There are indications that our family can be traced far beyond the middle of the sixteenth century. While those connections are still being researched, we are relatively certain, as certain as any historian or genealogist can be, of our connections to various families in Europe beginning as far back as 1563.

It was in this year, amidst the turmoil of war between Denmark and Sweden, we find the first record, a death record, of an early ancestor named Johan BURDICK in the Rhine area of Germany . Nowhere else is this spelling found, although some genealogists insist the name BURDICK can be traced back to BURDETT in England as early as 1650 , however, no definitive link has been made.

Further research, however, uncovers some interesting facts. BURDICK seems to be what many call, ?a good old German name?. Bur, it can be noted, is a dialect spoken in the Rhine area. BURDICK is derived from the words ?bur? which means ?Bauer? or farmer in English. (In Dutch it is the word ?boer? and both words mean and sound similar.
"Bur"is spoken like "poor" with a "b"= "boor". ?Dick? is the old word for Dieck, Deich, and Teich which in English means pond. It is interesting, that in the Low-German dialect "u" changes to an "i", too. ("Biur" or "Biuer"; you will have the exact pronounciation, if you speak "be you" as quick as possible ="Beyou-rr-dick"). This only word can be written in High German in four variants: "BURDICK", "Burdiek";"Baurdick"; "Bauerdick"- re-translated in Low German these surnames sounds always like "Beyour-rr-dick". That was the reason, that "BURDICK" changed to "Bauerdick" before 1700. The first school in the Enkhausen-parish opened 1658, the following generations were no illiterates any more and were able to write their names. They took one of this four variants and never changed it again. .

So BURDICK means ?farmer near the pond?. In some cases you will find the word ?dick? used with Dickicht which is a break or thicket in English, so it may also be translated as ?farmer near the thicker? or farmer at the break?
According to available records, the farm of the first German BURDICK in 1563 was the former manor of the "von Hoevel"-family.

The record of Josef Bauerdick?s ancestry is taken directly from available primary source materials so that there is documentation to substantiate the claim of a Johann BURDICK in Hove before 1540 and after 1563.

A more recent connection to the BURDICK family name in Germany appears on maps of D?lmen, Westfalia, north of the Rhur area and southwest of M?nster and again in Jahrsdorf/ Holstein north of Hamburg. These two cities have streets with the name ?Am Burdiek?. Joseph BAUERDICK wrote to the Mayor of D?lmen and he replied with information gleaned from the town achieves. According to this letter, Am Burdiek takes its name from and old pond which belonged to a nearby farm called the D?veling-Farm. First mentioned in 1324, the farm was sold to the German government who built barracks there in 1956. There is an old myth about this ?D?velings Diek? or ?Burdiek? that says that the devil was sitting on the ground of this pond and rings a sunken church bell if someone throws a new coin into the water. The local dialect uses ?Duivel, or D?vel for devil so we can see that this is a probable recreation of local mythology.

Given all this information can we connect to one of these early BURDICK families? Certainly!

We know, for example that the name BURDICK is ?100% German? as evidenced by the ethnographic linguistics of the name itself. The scientific study of how words are formed gives us the linguistic roots of this surname. We can also assume with some degree of validity that one or more BURDICKs relocated to England after about 1588 or 1589 when the Leicester army returned to England. The fact that the name BURDICK with the same spelling simply appears on tax records in Exeter in 1641 is interesting to say the least. With many birth, death and marriage records, as well as church records from this time still available and with more being digitized daily, it is a striking omission of this name with this spelling that draws attention to this particular family.

Until we find other documentation or evidence that is contrary to what we have thus far uncovered, we will, for the purposes of this research endeavor, accept that our earliest BURDICK relation came from Germany and migrated to England and that our Robert BURDICK of Rhode Island is, by virtue to comparable dates and name spelling variation, a descendent of these two BURDICKs.

---Thanks to the research efforts of Josef Bauerdick and J.Alan Burdick