GERMANNA History Notes Page #058

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This is the FIFTY-EIGHTH page of John BLANKENBAKER's series of Short Notes on GERMANNA History, which were originally posted to the GERMANNA_COLONIES Discussion List.  Each page contains 25 Notes.

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This Page Contains Notes 1426 through 1450.

GERMANNA History Notes
Page 58

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Nr. 1426:

Let us take a look at some folders of Northern Neck warrants and surveys in Culpeper County.  I�ll take these from volume 3 of Peggy Shomo Joyner�s books on Northern Neck Warrants & Surveys.  Forgive me if I emphasize in the selection those that pertain to people with whom I am acquainted.

There are two separate documents on which this is based:  The Warrant and the Survey, with the two dates shown.  Peggy Joyner reports the two as one single entry.  Sometimes the information does not agree in the two documents, and she informs the reader when this is the case.  Looking at Michael�s case above, Lawrence Garr married Michael�s sister, Dorothy.  Jacob and Zachary were brothers of Michael.  The three people assisting Michael and the surveyor are two brothers and a brother-in-law.  Now, this is an extreme case of using relatives to do the dirty work.  Zachary, as a marker, had the task of building monuments or signing trees to mark the course and corners of the plot.

  • �Adam Broyle, assignee of George Moyer;
  • 10 Mar. 1753 - 10 Apr. 1753;
  • 375 a. on Island Run, now called White Oak Run;
  • adj. his (Moyer�s) own land where he lives & patented 24 Jun 1726, Adam Yager, Michael Kafer, Christopher Moyer.  [The last three names are more neighbors.]
  • CC - George Holt & Adam Wilhite.
  • Surv. - Philip Clayton.�

In the above folder are included the results of a Chancery Cause between Adam Broyle/Broil, Complainant, vs. George Moyer, Defendant.  The above land was awarded to Broyle, 6 Aug. 1754, by the Culpeper Court.  Wit. Robert Cobman and Wm. Brown.  Roger Dixon, Clerk.

This shows that, in addition to the actual Warrant and Survey, the folder also may contain other relevant documents.  In this case, there are aspects that not easily understood.  Why did Moyer assign to Broyle before the court case was decided?  I am making the following assumption:  George Moyer had paid for the warrant on 375 acres of land.  Adam Broyle believed that he had a prior claim.  He brought suit.  Before the suit was decided formally, Moyer assigned the warrant to Broyle, who had the land surveyed.  Later, the court case confirmed these actions.  [If anyone can correct me, please do so.]

Whether there were any relationships between the people is hard for me to say, as there were two Broyles in Culpeper Co. at the time.  We would be looking for a relationship between Adam Broyle/Broil and George Holt, and a relationship between Adam Broyle/Broil and Adam Wilhite.  George Holt was the son of Michael Holt and Elizabeth Scheible.  George Holt is said to have married Mary Magdalena, the widow of John Caspar Stoever, Sr.  He (George Holt) would not "seem" to have a relationship to Adam Broyle/Broil.
(08 Jul 02)

[For all data on Surveys and Warrants:
        a. = acres
     adj. = adjacent (other property adjacent to the land in the Survey or Warrant;
                             shows names of "neighbors")
     CC = Chain Carrier (person who carried the "chain" to measure the land)
  Surv. = Surveyor
]



Nr. 1427:

In choosing the Warrants and Surveys from the Northern Neck to lay before you, I am guided by the desire to illustrate different events.  The case of John Button serves this purpose well.

  • �John Button, no warrant,
  • surveyed 18 Apr 1752;
  • warrant was issued to Richard Jones, surveyed for Button;
  • 472 acres in Little Fork of Rappahannock River;
  • adjacent Samuel Scot, Coll; Fairfax or Mr. Carlile, Green, Richard Jones (now Capt. Cave�s), John Grant, decd.
  • CC - Edmond Brouning & Samuel Scott.
  • Surveyor - George Hume.�

The Warrant, which had to exist at one time, was lost.  Apparently, Richard Jones had paid the fees, and than had sold (assigned) the warrant to John Button.  This was not an unusual procedure.  Normally, one would expect some evidence that the Warrant had been assigned to Button, but it could have been a signed statement on the back of the Warrant.  The assignment of Warrants to another was a common event.  In the following item, there are peculiar features.

  • �Nancy Cheek, assignee of Judith Cheek, assignee of Joseph Clemmons (for whom surveyed);
  • 13 May 1762 - 18 Mar 1763;
  • 100 acres at foot of  blew Ridge on S. side the N. prong of Indian R.
  • CC - Martin Pugett & Joseph Clemmons.
  • Surveyor - Richard Young.�
  • [Other papers in the file read,]
  • �21 June 1776 - Caveat entered by Judith Cheek of Dunmore Co., who informs she purchased this land of Joseph Clemmons ca. 9 years ago.
  • 10 Aug 1778 - Came George Robarts, Martin Fugit & Edward Collins worth before R. Eastham, JP, & made oath that Judith Cheek hath to the best of their knowledge paid Joseph Clemmons for this land & deed should issue to her.
  • 26 Aug 1778 - I request a deed issue to Nancy Cheek of Shannandoah Co.
  • (Signed)
  • Judith (X) Cheek.�

Apparently, in spite of the survey being completed 18 Mar 1763, no deed had issued by 21 June, 1776, when to overcome any doubts about the ownership, Judith filed a statement, and had friends and neighbors also swear to her purchase of the land.  The deed was issued to Nancy Cheek, who was the assignee of Judith Creek.

Quickly, a routine one,

  • �John Clore, Junior, assignee (in 1777) of John Stansifer;
  • 6 Dec 1769 - 12 Apr 1770;
  • 22 acres on S. side of drs. of Pass Run or Strother�s Run & N. side of the doubletop Mt.;
  • adj. Dr. Wallace, decd.
  • CC - Michael Clore & John Clore, Junior.
  • Surveyor - Richard Young.�

John Stonecipher married the sister of John Clore, Jr.  Probably, Michael Clore was the brother of John Clore.  This one was family all the way.
(09 Jul 02)



Nr. 1428:

The application procedure for land in the Northern Neck often disclosed a complicated process by which the land ended in the hands of the final grant holder.  (On the lands of the Crown, we do not have this history.)  Take this grant:

  • �Christopher Crigler, assignee (in 1765) of George Rootes;
  • 6 July 1763 - resurveyed 22 Aug 1763;
  • 422 acres formerly granted to Thomas Dimack 13 Oct 1727, which appears to have been lapsed by the General Court of this Colony in 1732
    [failure to make the necessary improvements or to settle people on the land].
  • Application was made by John Stubblefield who sold before he obtained a patent to Mr. Philip Rootes, deceased.
  • Rootes devised it by will to his son George Rootes, the now petitioner;
  • adj. Thomas Phillips (now Roote�s), Benjamin Smith, a line reported to be Henry Down�s but no line or corner found, Lewis Fisher (now Adam Fisher�s).
  • CC - William Chapman & Christopher Crigler.
  • Surv. Richard Young.�

I have cited the followed one before because of the names in it, which, so far as I know, occur hardly anywhere else in the Robinson River Valley.

  • �Deobald Cristler, assignee of Christian Tivall;
  • 12 May 1752 - 17 mar 1752/53;
  • 62 acres on branches of Robinson R.;
  • adj. his own land, Michael Smith, Andrew Gar.
  • CC - Lawrence Gar & Henry Tivall.
  • Surv. George Hume.�

Nothing complicated, but who are these Tivalls?  Another one reads,

  • �Henry Ealer [Aylor surely], 26 Feb 1776 - resurveyed 10 Apr 1776;
  • 422 acres on Deep Run in the Great Fork of Rappa. being the same land granted to Joseph Bloodworth by King�s Pat[ent];
  • adj. James Newman & said Ealer.
  • CC - Thomas Chissel & Tivolt Fife.
  • Surveyor George Hume.
  • NB - This land first taken up by Joseph Bloodworth who conveyed to Roan who conveyed to Thomas Newman & Thomas Porter who conveyed to Ealer.�

For a few, it is not so obvious what they are saying,

  • �Adam Fisher, assignee of Lewis Fisher;
  • no warrant, date from survey, 4 June 1763 - resurveyed 30 Nov 1764;
  • 238 a. - the remainder of a former survey made for Lewis Fisher excluding a patent granted to Thomas Dimmack in 1727 for 500 a. in Spotsylvania (now Culpeper) & by Lewis Fisher�s request is now returned in his son Adam Fisher�s name;
  • on N. side of Round Hill Ridge;
  • adj. Paul Planeanpetler (now Lewis Fisher�s), Dimmick.
  • CC - Michael Planeanpetler & Adam Fisher.
  • Surveyor Richard Young.�

    [Adam Fisher�s mother was Anna Barbara Blankenbaker.]

(10 Jul 02)



Nr. 1429:

Sometimes the story told in the Warrants and Surveys (a part of the Northern Neck land granting process) is not easy to understand.  When Craig Kilby is confused, or does not understand what is said in the warrant and surveys, the rest of us are in trouble.

In his response to my last note, he mentioned a name which I do not remember ever hearing or seeing before.

Craig wrote,

". . . adjacent Conrad Amberger in John Fink's line (Orange Co. DB 1, pp. 258-262)."  [He added also this came from a 1736 deed.]

Usually, the Germanna history does not have a John Finks in this time period.  The story is that Mark Finks came alone to the Robinson River Valley in the early 1730s.  By 1734 he was a member of the first Grand Jury impaneled in Orange Co. (along with William Carpenter and George Utz).  About this time, Mark Finks married, so he would not have any grown children, until at least into the later 1740s.

Now, the 1739 tithables list for Orange Co. shows two tithables for Mark Finks, who was never a slave holder.  This second tithable, another white male, over the age of 16, has been an unknown.  I have previously interpreted this as a younger brother of Mark Finks who left few records.

A book of Wayman genealogy says that Zacharias Blankenbaker (son of John Nicholas) married a widow, Alcy, who had been married to a Finks.  She had two daughters before 1750.  She married Zacharias about 1749.  (Alcy's maiden name is unknown.)  I have tentatively assigned this younger brother of Mark Finks as the Finks who married her.  Apparently, there was a John Finks in the community in 1736, a man old enough to own property.  I have no explanation as to why John Finks was not listed as a separate individual in the 1739 tithe list.

When the family of Zacharias Blankenbaker was listed in the Baptismal Register down at the church, his two step daughters were not given.  These girls interacted with Zacharias' children at the baptisms of all of the children of Alcy.  In this regard it is impossible to tell there was any difference in their parentage.

Alcy's two daughters, POSSIBLY surnamed Finks, were Elizabeth, who married Peter Broyles, and Mary Magdalena, who married Henry Wayman.

Incidentally, Zacharias was born in 1715, in Germany, and if he was not married until about 1749, then he was 34 years old.  For this reason, I have wondered if there were an earlier marriage, but there is no evidence of children.  Then, again, the Blankenbaker men were shy and may it have taken him that long to learn how to speak to a woman.
(11 Jul 02)



Nr. 1430:

I continue with a few more selections from the Warrants and Surveys.

  • �Henry Huffman/Hoffman, 10 Sept 1766 - 10 Oct 1766;
  • 369 a. to include his patent [from the Crown] with this entry in one deed; resurveyed a parcel of land for Huffman being part of a greater tract granted to William Deatherage 10 Jan 1735 & a part sold to Huffman 24 Mar 1747 (recorded in Culpeper Court), plus 41 a. waste & ungranted land;
  • adj. William Tapp, Williss br., Deatherage (now Huffman�s), Frederick Fishback, Fitzhugh�s old field, & a poison field.
  • CC - Herman and Joseph Huffman,
  • Pilot - Frederick Fishback.
  • Surv. Richard Young.�

This is the �other� Henry Huffman, the one that is not a brother of the 1714 John Huffman.  Notice that the land (in the Little Fork), which sold in 1747, was not recorded until after Culpeper County was formed in 1748.  The poison field that is mentioned was the result of Indians burning the trees and grass in an area to allow a better crop of grass to grow.  This attracted the deer.

John Huffman had a survey 27 Apr 1752 for 3,525 acres (this was in the Robinson River Valley on Deep Run).  (He had been accumulating land since 1728.)  On the reverse of the survey notes, it says, �to be drawn & sent to Jacob Holtzclaw.�  I have always wondered why John wanted Jacob to see it.  Was this a case of �kick the tires and slam the door�?

Picking another name at random,

  • �Adam Kilby, 16 Mar 1776 - 9 Apr 1776;
  • 42 a. in the Great Fork ca. two miles from Hazel River;
  • adj. John Kilby, decd., himself, John Vawter, William Thompson, Jno. Reynolds.
  • CC - Jno. Kilby & Jonathon Wall.
  • Surv. George Hume.�

The previous did not say, but it was probably waste land, meaning land never before patented or granted.

Here is another Little Fork Warrant & Survey,

  • �Jacob Nay of Orange; no warrant, date from survey, 10 Jan 1748 - 24 Jan 1748;
  • 146 acres on br. of Negro Run;
  • adj. William Harris, Charles Dewit, Otterback, Button.
  • CC - Harman Miller & Joseph Conts.
  • Surv. John Bayliss.�

After the surveyor had surveyed a plot for Henry Otterback & John Button in 1748, Jacob Nay, 16 years old, an orphan, claimed 100 acres within the survey, which had been bought by his Mother of Cha: Dewit.

  • �By Jacob Houlsclaw I am informed Nae has got 140 a. & is satisfied.  Draw deed as surveyed.�
(12 Jul 02)



Nr. 1431:

I still have some more Warrants and Surveys that I want to give, but I have failed to bring you up to date on the latest issue of Beyond Germanna, which has been out for almost two weeks.  It was actually mailed early to be sure it would beat the price increase in postage.  Postage is now up to sixty cents to mail one issue in an envelope.  This is two ounces but it permits heavier paper and more pages.  The issue had a "first", it contained twelve pages, not the customary ten.

The lead article was by Elizabeth Yates Johnson, who will be more easily recognized as Betty Johnson or just Betty.  In her article, with no less than 40 references, she shows that the son John of Michael Yager was NOT the Piney Woods John.  She has real clinchers for the proof, even though she adds a lot of circumstantial evidence.

Most of us have heard of the Zollikoffer appeal in Europe on behalf of the Germanna colonists.  And many of are aware of the appeal to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), even though it was of dubious origin or authorship.  Andreas Mielke found abut nine documents that bear on the appeal, and he is still looking.  What is most important, he found a printed version of the actual petition signed by Rev. Haeger and two elders of the Reformed Church in Virginia.  It bears no resemblance to the SPG petition.  He translated this appeal and a copy of the printed appeal, and the translation are included in the issue.

We decided to print the petition and include the translation by him to distribute gratis to the attendees at the Germanna Reunion who want to have it.  Look for it at the Beyond Germanna vendor's table.

The July issue was rounded with two pages of photos that Eleanor and I took in Germany.  I printed these two pages on my own printer so there was no copying of the first version.  It improves the resultant photos and the comments have been good.  The photos concentrate on Falkenstein and on Klings.

I will be taking some color photographs to the Reunion which are 11 by 17 inches and laminated.  These cost me a nice little hunk of change, so I will have to charge for them.  I will be bringing photos of the village of Falkenstein (Yagers), of the village of Neuenbuerg (Blankenbaker, Schluchter, Thomas, Scheible, and Fleshman), of Klings (Fleshman), of Plankenbuechler Gasse (Blankenbaker), of Eisern (Hoffman, Railsback, Stonecipher), of Muesen (Kemper, Brombach, Martin, Weaver), and of Trupbach (Otterbachs, Rectors, Fishbacks).  I will say that they are fairly nice.  Several of them duplicate the photos that Sgt. George has put on the web page.  Now you can hang them on your wall or eat on them or catch the oil drippings from your car.
(13 Jul 02)



Nr. 1432:

The Warrants and Surveys for the Northern Neck Grants have some surprises in them.  I am going to return to a thread that I started earlier.  Let me start by citing this one:

  • "Debold Christler, assignee of Christian Tivall, assignee of Andrew Garr 02 Oct 1751 � 06 Jun 1752;
  • south side of South Fork of Shannandoah River
  • adjacent Zachory and Micall Blancumbaker.
  • Chain Carrier: Lawrence Garr,
  • Peter Cree."
    "Above was a warrant to And. Garr and given to his son-in-law Christian Tival. Surveyed for C. Tival of Culpeper Co."

Andrew Garr had two daughters, that we know of, in America; Rosina, who married Theobald Christler, and Elizabeth Barbara Garr, who married Michael Blankenbaker.  Apparently, he had another daughter who was born in America.  Is this possible?  Eva Seidelmann Garr, wife of Andrew Garr, was born in 1689.  They came to America in 1732, and letters written to Germany at the end of the year do not mention another member of the family.  They do mention that a daughter, besides the two above who came with them, had died in Pennsylvania.  In 1733, Eva would have been 44 years old.  It is possible that she had another child.

I have to assume this child married Christian "Tivall".  In 1751, Andrew Garr had a warrant for land in the Shenandoah Valley.  If we assume that this unnamed daughter was still living then when Andrew Garr assigned the warrant to Christian, she might have been about 18 years old.  So far, there is nothing impossible in the story.  Christian Tivall had the property surveyed in 1752.  His wife, the daughter of Andrew Garr, died about this time and Christian felt badly about taking the land from Andrew.  I would assume that, if there had been children of Christian and the unnamed Garr daughter, Christian would have kept the land in trust for the heir.  Instead, Christian assigned his rights to another son-in-law of Andrew Garr, namely, Theobald Christler.  The word "assigned" could be interpreted as either a gift or a sale.

The name Tivall is reinforced as connected with the Gaar/Garr family by another Warrant & Survey.

  • "Lawrence Garr of Culpeper, 4 Jan 1749/50, 3 Feb 1750,
  • on South Fork Shannondoah.
  • Chain carriers: Tivall & Zacharias Blancumbaker."

I do think the surveyor was confused when he wrote up the survey results.  He implied there was a Tivall Blancumbaker but a more correct reading would probably be "XYZ" Tivall where XYZ was most likely Christian.  I will add some more to these thoughts in the following notes.
(18 Jul 02)



Nr. 1433:

Another warrant and survey also shows the name of Tivall,

  • "Deobald Cristler, assignee of Christian Tivall; 12 May 1752 - 17 Mar 1752/3;
  • 62 a. on branches of Robinson River;
  • adj; his own land, Michael Smith, Andrew Gar.
  • CC: Lawrence Gar & Henry Tivall."

This is a third item to mention the name Tivall.  We have had Christian, Henry, and an unspecified one.  The last one quoted seems to say that they could have been residents of the Robinson River Valley.

Aside from the references in the last note and this one, I am not aware of any other reference to the name.  We do note that Christian Tival, who was the owner for at least a short period of time of two separate warrants for land, always assigned the warrant or survey to Theobald Christler.  He seems never to have pursued or taken a grant on the lands.  (Looking for a grant to Crisler in this time frame, I do not find one to him either.)

Recently, I was looking through German records for the village of Neuenb�rg, where the Blankenbakers, Fleshmans, and Thomases were from.  There was one name that struck me, especially because the German pastors were having a lot of trouble spelling the name.  Then as I thought about the name, I remembered there was a later association between that name and some of the Germanna names.  There were only a few references, but the compiler of the information, a German, lumped together Debelt, Debold, and Debolt.  In a nearby village there were some more variations such as Diebold.

I then remembered that Michael Crisler, the son of Theobald Crisler and Rosina Gaar, had married the widow Mary Ann (Thomas) Debolt.  Mary Ann Thomas was the daughter of Michael Thomas, the son of John Thomas and Anna Maria Blankenbaker, both of Neuenbuerg.  It seems to me that a connection had been carried from Neuenbuerg to America.

Next, remembering that the Germans even had trouble spelling the name, I begin wondering about the confusing between "t" and "d" and between "b" and "v".  In the soundex system these are equivalent sounds.  So could Tivall have been derived from Diebold?  In America, a connection between the Diebold and Gaar families was established by the marriage of Christian Tivall to the unnamed daughter of Andreas Gaar.  When Mary Ann Thomas Debolt was left a widow, Michael Crisler stepped to the plate and married her.

I believe the only place so far that I have encountered the Debolt name has been in southwest Pennsylvania.  In the 1770s, this area around Red Stone Fort was thought to be a part of Virginia.  Many members of the Thomas family had moved there at this time.

Aren't warrants and surveys a lot of fun?  [See you at the Germanna Reunion.]
(18 Jul 02)



Nr. 1434:

I return to the second paragraph of Note 1432, in which one of the chain carriers was Peter Cree.  Did that name cause you to think twice?  It should have.  The conventional histories do not name a Peter Cree.  Assuming he did exist, and there is no reason to doubt his existence, he would probably have been a son of Lawrence Cree and his wife.

The origins of Lawrence Cree were found by Johni Cerny and Gary Zimmerman.  In Germany his name was Greys, and he had married Maria Euphrosina Schott in 1709.  One daughter is known in Germany, but she has no record in Virginia.  There was another daughter born in Virginia, Rebecca, who married Timothy Swindell.  It has been assumed that she was the only child in the family, since Lawrence Cree left all of his land to her and her husband.

It would appear from the Warrant and Survey cited above, that there was a son, Peter.  Peter could have been a man of almost 40 at the time of the survey for Theobald Crisler (it is more likely that he was younger).  Therefore, he might have been a father by then.  And, he might have left heirs; however, the most likely event is that he did not leave any children, since we would expect that they would have shared in the land distribution that Lawrence Crees made.  There could have been other explanations for the lack of any land distribution to him or his heirs.

I think that one of the main points to be noted by this is that we can never have too many facts or evidence.  It has always been assumed that the descendants of Lawrence Crees have been through his daughter Rebecca.  There is at least a "possibility" that there could be other Cree descendants.

Returning again to the Warrant & Survey mentioned above, the man for whom the survey was being made was Theobald Crisler, who married Rosina Garr.  The origins of the Garr family are in Mittelfranken, as are the origins of the Crees family.  Was there some connection between the families much earlier that led to the emigration of the Crees and Garr families to the Robinson River Valley?

That John Rector, the eldest son of John Jacob Rector, had two wives was not even considered.  All of his children were said to be by the original wife.  Until John Gott found the preliminary work in a Fauquier County lawsuit in the loose papers, it was not even questioned.  It was considered a certainty that he had only one wife.  One of the points that I made in my talk at the Germanna Seminar was that "facts" are only probabilities.  Returning to Lawrence Cree, it is only a probability that all of his descendants were through his daughter.  This has always been true, but the discovery of this Warrant & Survey has changed the probability.  This is the way research goes.  New evidence changes the probabilities.
(23 Jul 02)



Nr. 1435:

The Warrants and Surveys that I have been quoting come from Peggy Shomo Joyner's "Abstracts of Virginia's Northern Neck Warrants & Surveys".  This four-volume set was compiled and published by her.  Book orders may be directed to:

Peggy S. Joyner
3113 Riveredge Drive
Portsmouth, VA 23703.
(This information is ten years old and may not be current.)

The author was aware of the Warrants and Surveys in the loose papers at the Virginia State Archives, and, from Archives' personnel, obtained permission, and help in compiling them into meaningful and useful documents.

Another useful part of her books is a section of "Orange County Tithables for 1736-1739".  With limitations, this is a Census of Orange County for those years.  And, just like modern census takers, the ones collecting the Census data then went from house to house in a pattern that corresponds to the known land patents.  Taking a map of the land patents, one can trace out the route they took, and even predict the next household that they will call on.

The spelling of names in these Tithe Lists is atrocious.  The list directly in front of me as I type this shows an Adham Yeago, Michale Smith, and William Carpinter.  Kerker comes out Careker, and Peggy Joyner was even confused on that one.

The more interesting part of these Lists is that there are a few people missing and there are a few extra people.  There are two Lewis Fishers, for example.  One of them resides south of the Robinson River, and one resides north of the river.  This has led to some debate as to whether there were really two of them or not.

Speaking of Censuses, when someone looks in the year 2000 census, they won't find me.  Twice during the census time, I noted that I had been overlooked and I called the census bureau to alert them.  Both times they assured me that they would find me.  But perhaps because we have a post office box to receive our mail, they may have looked there and didn't find us at home.  Again, we have a lesson.  The original documents are sometimes erroneous.
(24 Jul 02)



Nr. 1436:

Several people had the opportunity of seeing and hearing the Tannenberg organ at Hebron Lutheran Church in Madison Church during the Germanna Reunion.  This year marks the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the installation of this organ, which was built by David Tannenberg.

During the eighteenth century, especially in the German communities, the name Tannenberg was synonymous with "organ".  David Tannenberg was born in Saxony in 1728, where he was persecuted for his religious beliefs.  He sought asylum with the Moravians and remained affiliated with them for his lifetime.  At first he was a cabinet maker in America, but about 1758 he started as an apprentice with an organ builder, Johann Gottlob Clemm, who had some experience as an organ builder.  Before Clemm could transfer any knowledge concerning the building of organs, he died.  With such a "good start", Tannenberg turned to published material for guidance.  By 1765 he had settled in Lititz, with a shop in the rear of his home.  Over a period of about forty years, he produced more than one organ per year.

A German could hardly conceive of a church without an organ.  No matter how small the church, it must have an organ.  Not only was the sound important, the looks of the cabinets had to be right.  They tended to favor fancy baroque cases.  (See some of the German photos on the Germanna photo page Oberfischbach Organ, Kettenbach Organ, and Illenschwang Organ.)  These were the ideas they brought to America, but the cabinets were simplified in America.  The output of any one builder showed a family resemblance.  (I have seen three Tannenberg organs and they all look about the same.)  There were variations in the number of manuals, stops, and pipes.

David Tannenberg's best customers were the Moravian churches, who value music very highly.  The Lutherans were the next best, followed by the Reformed.  The organs were installed from New York to North Carolina, with the most in Tannenberg's home county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Business was good enough to require an assistant, and Tannenberg recruited a young man in Germany, Philip Bachman.  Philip married one of Tannenberg's daughter but she died under circumstances which were not a credit to Bachman.  Thereafter, Bachman and Tannenberg worked independently.

The Hebron organ was the next to last organ that Tannenberg built.  He was too feeble to go to Virginia to install it, so he sent Bachman.  Since its installation, the organ has hardly been modified, and is today the finest original example of Tannenberg's work.  It is still used on a weekly basis.

Tannenberg helped install the last organ at Christ Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania.  Just before it was completed, he suffered a stroke and fell from the scaffolding.  Two days later he died.  His funeral was held at the Christ Lutheran Church, and the new organ was used, with both the Moravians and Lutherans participating.

For more information on German organ builders, see the book, "That Ingenious Business, Pennsylvania German Organ Builders", by Raymond J. Brunner.

(For a discussion of the "Technical Details of The Tannenberg Organ at the Hebron Lutheran Church in Madison Co., VA", please see the Note provided by Thom Faircloth, President, The Germanna Foundation.  This is for those of you who are really into the technical aspects of early organs made by German emigrants.)

(Note:  The oldest extant American-built organ is in Zion Lutheran Church in Richmond Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania.  It was built by Tannenberg in 1770.)
(25 Jul 02)



Nr. 1437:

Fort Redstone was originally thought to be in Virginia, but then it was conceded by Virginia to Pennsylvania.  The site of it can be found on modern maps as Brownsville, south of Pittsburgh about halfway to the state line.  An even easier way of locating it is to note where U.S. Highway 40 crosses the Monongahela River.  This river flows north to Pittsburgh, where it joins with the Allegheny River from the north to form the Ohio River at Pittsburgh.  Before the Revolution, it was not clear which colony the land around Fort Redstone lay in.  Many Virginians thought it was in Virginia and land grants were issued to settlers by the colony of Virginia.  As a consequence, many Germanna people took grants and moved there.  At this time, Kentucky was not open for settlement.

One Germanna person who moved to Fort Redstone was Michael Thomas.  His two wives and twenty-five children are a mystery, if these numbers are to be believed.  Many of the children are known; no complete inventory exists though.  But before we go into the children, let us start with some facts about Michael Thomas himself.  He was born in Virginia as no record exists in the German church where an older brother and sister are noted.  Also, he was never naturalized in America.

When did his parents come to America?  We like to say 1717, with the other members of the Second Colony, but we have no proof of this.  Michael�s father was John Thomas and his mother was Anna Maria Blankenbaker.  She was born in 1687 and married in 1711.  Her first child was born when she was almost 25 years of age (lacking about three weeks).  By two husbands, she gave birth to ten children, of whom nine lived.  One reason that she might not have come to Virginia when here husband did is that she could have been pregnant at the time of the trip and she decided to wait another year.  We assume that Michael Thomas and a sister Margaret were born in America.  But these must have been born almost before 1720, since, by her second husband, Michael K�fer, she had five more children.  In 1730, she would have been 43 years old.

John Thomas, the father, left no records in America.  He does not appear on the Spotswood importation list, nor was he or any member of his immediate family sued by Spotswood.  Apparently Michael Thomas married at an early age for one of his sons is said to have been born in 1740.  Michael had some land with his brother, John.  He could have launched into marriage at an early age.  His wife might have been 18 or 19 at the time of marriage, perhaps a year or two younger.  We do not know her name.  Her given name appears to have been Catherine.  Speculation that she was Catherine Wayland, born in 1715, and an immigrant with her family to Virginia does not seem well founded, as she would have been a few years older than Michael.
(26 Jul 02)



Nr. 1438:

Michael Thomas left few records in Virginia.  He witnessed a few wills but never took up any more land beyond the patent made in his name when he was a small lad.  His most ambitious plan was to join a group of men, including Pastor Klug, in a land speculation scheme in the Shenandoah Valley.  Michael may have done the preliminary field work, as the description of the property includes some boundary markers with an MT on them.

Michael witnessed the will of John Harnsberger in 1750 (with George Samuel Klug and George Moyer); in 1761 he witnessed the will of Anne Mary Gabbard (with Christopher Dicken and John Clore); in 1763 he received a payment from the estate of Christopher Yowell for a debt; and he was named in 1762 as a child of Michael K�fer�s deceased wife [Anna Maria Blankenb�hler].  At the church, the Thomas family is, to put it mildly, under-represented.

One son of Michael was Samuel Thomas who, according to a tombstone, was born 16 June 1740.  Because Michael could hardly have been more than 20 at this time, Samuel Thomas may have one of the older children, if not the oldest.  By the time of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the Michael Thomas family was living at Redstone Fort on Ten Mile Creek.  Samuel was a friend and neighbor of William Harrod and James Harrod of Kentucky fame.  Samuel was in Kentucky on several early occasions that were documented, but he did not move to Kentucky with the very first pioneers.  Samuel married Rachel Perry (an aunt of Commodore Perry), with known children, Catherine; Samuel, Jr.; Rachel; Margaret; and George.  About the year 1784, perhaps slightly later, he moved to Bracken Co., Kentucky, with several of his children.  His daughter Catherine married Jeremiah Teagarden [I wonder how that is spelled in German], but they did not move to Kentucky with her family, even though they owned property there.  One child of Jeremiah and Catherine was born on the flatboat they were using to float down the Ohio River.  Rachel Thomas, the daughter of Michael, married Rev. Dr. Joseph Smith Tomlinson, a Methodist minister and president of Augusta College.  A nephew of his had the name of Stephen Collins Foster.

In Kentucky, in Bracken County, William Harrod, Samuel Thomas, and Jeremiah Teagarden all had land close together.

Back in Pennsylvania, a major industry was the distillation of whiskey.  Being isolated, it was difficult to ship grain to the markets.  Instead, the grain was condensed to a smaller size in the form of whiskey which could be shipped more easily.  At one time there were up 70 distilleries in the Ten Mile Creek area, and they developed an expertise in the making of whiskey.  The whiskey rebellion, against the taxes which were placed on whiskey, centered in this area.  President Washington had to send in the troops to put down the rebellion.
(27 Jul 02)



Nr. 1439:

Continuing with the family of Michael Thomas, Margaret was a daughter who married Everhard Hupp.  Some say the marriage took place about 1768, probably in Culpeper County, Virginia.  The will of Philip Hoop (Hupp) is recorded on pages 264-5 of Will Book A of Culpeper County.  It was dated in April of 1761 and proved in the fall of that year.  The executors of the will were the wife, Elizabeth, and Henry Aylor.  Henry married a daughter of John Thomas, Sr., and Anna Maria Blankenbaker.  Michael Thomas was a son of Anna Maria Blankenbaker Thomas.  About 1770 several members of the Hupp family moved to southwest Pennsylvania in the general vicinity of Redstone Fort.  One fix on the time they moved is that Everhart and John Hupp deeded away land in Culpeper County in 1769.

The moves of the (Michael) Thomas family and the Hupp family to northern Augusta County in Virginia, later to be a part of Pennsylvania, were probably connected.  The Hupps were among the earliest recorded settlers in the Ten Mile Creek area.  Another family from Culpeper that moved about this same time was George Bumgarner.  Some say that the Bumgarners were in the area about 1766.  Early road petitions mention Everhard Hupp�s mill.

It is said that Margaret Thomas, the wife of Everhard Hupp, was the first white woman west of the Monongahela River.  Even under the difficult circumstances of life there, Everhard and Margaret had eleven children.  Everhard and Margaret did not move to Kentucky, but lived their lives at Ten Mile Creek.  The region at first was shared by both the white man and the Indian.  In five generations, from Matthias Plankenb�hler of Gresten, Austria, members of the family had moved to western Pennsylvania along the route, Neuenb�rg, Germany, to Virginia, and on to Pennsylvania.

It was with some surprise, when I was looking through the church records for Neuenb�rg, Germany, that I encountered the name Hepp.  In a village not too far away from that, in Eppingen, I met the names Hepp, Hopp, and Hupe.  One starts to wonder if it was an accident that there was a Thomas and Hupp marriage in Virginia.  Perhaps the experience of the Thomases had something to do with the Hupps being in Virginia.

In the last note, I gave some information about Samuel Thomas who was said to be born in 1740.  The Thomas family tradition is that another son, Henry, was the oldest child.  If so, then Michael Thomas must have been married at an early age, perhaps 18 or 19.
(29 Jul 02)



Nr. 1440:

Continuing with the family of Michael Thomas, there was a daughter Anna Maria, no doubt named for her grandmother, Anna Maria Blankenbaker, who married, first, John Thomas in Germany.  Anna Maria, the daughter, married, first, Michael Debolt.

The bells started ringing when I read in the index of names for Neuenb�rg the names Debelt/Debold/Debolt, or, in nearby Eppingen, the names Dewald, Dibold, and Diebolt (t,dt).  Was this a case that where a family came from the same area of Germany that the Thomas family did?  Were they influenced to come to America by the Thomas family?

Michael Debolt did not live long, and Anna Maria Thomas Debolt then married Michael Crisler.  So often when a women is widowed, the family seems to rally around and tell some man from the family that he must do his duty and marry the widow.  If this is true, what is the Crisler and Debolt connection?  Do you remember a few notes ago when we were discussing Warrants & Surveys that a Christian Tivall assigned his rights to Theobald Crisler?  Have we got another variation on the connection of a Dewald/Dibold/Debolt with a Crisler?

Michael Crisler was the son of Theobald Crisler and Rosina Gaar.  Where were Michael Debolt and Anna Maria Thomas living?  Anna Maria died in Pennsylvania.  Where did she live with Michael Debolt?  It is so frustrating to have a little information and to be left with large gaps in one�s knowledge.

I have some information about Michael Debolt for which I do not vouch.  On 10 Aug 1779, Mary Ann Thomas Debolt (probably the widow of Michael Debolt) married Michael Crisler.  In January 1785, the Fayette County Orphan�s Court (in Pennsylvania) appointed Michael Chrisler to be a guardian over the persons and estates of Catherine Debolt, Michael Debolt, Mechlin (?) Debold, and Mary Debold, minor children of Michael Debold, during their minority.  This family later settled in Beaver County, with the exception of Michael Debolt, who married Abalona (Apollonia?) Yeager, and settled in Fayette County.  Catherine married George Mason, Mechlin (Mary Magdalene?) married William Eckles, and Mary Ann married Ruel Reed.  These surnames may all be German, for Mason seems to have originated from Maurer, meaning mason, and the name Reed might be Rieth or a similar name.

The story is told that a brother of the father of Michael Debolt was captured as a lad by the Indians and forced to live with them for nine years.  Apparently he was not mistreated, but he felt that he should return to his own people and he made his escape.

If anyone can add anything to the events that I am describing, please speak up.
(30 Jul 02)



Nr. 1441:

Perhaps the best known of the twenty-five offspring of Michael Thomas was Abraham Thomas.  He seems to have been a true frontiersman who probably never set foot inside a schoolroom; however, he was at home in situations where we would fear to tread.  He seems more real than many of the children of Michael Thomas because he told several incidents of his life to an Ohio newspaper which published them.  These comments found their way into the Draper manuscripts and are available to read today.  Excerpts have been published in these notes.

Abraham was born, in 1756, to Michael Thomas and his first wife Catherine, in Culpeper Co., VA (now Madison Co.).  When he was, in his own words, "...a chunk of a lad...", he and a brother drove a flock of sheep from Culpeper County to the vicinity of Red Stone Fort (about 150 miles).  His father had purchased some land and was probably transferring his goods and livestock to the new farm.  Abraham wrote that he and his brother lived the winter there on what they could provide for themselves.  Probably they shot a lot of game.  He admits, though, that he had relatives in the area, probably his sister Margaret, who had married Everhart Hupp.

Before he was nineteen years old, Abraham married Susanna Smith, the daughter of Adam Smith and an unknown wife.  Probably Abraham did not have a shilling in his pocket when he married, but his life shows that he lacked nothing in the way of confidence.  Susanna was actually a cousin of Abraham.  Her grandfather was John Michael Smith, Jr., and her grandmother was Anna Magdalena Thomas, who was a sister of Michael Thomas.  So, Abraham and Susannah were first cousins, once removed.  Though the marriage probably took place in Culpeper County, they seemed to have lived the first several years in the vicinity of Ten Mile Creek.

Not only was Abraham busy getting set up in a new life with his wife, he was active in the military campaigns which took place about this same time.  He served with Michael Cressup in the Lord Dunmore War, and in the Revolution, though both of these services seem to have short engagements.  He was a scout with Daniel Boone against the Indians in the 1780 Ohio campaign, and with George Rogers Clark against the Indians in Ohio in 1782.  On one of these campaigns he claimed that he was the first white man on the future site of Cincinnati.

Abraham continued to live in Fayette County for several years, as did his father.  For a while he was at Fisher's Station in Kentucky, which his Fisher cousins had established.  In 1808 he migrated to Miami County, Ohio, where he spent the rest of his life.  He outlived Susanna Smith and married a widow, Mary Swailes.  He lived for 87 years, having missed the disease and bullets and scalping knives that took the toll of so many people.  Abraham and Susanna were the parents of William, Michael, Adam, Ezekiel, Catherine, Abraham, Samuel, Mary, and Peter.
(31 Jul 02)



Nr. 1442:

Recently, I have examined some coincidences where names are "paired" in different localities.  The Thomas family certainly seems to have it share of pairings, which may extend from Germany to what is now western Pennsylvania.

Members of several families moved from Culpeper County, Virginia, to what was thought then to be northern Augusta County, VA, but is now southwestern Pennsylvania.  Some of the people who moved include the Hupps, who may have been about the first from Culpeper County.  The Thomas family was not far behind them.  George Bumgarner was early.  A member of the Crisler family went, but he was not so early.  A member of the Smith family, Susanna, moved up.  Were the Debolts ever in Culpeper County?

This whole migration to southwest Pennsylvania has been under-emphasized in the Germanna histories.

Before leaving the Thomas family, I want to emphasize a connection to another family which I feel needs more explanation.  That is the Thomas and Holtzclaw interactions.  The eldest son of the immigrant, Hans Jacob Holzklau, was John.  He married a widow, Catherine (Russell) Thomas, who had a Thomas son.  The two youngest sons of Jacob, namely another Jacob and Joseph, married two Thomas girls from the Robinson River Valley.  Now the Robinson River was not the home ground of the two Holtzclaw men.  This was not a case of marrying the girls on the next farm.  This is like marrying someone who was living twenty-five miles away, or whatever the distance is from Germantown to the Robinson River Valley.  How did they become acquainted?

The mother of the two youngest Holtzclaw sons (perhaps Harmon also) was a second wife.  Her given name was Catherine and her maiden name is unknown.  Perhaps she had come from the Robinson River community and provided the link between the Holtzclaw and Thomas family.

Or was the Catherine Russell Thomas the link?  Was her Thomas son a relative of the Thomas families in the Robinson valley?  If this had been the case, perhaps the Thomas family members from the Robinson area paid periodic visits to Germantown to visit their relative(s).  This scenario seems to require that the John Thomas who came (probably in 1717) had a relative who came with him.

There is another connection in that it is believed that Henry Holtzclaw, second son in the family, married Nancy Harden.  Now some members of the Harden family went to southwest Pennsylvania.  Were the Thomases and the Hardens acquainted, and did the actions of one influence the other?

We all know what Winston Churchill said.  Can someone quote it?
(01 Aug 02)



Nr. 1443:

Jacob Holtzclaw, the son, not the immigrant, was introduced in the last note.  Let's give a few more words about him.  He was born in Prince William County on 17 Feb 1738, and died in Mercer Co., Kentucky, on 21 Oct 1812.  He married, about 1758, Susanna Thomas, the daughter of John Thomas and a Mary unknown.  John Thomas made a gift deed of land to Jacob on 20 Nov 1760.

Jacob and Susanna lived in Culpeper from about 1760 to 1775.  Jacob had land at Germantown, but he sold some to his brother-in-law, Jeremiah Darnall, shortly after his father's death in 1760.  He deeeded away other land in Fauquier County in 1772.  On 20 Feb 1775, he sold the land in Culpeper County that had been deeded to him by his father-in-law, John Thomas.  He apparently moved immediately to Kentucky.

In 1776, he applied for land in Kentucky, stating he had already raised a crop on it, and he was granted 400 acres in Lincoln Co., 1 Dec 1782.  He served in the Revolution in Kentucky, including a campaign against the Indians by Gen. Clark in 1782 (we have already mentioned that Abraham Thomas was in this campaign also).

I have recently mentioned Adam Smith whose daughter Susanna married Abraham Thomas.  Adam had two brothers, Zacharias and John, and the three of them moved to Kentucky about 1777 (at least that the last year of any records in Culpeper County for them).  Zacharias married, about 1760, Ann Elizabeth Fishback, who was the daughter of John Frederick Fishback and Ann Elizabeth Holtzclaw.  Remembering that these Smiths had a mother, Ann Magdalena Thomas, the sister of John Thomas and of Michael Thomas, we see another Thomas and Holtzclaw connection.

About the same time that Jacob Holtzclaw was raising corn in Kentucky, Zacharias Smith was doing the same.  Very likely, they had engaged in this activity together.

Zacharias was married twice, the second wife being Sarah Ann Watts.  His brother, John, married an Elizabeth, but her maiden name is unknown.  The third brother, Adam, was married twice and we can say very little about his wives names except the second wife seems to be an Elizabeth.

In general, wives and children are very hard to trace in the Thomas family.

[There will be no note on Saturday.  Today, I am driving to Lewisburg, West Virginia, to attend a Fleshman Reunion.  I will be talking (called a "lecture") about the Fleshmans.  I will just be describing the visit of Eleanor and myself to Klings, the source of the Fleshmans.  Also, I will be talking about the wife of Peter Fleshman.  None of this can be called a lecture.  I would hardly know how to give a lecture.  So if any of you are in the area, drop in.  Do a search on "Fleshman" on the web and this will turn up a page with information.]
(02 Aug 02)



Nr. 1444:

I want to return to the Thomas families, but let me take one Note to report on the Fleshman Reunion in Lewisburg, which is in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.

I took about an hour while there to scan the local telephone book for what could be Germanna names.  I knew a few that I was expecting, but I was surprised at how many of the names could potentially be Germanna names.  The names are:

Arbaugh Ballenger Barlow Bender Berry Broyles
Bunger Deahl/Diehl Fleshman Gabbert Gearhart Kemper
Koontz Lipp/Lipps Manspile Marr Niswander Painter
Riner Rookstool Souther Vaught Vaughan Wilhite
Yeager/Yaeger Wolfenbarger Ziegler      

Not all of these names have a German origin but some of the families have become so involved with the Germans that they have acquired the patina of being Germanna names.  I skipped over the Carpenters, Smiths, Cooks, Thomases, Fishers, Longs, Huffmans, Tanners, Weavers, and Zimmermans, even though the latter are German names.  They have so many origins that it would not be possible to quickly say whether they have a Germanna basis.

It is rather interesting to me that I have pointed out recently that Lipps, Diehls, and Longs have a presence in the neighborhood of Neuenbuerg, where the Fleischmanns last lived in Germany.

I thought the talks after the Saturday night dinner were good.  (You don't think that I would do things like that unless I truly enjoyed it, do you?)

I had never been in Lewisburg before.  I have read about Greenbrier County so many times that I wanted to see it.  Driving into town, but especially in driving out to the grave site of Robert Fleshman, gave me a better view.  Robert Fleshman was one of the six children of Peter Fleshman and Maria Sophia Weaver.  Robert married Dorothea Baumgartner.  Most of the Fleshmans who live in Greenbrier County are descended from this Robert so they tend to think of it as a Robert Fleshman Reunion.  However, both Thom Faircloth, who gave a lecture, and myself tried to emphasize the larger setting of which Robert Fleshman was a part.

The grave of Robert Fleshman had been lost.  One story is that, thanks to a coon hunter, there was a recollection of the general location atop a knoll; however, the grave stone proved elusive to find until two corners of it were spotted poking out of a tree.  An R and an F could be detected.  The residue of the stone was cut out of the tree.  Then descendants erected a new monument which incorporated the pieces from the original stone.  The site is rather inaccessible, but we got a ride in a four-wheel drive vehicle up the knoll.

A very special pleasure for me was meeting Larry Shuck for the first time.
(06 Aug 02)



Nr. 1445:

The immigrant John Thomas, Sr., (who had married Anna Maria Blankenbaker) had four children which we know, because Anna Maria's second husband, Michael Kaefer, left a very complete will which named his stepchildren as well as his own children.  The four children were:

John, Jr.;
Anna Magdalena;
Margaret; and
Michael.
In the preceding notes, we have talked a lot about the children of Michael, where we have mentioned a few of his purported twenty-five children.  We believe that we know the four children of John, Jr., who were:
Susanna (m. Jacob Holtzclaw),
Mary (m. Joseph Holtzclaw),
Mary Barbara (m. Jacob Blankenbaker), and
Elizabeth (m. John Railsback).
There may have been a fifth child, possibly a son, Michael.  We know the families of the two daughters of John, Sr., best of all.  It took us a long time to find the husband of Margaret, but he was Henry Aylor.

Let's go back to the four daughters of John Thomas, Jr.  Three of them are known to have married husbands of the Reformed faith, namely, two Holtzclaws and John Railsback.  The fourth son-in-law of John, Jr., was Jacob Blankenbaker, who was a Lutheran.  The first child in the family of Jacob and his wife, Mary Barbara Thomas, was born after 1750, so would have been expected all of Jacob's and Mary's children to be in the baptismal register of the Lutheran Church, but they are not.  In the second family of Jacob B., the children were baptized as Lutherans.  Why aren't Jacob's first children baptized as Lutherans?  They were raised in the Lutheran church (the only church game in town).

I consider it very likely that the first wife of John Thomas, Jr., was not a Lutheran.  Noting that three of her children married Reformed men, perhaps she was Reformed.  We know very little about her beyond her given name of Mary.  This hypothesis would help explain why the daughters married Reformed men.  It might even be extended of Mary Barbara Thomas, who married Jacob Blankenbaker.  Perhaps her upbringing as a Reformed person would have made it difficult for her to accept a Lutheran baptism for her children.

The family of John Thomas, Jr., certainly has Reformed connections.  The earliest potential connection would seem to be the marriage of John Holtzclaw to Catherine (Russell) Thomas, a widow.  Was this Thomas connected to the Robinson River Thomases?

B. C. Holtzclaw, in writing about the Thomas family, spent three pages in Germanna Record 6 agonizing over the structure and identity of the Thomas family.  As we see here, the Thomas family, which might be several distinct families, is tied to the Holtzclaw family in three ways.  Because the Thomas family may be regarded as a branch of the Blankenbaker family, I have spent some time puzzling over this connection.

I have mentioned these Thomas-Holtzclaw connections before in these notes, hoping to find someone who has studied the situation and can perhaps add some new information.  So far I have totally bombed out, but "Hope Springs Eternal".
(07 Aug 02)



Nr. 1446:

Here is some testimony on early wine making in Virginia.  The first comments come from John Fontaine, as he recorded them in his diary.  On his first trip to Germanna in November of 1715, he states that he and Mr. Clayton arrived at Robert Beverley's place about ten o'clock at night, where they were well received.  The next morning, it was windy and wet so they decided not to proceed on.  After breakfast they went to see Mr. Beverley's vineyard.

The vineyard seemed to have an emphasis on the native or wild grapes.  The vineyard was about three acres in size, on a hillside.  In this year he had made four hundred gallons of wine.  It had been a major expense.  He used caves and had a wine press.  Fontaine said he was following the Spanish method, but the vineyard was not managed rightly.  Among the plants there were several French vines.

The reason that Mr. Beverley had such a large vineyard was that about four years prior to 1715, he had made a bet with a number of gentlemen in the country that he could produce a vintage of seven hundred gallons in seven years.  The terms of the bet where that at the beginning Beverley would give the others one guinea and if he did produce the seven hundred gallons of wine in one year they were to pay him ten guineas for each guinea he had given them.  If he succeeded, he stood to collect a thousand guineas.  He was very optimistic about his prospects.

Robert Beverley and others were partners with Alexander Spotsylvania in the 40,000 acre Spotsylvania tract partnership on which the Second Colony members were located.  Probably, Spotswood was the majority partner and Beverley was the secondary partner, with the others in some minor positions.  The primary objective for the Second Colony was that it was to make naval stores.  Beverley added his objectives to this, which was to encourage the Germans to grow grapes.

Testimony to this effect comes from the Rev. Hugh Jones who wrote "The Present State of Virginia", in 1724, based on experiences in Virginia, which ended in 1722.  He wrote,

"Beyond this [Germanna] are seated the Colony of Germans or Palatines, with allowance of good quantities of rich land, at easy or no rates, who thrive very well, and live happily, and entertain generously.  They are encouraged to make wines, which by the experience (particularly) of the late Colonel Robert Beverley, who wrote the history of the Virginia, was done easily and in large quantities in those parts; not only from the cultivation of the wild grapes, which grow plentiful and naturally in all the good lands thereabouts, and in other parts of the country; but also from the Spanish, French, Italian, and German vines, which have been found to thrive there to admiration."

In 1715, Fontaine mentioned only French vines besides the native vines.  Jones, though, mentions also Spanish, Italian, and German vines.  These foreign vines could have been purchased by Beverley, who had the resources and means for doing so, or these vines might have been brought by the Germans.  I doubt the Germans would have brought "Spanish" or "Italian" root stock, though.
(10 Aug 02)



Nr. 1447:

One of the early families in the Robinson River Valley was the Wayland family.  According to his application for head rights, which was made in 1729 in November, Thomas Wayland said he came with his wife Mary and children Jacob and Katherine.  His land patent was issued in 1728, two years after the majority of the Second Colony had their land patents.  It is assumed that Thomas Wayland probably came about 1719.

Cerny and Zimmerman found Thomas Wieland who had married Maria Barbara Seppach in 1711 at Willsbach, W�rttemberg.  Their first two children were born at Waldbach, W�rttemberg, in 1713 and 1715.  Their names were Hans Jacob and Anna Catharina Clara .  All of these names can be matched to the names in the head right application.

It has been doubted that Wieland would become the name Wayland since Wieland could be expected to be pronounced as Vee-lant.  The choice of the "d" or the "t" is not that significant.  Other individuals say that in the southwest region of Germany, where Thomas Wieland came from, that the Wie could be pronounced as Vay.  In the German community,the name was probably pronounced as "Vayland", which became, in time, "Wayland" in pronounciation.

The photo page which George Durman maintains has a few photos of Waldbach, which is about fifteen miles east of Heilbronn.  (Although there are no maps of Waldbach yet, you may check the "Map" page occasionally and see the maps when they are added.

Except for the head right application, there is no record of Jacob or Katharina in Virginia.  They could have been dead by the time of the application even.  The two children, by whom he had two more children.

John Wayland married Catherine Broyles, a daughter of Jacob Broyles and a granddaughter of John Broyles, the original emigrant.  They had a large family and the children married mostly other Germanna people.

Adam was prominent at the German Lutheran Church.  He appears in three communion lists, and, in two of these, he and Mary are the first names.

What he is best known for is writing a will when he was married to his first wife, Elizabeth Blankenbaker.  She died and he married Mary Finks.  He failed to update his will before he died, so the will failed to mention his second wife and the two children of which she was the mother.  This led to a lawsuit which makes clear the family structures and the children of each mother.
(12 Aug 02)



Nr. 1448:

The last note of a few days ago discussed Thomas Wayland and his descendants.  Another family that is often confused with the Wayland family is the Wayman family.  The two names are similar enough so that people do confuse the two.  I have been known to be guilty of this and I often have to stop and think and fetch my memory aids (if I can remember where I put them).  It was hard when the Blankenbakers held a picnic in the last half of the eighteenth century for there were Wayland and Wayman descendants of the early Blankenbakers.

George Wayman, whose name in Germany was Georg Caspar Weidmann, was one of the lucky people who survived the 1738 trip on the ship Oliver.  The name became Wayman, though some people seem to be saying that it should not have been that in America if there was any attention at all to phonetics.  George Wayman was probably a bachelor when he came, but he apparently married soon after arrival; his wife's name is unknown beyond Catherine.  Though George started off farming in the Little Fork, three of his children married people from the Robinson River Valley, which might indicate that Catherine came from there also.

The children were Joseph, born about 1745, who lived all of his life in the Little Fork, where he married Ann Elizabeth Coons.  Perhaps the second son was Henry Wayman, who married Magdalena Blankenbaker.  He lived in the Robinson River Valley.  Henry had two wives and the division of his children between the two wives is not entirely clear.

Harmon Wayman, perhaps the third son, lived near his brother Henry until about 1794.  Harmon's first wife was Elizabeth Clore, the daughter of Peter Clore and his wife Barbara Yager.  After Elizabeth Clore died, Harmon married Frances Clore, the daughter of John Clore.

Mary Wayman, daughter of George, married Adam Utz before 1776.  These three sons and the daughter seem to be all of the children of George Wayman.

Anyone who is a descendant of George Wayman can feel lucky for the voyage of the ship Oliver (I believe it actually a bilander, a ship normally used in coastal trading) was a disaster with a great loss of life.  When the ship left Rotterdam, the captain detected, in his opinion, that it was overloaded and he turned around and returned to Rotterdam where he resigned his position.  The owners of the ship solved the problem by hiring another captain.  Due to various delays, the people who boarded the ship in June were still on it the next January when it was off the coast of Virginia.  It essentially sank there with a great loss of life.  Of the original passengers, less than one-third of them survived.
(16 Aug 02)



Nr. 1449:

Yesterday I was reading "Ortssippenbuch Gochsheim", a book of genealogy for the village of Gochsheim in the Kraichtal.  The village is not far from many of the villages from where Second Colony people came.  At the end of the book on page 719, there was the statement:

"Die Waldenser Kolonie Augustastadt 1698-1724"
which was followed by a few hundred names, many with a French look.  My interest was heightened by the last name in the list which was ". . . Zollicofer Pfarrer 1698."

I thought that perhaps I should consult the Encyclopedia.  The Britannica told me more than perhaps I wanted to know.  The World Book has a much shorter sketch.  Following the latter, the Waldenses are members of a Christian religious group which was founded by Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyon, France.  In 1173, Waldo left his wife, gave his fortune to the Church and charity, and began preaching in the streets of Lyon.  His message of poverty and religious devotion attracted many followers who were called the Poor Men of Lyon.  His preaching also came to the attention of the Pope Alexander III and the local bishop, who forbade the followers of Waldo to preach because they were not priests.  Perhaps a more telling point was that their teachings differed from the Catholic Church.  They denied the pope's authority, which may have touched a sensitive spot.  They also denied the existence of purgatory.  Within eleven years, they were excommunicated by Pope Lucius III.

Their thought spread to many centers of Europe and influenced many others.  They maintained a presence in France, and established another center in northern Italy.  While they have been opposed through the ages by many political and church leaders, they have about 50,000 members today in Europe and in North and South America.

Why the Gochsheim Ortssippenbuch should have a mention of the Colony is not clear.  The Waldenses had their own religious leader.  It looks as if the political leaders ordered the Waldenses to register with the local church and the list that has been preserved is that registration.  A date range of 1698 to 1724 is given.  I wonder if they were only present during this time or whether a (possible) requirement to register was valid only during time.  Were they evicted from France at this time?

Genealogically, the impact on us (the Germanna Colonies) may not be great.  But if they were in the neighborhood of our ancestors, it gave them something to think about.

The name Zollicofer is Swiss, I believe, and is the same as the merchant from St. Gall who was a trader in Virginia, and the messenger who took the appeal of the First Germanna Colony back to Germany.  If anyone else can add information about the Waldensers, please speak out and tell the rest of us.
(17 Aug 02)



Nr. 1450:

The Christian church has not been monolithic or unified at any time.  We are all aware of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which has been in competition with the Western, or Catholic, Church.  Perhaps it is less well known that through the ages there have been many minor sects.  Most of these have faded away and reconstructing their history is very difficult.  The dominant church usually controlled the writing and publication of history, and they made every effort to describe the minor sects in the most unfriendly terms, if at all.  On the other hand, if the minor sects succeeded to the point where they did leave some writing, they often were guilty of biased reporting of their own history.  [We have plenty of this in genealogy where the almost universal tendency is to make one's ancestors look good.]

Peter Waldo, in the twelfth century, was the founder of one of these minor sects which has survived through the centuries.  The writings about him and his followers have been biased, and it is difficult to reconstruct an accurate history.  Persecuted and on the move, perhaps their biggest impact was on other movements and bodies of thought that came after them.  Thus, Wycliffe, and Huss, and the general Protestant Reformation, owe something to Waldo.  Waldo was not the first, though, to rise up against the established thought and practice.  Waldo sponsored a translation of the New Testament into Provencal, the language of his district around Lyon, France.

The Waldenses, under the more modern name of Vaudois (after Valdez, an alternate form of Waldo), have survived and are regarded as one of the oldest and most evangelical of the medieval sects.  Their original tenets are difficult to ascertain as they wrote very little.  Furthermore, their strongest adherents were often unlettered peasants who hid away in the cracks of civilization.  They often held that oaths were to be avoided and that the civil authorities could not use capital punishment.  These were thoughts that came to the fore centuries later among the Friends and the Anabaptists.  They generally held that every person, male and female of all ages, was a priest and that there should be no separate category of priests, certainly not a closed rank of priests.

By 1487, Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull for their extermination.  A bloody period followed which drove the adherents into further isolation, intellectually and physically.  They were generally sympathetic to the Hussites, the Brethren, and the Lutherans, and many Waldenses joined these movements while influencing them also.

In 1650, strong measures were taken against the Waldenses in the area of Turin, with French and English elements opposing them.  The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 led to a determination to exterminate them.  In the time of Queen Anne, she lent support to them.  The colony at Gochsheim in the Kraichtal (1698 to 1724), which was mentioned in the last note, was probably a group seeking refugee from the persecutions.
(19 Aug 02)


(To see John & Eleanor Blankenbaker's May, 2000, and May, 2002, Germany and Austria photos, click here.)

(To see maps of villages in Germany and Austria from which our Germanna ancestors immigrated, click here.)


(This page contains the FIFTY-EIGHTH set of Notes, Nr. 1426 through Nr. 1450.)


John and George would like very much to hear from readers of these Germanna History pages.  We welcome your criticisms, compliments, corrections, or other comments.  When you click on "click here" below, both of us will receive your message.  We would like to hear what you have to say about the content of the Notes, and about spelling, punctuation, format, etc.  Just click here to send us your message.  Thank You!

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(GERMANNA History Notes, Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 John BLANKENBAKER.)
(GERMANNA History Web Pages, Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 George W. DURMAN.)
This material has been compiled and placed on this web site by George W. Durman, with the permission of John BLANKENBAKER.  It is intended for personal use by genealogists and researchers, and is not to be disseminated further.

Index Links to All Pages of John's GERMANNA NOTES and Genealogy Comments
INDEX Links to All Pages of John's GERMANNA NOTES
Pg.001-Notes 0001-0025
Pg.002-Notes 0026-0050
Pg.003-Notes 0051-0075
Pg.004-Notes 0076-0100
Pg.005-Notes 0101-0125
Pg.006-Notes 0126-0150
Pg.007-Notes 0151-0175
Pg.008-Notes 0176-0200
Pg.009-Notes 0201-0225
Pg.010-Notes 0226-0250
Pg.011-Notes 0251-0275
Pg.012-Notes 0276-0300
Pg.013-Notes 0301-0325
Pg.014-Notes 0326-0350
Pg.015-Notes 0351-0375
Pg.016-Notes 0376-0400
Pg.017-Notes 0401-0425
Pg.018-Notes 0426-0450
Pg.019-Notes 0451-0475
Pg.020-Notes 0476-0500
Pg.021-Notes 0501-0525
Pg.022-Notes 0526-0550
Pg.023-Notes 0551-0575
Pg.024-Notes 0575-0600
Pg.025-Notes 0601-0625
Pg.026-Notes 0626-0650
Pg.027-Notes 0651-0675
Pg.028-Notes 0676-0700
Pg.029-Notes 0701-0725
Pg.030-Notes 0726-0750
Pg.031-Notes 0751-0775
Pg.032-Notes 0776-0800
Pg.033-Notes 0801-0825
Pg.034-Notes 0826-0850
Pg.035-Notes 0851-0875
Pg.036-Notes 0876-0900
Pg.037-Notes 0901-0925
Pg.038-Notes 0926-0950
Pg.039-Notes 0951-0975
Pg.040-Notes 0976-1000
Pg.041-Notes 1001-1025
Pg.042-Notes 1026-1050
Pg.043-Notes 1051-1075
Pg.044-Notes 1076-1100
Pg.045-Notes 1101-1125
Pg.046-Notes 1126-1150
Pg.047-Notes 1151-1175
Pg.048-Notes 1176-1200
Pg.049-Notes 1201-1225
Pg.050-Notes 1226-1250
Pg.051-Notes 1251-1275
Pg.052-Notes 1276-1300
Pg.053-Notes 1301-1325
Pg.054-Notes 1326-1350
Pg.055-Notes 1351-1375
Pg.056-Notes 1376-1400
Pg.057-Notes 1401-1425
Pg.058-Notes 1426-1450
Pg.059-Notes 1451-1475
Pg.060-Notes 1476-1500
Pg.061-Notes 1501-1525
Pg.062-Notes 1526-1550
Pg.063-Notes 1551-1575
Pg.064-Notes 1576-1600
Pg.065-Notes 1601-1625
Pg.066-Notes 1626-1650
Pg.067-Notes 1651-1675
Pg.068-Notes 1676-1700
Pg.069-Notes 1701-1725
Pg.070-Notes 1726-1750
Pg.071-Notes 1751-1775
Pg.072-Notes 1776-1800
Pg.073-Notes 1801-1825
Pg.074-Notes 1826-1850
Pg.075-Notes 1851-1875
Pg.076-Notes 1876-1900
Pg.077-Notes 1901-1925
Pg.078-Notes 1926-1950
Pg.079-Notes 1951-1975
Pg.080-Notes 1976-2000
Pg.081-Notes 2001-2025
Pg.082-Notes 2026-2050
Pg.083-Notes 2051-2075
Pg.084-Notes 2076-2100
Pg.085-Notes 2101-2125
Pg.086-Notes 2126-2150
Pg.087-Notes 2150-2175
Pg.088-Notes 2176-2200
Pg.089-Notes 2201-2225
Pg.090-Notes 2226-2250
Pg.091-Notes 2251-2275
Pg.092-Notes 2276-2300
Pg.093-Notes 2301-2325
Pg.094-Notes 2326-2350
Pg.095-Notes 2351-2375
Pg.096-Notes 2376-2400
Pg.097-Notes 2401-2425
Pg.098-Notes 2426-2450
Pg.099-Notes 2451-2475
Pg.100-Notes 2476-2500
Pg.101-Comments 0001-0025


INDEX Links to All Pages of John's GENEALOGY COMMENTS

(As of 12 April 2007, John published the last of his "Germanna Notes"; however, he is going to periodically post to the GERMANNA_COLONIES Mailing List in the form of "Genealogy Comments" on various subjects, not necessarily dealing with Germanna.  I'm starting the numbering system anew, starting with Comment Nr. 0001.)

Pg.101-Comments 0001-0025