7/13/2009 -- I uploaded an updated set of Family Group Sheets (accessed through the link above). As usual, no sooner than I had them all up, I realized there was a mistake on one family and I had an email with additional information in my mailbox. There have been so many wonderful vital records databases uploaded with information about Vantines that I can hardly keep up. The latest one is through the State Library of Michigan with copies of death certificates from 1897 to 1920 (still being completed). Good luck in all your research. Regards, Carol Van Tine Yocom
12/16/2008 courtesy of Peter Romanskiewicz we have a link to A Little Journey to Vantine's on the Gotheborg.com Antique Chinese and Japanese Porcelain site.
Contact me: cyocom@earthlink.net But The Name's Spelled Wrong!
What has this to do with the Vantine (Van Tine, Van Tyne, etc.) family, you are certainly asking. The legal language of New Amsterdam was Dutch, but most people were illiterate in any language. Henry Fiske says in his Dutch and Quaker Colonies that there were at least 26 languages being spoken in a town with only about four thousand inhabitants. I have never found proof that Charles Fonteyn could read or write either French or Dutch, the one signature existing being his mark "X" only. Throughout these records, wild variations in spelling the name Fonteyn are evident.
As Rosalie Fellows Bailey remarks in "Dutch Naming Systems": "In the seventeenth century, it was the custom of Dutch magistrates and scribes to translate foreign names into what they believed to be equivalent Dutch names and so enter them on the court records or other series of records kept in that language.... If the foreign name was difficult to translate, the seventeenth century Dutch magistrate or scribe usually entered a phonetic approximation. Such might take the form of a Dutch name similar in sound to the foreign name, but often quite different in meaning; or the foreign name might merely be spelled phonetically by translating the sound of the name in letters as the Dutch pronounced their letters."
Through my years of research on this family, I have discovered that the change from Fonteyn to Vantine follows many different paths. In the following chart, there are a few listed:
| Fontaine | ||
| Fonteyn | Vontine | Vantine |
| Ffontaine | Vonteyn | Vantyne |
| Fantine | Fontime | Van Tine |
| Fountin | Van Tyne | |
| Fontijn | Phantine | Tine |
| Fanton | Tyne |
To further complicate matters, the name is frequently misspelled. Valentine, Vandine, Van Dyne, Van Line, or Van Fine are some of the many variations. It can be confused
with the "real" Dutch names of Van Tyn and Van Tien. Given names suffered similar mistreatment
as evidenced by the name Jacques Fonteyn. In the late 1780's, a perplexed
tax enumerator in Adams County, Pennsylvania, scratched his head and
gave it his best effort and listed Zwacks Vantine as a taxable male
head of household.
Rosalie Fellows Bailey also came to the same conclusion, "The
Van Tyne or Vantine family of central New Jersey has a misleadingly
Dutch connotation since the family is of French origin." As late
as 1814, I have clear evidence that the family continued to use both
variations of the name. The documents that I have which were signed
by Cornelius Vantine to receive his War of 1812 land grant are clearly
signed Cornelius Fantine in two separate places (I believe this to
be John Vantine's, my third great grandfather's, brother--but no proof).
The early tax and church records of Dutchess County use many variations
of Fonteyn/Vantine.
The only clear exception is William Vantine who always seems to be
Vantine. Since his father William Fonteyn, who married Kniertje Wiltsie
29 Nov 1741, died shortly after William (son) was born, I feel certain
that this steadfast spelling can be attributed to his mother's second
husband, Koenradt Applie, a literate Swiss-German.
