John Netherland, Sr.

Debbie Gambrell

12/28/2022 at 5:38 PM

I noticed the Star of David on the profile and am wondering if anyone has info about this family's Jewish lineage.

Thanks in advance for any additional information.

Private User

12/28/2022 at 6:26 PM

Hi, Debbie,

If I'm following the trail correctly, it looks like someone with mixed Jewish and Christian ancestry created a family tree on JewishGen, then it got exported to MyHeritage, and then someone there attached an Israeli flag to that one profile for some reason, even though it's from the Christian side of their family.

Leon Hühner's history of Virginia's early Jewish community doesn't include anyone named Netherland, so that would add to argument that it's just a simple mistake.

Mike Stangel, I wonder if there's a technical solution here -- if an image on a SmartMatch is misleading/wrong, is there a way it can be suppressed?

Private User

12/28/2022 at 6:32 PM

Digging back further...the original source used seems to be a now-dead Geocities website that's partially archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20110119051428/http://reocities.com:80/... (all the links are dead). That site says the Netherland family was "[s]trongly English."

It looks like WikiTree saved some of the family line from that site before it died...here's their entry for John's father: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Netherland-9

So yeah, the Israeli flag looks like it was just a red herring.

Erica Howton C

12/28/2022 at 7:11 PM

Interesting history of a flag icon, thank you.

I reattached the rest of his mother, Frances Drew from where she had diverged, and add more references.

Debbie Gambrell

12/28/2022 at 7:49 PM

Thanks for the background on how that came to be attached to this family, Ashley. I knew I'd never seen anything indicating Jewish ancestry in my own research on the Netherland family.

Thanks also, Erica, for the additional work on his mother.

Lucinda Campbell Russell

12/29/2022 at 4:41 AM

Whilst we are on the subject of flags, I frequently see modern day flags shown with the profiles of early colonial ancestors. I find this somewhat damaging to the credibility of the rest of the information. For example, just yesterday, on profiles of the Trezevant and Timothee' families of Charleston, SC, there was displayed the tricolore of France, which was first adopted in 1794, about a century after those families arrived in Colonial America. In fact, it is the 1974 version which is actually shown. Their flag would have been the Bourbon white banner with fleur de lis. This also happens when the modern day British flag is shown, in place of the one which was in use at the time the immigrants arrived. I am sure this must be true of other countries of origin as well.

Erica Howton C

12/29/2022 at 4:54 AM

Feel free to upload more appropriate images. It would help.

Lucinda Campbell Russell

12/30/2022 at 2:31 AM

Thanks. Good idea.

John Netherland, Sr. - Jewish?

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