At the moment there isn't a huge amount of history to write. There is much speculation about where the name originates from. The family rumour that I heard said that the Meddemmens were French aristocrats involved in the lace trade. They came to England to escape the excesses of the French Revolution.
Other suggestions are that the name is of Scandinavian origin or that they were Polish Jews. Until someone comes up with something definative you can take your pick. If you know better then please let me know. The whole point of starting a Meddemmen Web-Site is to make it easier for anyone who is interested to find the answers.
From Leanne: I could be wrong but I heard 16th century Belgium (origin) and some thing about Huguenots in the history, a great-grandmother sewing lace on Queen Victoria's undies (knickers for you I think!)
From Jeffrey: By th way I have recently heard a theory as the origin of the Meddmmen name. I had long known that the Meddemmen family originated from Sweden, but I recently discovered by messing about with my mobile one day, and changing the language to Swedish that the Swedish word for message is Meddelaiden, so perhaps Meddemmen has something to do with Messengers...
From Derek Meddeman (April 2003): May be of interest but according to FamilySearch there was a Heirich Meddeman married to Elisabeth Rothe on 30 Jan 1587 at St Michael, Zeitz, Sachesen, Preussen. This is now Germany. Don't know if anyone has further information on this.
I had no idea that there were so many Meddemmens out there until I put my family tree on my personal web-site. However, as this is now seriously out of date and needs a major re-write, I've deleted the link for now.
I was then emailed by a couple of "Medds" from different parts of Australia. Thanks to Ainslie in particular for providing a lot of the information from her side of the family. It was at this point that I first heard about the "Fishes" and the "Silks". It would seem that one branch of the family devoted themselves to dealing in fish, while the other side specialised in clothing and, presumably, silk. I, it would seem, am a Silk, while Ainslie is a Fish.
What I have tried to do is amalgamate both the Silks and the Fishes into one family tree. It is far too big and unwieldy for my other web site and much of the information is of little interest to the Roses, Trivetts, Kiplings and Tommases who lurk in obscure corners of the Rose tree. So far it seems that we all stem from one common ancestor, William Meddemmen, who was born probably in the late 1790's. According to my family he was a weaver by trade.
One thing that is very clear from the family tree is that there are a lot of them about, even now - 358 individuals so far, including those who "married in". I think old William Meddemmen would have been impressed.
I have standardised the spelling of "Meddemmen" on this site, notwithstanding the many and various spellings found during my researches. Whether that is right or wrong is another matter.
If you know something about the Meddemmens, don't keep it to yourself.Tell me and I'll put the information on this site. Nothing too sleazy please!
You will see on the Nav Bar a button marked Contacts. The idea is to list email addresses (and web sites if you have one) so that you can be contacted by those you didn't know about. However, not everyone wants their email address broadcast to the world so it doesn't go on there unless you specifically ask me to do it.
Finally, if anyone wants to try it in their own family tree software I can email the gedcom file. It was 41 Kb when I last looked.
