Family history and name origins.?

Question

Fedewa, or Vedua, or de Vedua...

Where does this family orignate from. One source claims one, so possibly all his ancestors, were born in Tiranoo, Lombardy. Oddly enough though, I was always led to believe the family came from the German village of Lagenford, which is what we thought before finding new information. Apparently the name Fedewa, was not only Vedua at one point but was also de Vedua based on the earliest source I can find. What confuses me is the French sound to the name, and the fact that all of these men had blatantly German names like Jacob and Anton.



The name changed from de Vedua to Vedua sometime around 1720 apparentyly. It than changed to Fedewa sometime around the 1850's following immigration to America. Does anyone know any information about any of the three versions of the surname I listed.

I kind of think they may have been part of Wallenstein's mercenary army, or the Spanish Hapsburg army during the thirty years war. I'd like any information you may have in order to see if this has any possiblitiy of being right.

Answer 1

Hey 29 Characters,

The Family Search has a about 104 Fedewa entries. Some are from Germany 1795ish, and there are Pedigree files, that can be ordered on CD from the LDS. then Vedua has entries also in LDS and that turns up some "de Vedua" entries also. Again, more pedigree files and one about 1700. Germany again too.

A name like this can come from many places, at it indicates, Phillipines, Italy and Mexico - and a long time ago too. So, one thing that other surname groups do is DNA testing to show which of todays ancestors are distantly related, and if there are more than one source for the family name. This happens all the time, so, you just have to admit the name is not unique to a country.

There is no project currently for these names, but you can start one. This may not be a good alternative for you. You might just want to trace the surname back from you, your father, grandfather, ggfather, etc until you see where it came from.