This is my family's surname origin in France. If you think we are connected, contact me directly (
isaacs@whitemtnd.com)
Renea Isaacs
The family name has been spelled many different ways; among them being:
ISAACK, ISAAK, ISAAC, ISAACS, IZAAC, ISAAK, ISACKS, & IZAK
Even among the immediate family members of the same family, different spellings are found.
On the original passport of Baltasar Isaacs, he signed his name as ISAAK, but the official who filled it out spelled the name ISAACKS. In Baltasar's naturalization papers the name is spelled ISAACS. Anton Isaacs, who immigrated to the United States with Baltasar, raised two sons. The one who lived in Oklahoma spells it ISAACS, and the one who lived in Stacyville, Iowa spelled it ISAAC.
The youngest brother of Baltasar, Edouard, made a visit to the ancestral home in Urmatt, France, after World War I. From the original records, he found that the name was spelled IZAC. As the family had been French for many generations, this spelling is probably correct since the suffix "ZAC" is typically French and is found in many French family names.
Tradition has it that the family originally came to Urmatt from somewhere in the East some six centuries ago and were probably of Jewish Origin. As the family lived in Alsace, which is on the great crossroads of Europe, and where migrations were more frequent than in most parts of Europe, there must have been many different racial infiltrations, although most were Teutonic and Gallic French.
Apparently the family was above the ordinary peasant class, since they were artisans as well as comparatively large land holders. That the family was rather among the better class can be inferred from the fact that Michel III married the daughter of Schuler, the Burgomaster , or Mayor of a town.
Edouard found that all the statistical records of Urmatt, both civil and religious, were destroyed during the French Revolution. The civil records at the Mayor's office in Urmatt begin in 1792, the first year of the First French Republic. The religious records , kept by the cure' of the Catholic church in Urmatt begin in 1803. From a diligent and careful search of the deaths and births in both civil and religious records by Edouard Izak after WWI, the first authentic record is that of MICHEL ISAACS whose death was recorded as December 4, 1815. This Michel was born in 1758 and was the son of another MICHEL ISAACS , (who may be designated as Michel I) who would be the earliest ancestor known at the time of this writing of the ISAACS family. It could not be determined if there were other children, other than the son, Michel III , who was born in 1758. Michel II married Francoise Urober in about 1780. They had at least one child, Jeanne, born in 1784 and who evidently never married and who died in 1820. Francoise must have died shortly before the Revolution because the next birth record in the civil records of 1792 show a daughter, Anna Marie, born May 27, 1793 to Michel Isaacs II and his wife Margarita Schach. Other births to this Michel II and Margarita were Catherine, born 1795 and died 1896; Margarita, born 1800 but no further record; Michel III, born December 11, 1802---the only son who grew to manhood; Nuola, born 1805, died young; and another daughter born 1807.
Michel III married Francoise Schuler on November 22, 1825. The
following children were born to them: Michel IV, 1826; Francoise, 1827;
Joseph, 1832; Louisa, 1835;Anto;n, 1837; Clara, 1839; and Baltasar,
February 7, 1841 at eleven a.m.
Francoise died shorty after the birth of Baltasar and Michael III
married a second time. This wife brought up the family. Michel III
died in 1861 or 1862. Of the children of Michael III, Michel IV, the
oldest, always lived in Urmatt, although he served three enlistments in
the French Army in what was then called a "sapper and miner regiment"
but now called engineers. He served during the Crimean War and Austro
Italian War and participated in the siege of Sebastabul and in the
battles of Magenta and Salvarina in Italy. He also was in the French
Army that occupied Rome.
Michel IV had at least three children. Florenze, who after Germany
annexed Alsace in 1871, fled to Franch to escape German military
service. He served three enlistments in the French Foreign Legion, but
later returned to Urmatt and served his time in the German Army as an
orderly to a German Colonel. He later married and had a family and was
reported to have gone to America but no further knowledge of them are
known.
The second boy of Michel IV, Bernard, came to America in 1889 and
started back to France in 1893, but died in Chicago. The third child,a
daughter named Rosalia, married a Joseph Deschler and was given the
family home which subsequently was occupied
by her sons, Joseph and Louis. They wrote a letter received in June
1946 that this ancestral home was not damaged in World War II.
Of the other children of Michel III, Francoise was the first of the
family to come to the United States. She married a Swiss name Jung and
lived in Dubuque, Iowa and later in different places in Minnesota and
finally in West Union, Iowa where she died in 1887. Joseph died
comparatively young. Louis had the same military service as his brother
Michael IV and also married after his terms of service; however, he had
contracted tuberculosis of which both he and his wife died, leaving a
boy and a girl who later were raised by Clara in Paris. Although both
grew to maturity, we have no further record of them. Both were living
in Paris after World War I. Louisa came to America in 1864. Anton came
to Americas in 1871. Both located in Stacyville, Iowa. Clara became a
num with a teaching order whose mother house was in Paris. She was
there during the siege of Paris and the troublesome times that
followed. The order was dissolved by Pope Pius IX and she became a
governess in a wealthy royalist family. She had considerable wealth but
lost most of it by investments in Czarist Russian bonds and bonds of
DeLesseps Panama Canal -- all of which became worthless. She died in
Paris a few years after World War I.