonable access to Rotterdam.

"Let's just say he did come from Germa-ny. There are thousands of churches in Germany. You'd go crazy checking them all, even if you knew his records were in one of them Perhaps you've heard, also, there's been a bit of unpleasantness during your family's absence. Bombing, and all that. If there ever was a record, the church that held it may no longer stand.

"That, you see, is why you needed to start in Holland. The ship's captain might or not have cared where Johann Wilhelm came from. William Penn may not have been too picky about the specifics, either. Isn't it much more likely that somebody in Rotterdam wanted to know who he was, before he left? Crimes, debts, or taxes he was responsible for... there'd be no collecting once he set off for the New World. Rotterdam seems like the place to find that most important link in the chain to finding his ancestors: where he came from just before he got on the boat."

The logic, if not absolutely irrefutable, flowed nonetheless more than anything I'd formulated.

I still searched, admittedly now at random, but fairly extensively. Anyone I know who's ever searched family history has been amazed, at least once, by how easily and unexpectedly she or he found a given lead. Reading a Kentucky genealogi-cal society journal once, I came across a story which referred in passing to Abe Lincoln's visit in a small town there, long before he married or became presi-dent His date, for a local event, had a name which struck me for some reason. The Dallas Public Library kindly ran a search for me, and some days later I had two microfiche issues of the local newspaper at the time. The first mentioned Lincoln's visit in no particular context; the second contained an interview of the woman, recounting their brief acquaintance.

She of the vaguely-familiar name turned out to be my mother's great-grandmother. She'd trod an essentially uneventful path, and yet I had a wealth of information or her life and her line because, one time, she'd been escorted by a man who became famous.

Those unlikely, thunderbolt sort of discoveries occur often enough that you're subconsciously tempted to expect them, suppose. I had no such luck with my quest for Johann Wilhelm. I never even found a living Volprecht. I never even found a church with a previously unknown Volprecht or Volbrecht record predating his emigration. I found no German equivalent of a Ful-bright Society. So far as I found, no one of either spelling has reaped great fame or great infamy; not in war, science, art or commerce.

I have not yet returned to Rotterdam, but I strongly recommend it as a starting point to anyone wanting to research our European origins. Lest anyone think my failure to derive any hard information means future efforts would be wasted, however, let me disabuse you.

First, the paucity of easy leads is both a blessing and a curse. Better to struggle and find one Johann Wilhelm, than to find twenty and have no way of distin-guishing among them.

More importantly, anyone preferring to see Europe as a traveler (rater than a tourist) could hardly pick a better way to stumble into unique adventures than to make a search such as mine. I saw art and architecture, some great, some just inter-esting, which would never appear on any tour. I swapped stories with innkeepers, church sextons and record clerks from Dublin to Vienna, striking many a pleasant short-term acquaintance. I had the oppor-tunity to see each country from angles its trained guides and famous landmarks could never have revealed.

There is one postscript which I hesi-tate to pass along because, for reasons which will become apparent, I have no idea how much credence to give it.

I was fortunate enough to meet a histo-ry professor whose specialty was the era of Frederick II of Prussia. Known as the first "enlightened despot," Frederick the Great began sewing the seeds of a separate Germany the very same year that Johann Wilhelm arrived in Pennsylvania.

Hoping only to obtain a flavor of the time from the good professor. I was dumb-struck when he claimed some knowledge of the name Volprecht. "Absolutely," he said, "You won't find anything on them here, you know. They were _____" and he gave a noun or adjective I'm fairly sure meant Hugue-not. Brandenburg, along with Holland, was one of the principal places to which Huguenots fled after the Edict of Nantes was revoked.

Allow for the following as you see fit.

On a good day, I can say three consecu-tive phrases in German without stumbling. "Good morning. On which track will I find the train to Bremen? This is my luggage," forms a nice sample. I do understand better than I speak, but I still wish Anne had been nearby to translate. You should also know that one specific purpose of the party was for each to sample one another's home-made beer. I do not necessarily impugn my source's credibility, but I suspect he had offended none of the ama-teur brewmeisters by failing to partici-pate.

"Since Otto I, yes? His only means cementing the empire was to ally with Roman Church. You are not Catholic? You know of no Volprecht who was Catholic?"

I told him (as best I could in German, in places using English I can only hope he understood) that my Fulbright ancestors had been Protestant as far back as I knew.

"Ah, so." he said. "in the past that was not a change one made easily, in either direction. Your people left France to escape the law, but even in Brandenburg the law was not so much better. Vienna demanded that Jews and Protestants be strictly regulated."

He was shuffled off to fulfill other social obligations before I could find out why he seemed so sure we were French Protestants in transit. Did his hypothesis apply only to Volprechts, or to Volbrechts as well? Was he still as certain when the beer wore off? I had many such leftover questions, as you can imagine. When I called his office the following week, I was informed that he'd left for Indonesia. Anne and several others did agree, howev-er, that having been outside the fold of Roman Catholicism for any reason would have severely restricted the number of records our ancestor would have been allowed to create.

I hesitate to pass this on, as I say, because it is so frail a clue. These things tend to take on a life of their own: I was once quoted chapter and verse from a book which placed our family origin in England, and even gave something like Feolbercht as our Anglo-Saxon name. Still, I found the professor's theory interest-ing, so I send it through for that reason only.

I would love to hear the tales of other would-be searchers, past and future.