Today, I am going to Staunton to the Frontier Culture Museum for a gathering of people who want to remember Klaus Wust.  The place and the time are appropriate.  Klaus was one of the founding directors of the Museum of America Frontier Culture, as it was originally called.  At this time of the year they hold Oktoberfest.  Klaus might have liked that.

Klaus came to Bridgewater College on a one-year Fellowship in 1949.  At this time, he was in his mid-twenties and a newspaper editor.  He obtained a leave from his newspaper in Germany to come, and he expected to be only one year.  That was before he met Dr. John Wayland, who was delighted to have a person who could read the old German scripts which were so prevalent in the Shenandoah Valley.  Klaus soon found that the translations of some of this old material were very bad.

But more than anything, Klaus was amazed to discover so much German influence in the Valley.  He soon saw that their history had been neglected, or, in those cases where it had been told, it was wrong.  He obtained permission from his newspaper to stay a while as a foreign reporter.  He never saw an end to the reporting and research that he could do here.

John K. Gott reports that he was on the Bridgewater campus as a student when Klaus arrived at the gates.  John says he was very disheveled, dressed in old army-fatigues, and carrying a packed duffel bag on his shoulder.  Klaus spoke with a heavy accent, and John had difficulty in understanding him, but eventually he heard Klaus say that he wanted to go to the Dean's office.  John wasn't sure that he should go just immediately.  It appeared that Klaus had heard that one shouldn't touch the water in foreign places.

Klaus and John were across the dormitory hall from each other.  Together they were introduced to Dr. Wayland.  John did not even know that he had Germanna ancestors at the time but Dr. Wayland and Klaus could tell John that he did.  Both men were present at the time the Germanna Foundation was being formed, and they used to attend its meeting, held outdoors then.

When Klaus submitted the text of his book, The Virginia Germans, to the University of Virginia Press, they rejected it.  Why?  It had too many references in it.  John says that there were almost as many pages for the references and notes as for the text.  When published, there were about 31 pages of notes to the text.

If any of you are in the area of Staunton today, you may attend the meeting and "fest" with others.  The time is 2:00 PM.
(11 Oct 03)

The Memorial Meeting for Klaus Wust was memorable.  There was a good attendance, both in person and by memoranda, of people who had been involved with Klaus.  Certainly, I learned a lot about his life and work that I had not known before.  And, I learned a great deal about his family.

He is survived by his wife Monique; by two daughters, Barbara and Francoise; and by two grandchildren.

Most of his papers and books will be donated to the Shenandoah County Library in Edinburg, which will have a formidable German collection.  (They already are the keepers of the Mid-Atlantic Germanic Society Library.) The family will retain a few of Klaus' oldest books.  Donations to the Library In Memory Of Klaus Wust will be appreciated.  (Shenandoah County Library, 514 Stoney Creek Blvd., Edinburg, VA 22824.)

Klaus' last work, one that is essentially completed, is "Present Voyage", a book of the whole process of migration within Europe of German-speaking individuals, and their immigration to America.  Francoise Joiris, his daughter, will see this through to completion.

The actual event was held at the Frontier Culture Museum in their German House, a reconstructed building from the Palatinate that Klaus was instrumental in procuring and moving to the Museum.  (The building was especially interesting to me, as I compared a number of features of the building to the Hans Herr House, which was built, here in America, at about the same time as the Museum House.)  Though the day was very busy at the Museum, as they were holding Oktoberfest, the Museum closed the House for about two hours for the Wust gathering.

A theme which many of the speakers developed was that Klaus had been a big help to them.  Over and over, speaker after speaker recounted his willingness to help others.

A second theme was the scholarship of Klaus.  He tried to get the complete story and he tried to get it right without injected his own views into the discussion.  Always, he tried to use original materials, not what other historians had said.

His last public appearance was at the Germanna Reunion in the year 2002, where he was a speaker.
(13 Oct 03)

At the Memorial for Klaus Wust, Gary Grassl said it would be a waste to lose the smaller pieces written by Klaus.  They are widely distributed and someone would have to look hard to find them all.  In addition, some of them are written in German.  Gary was wondering about collecting these pieces and republishing them.  I think his idea is great.

I thought I would paraphrase an example of what Gary is talking about.  He distributed copies of this to attendees at the Memorial and I would like to promote the basic idea by my comments here.  Originally, this appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1951 (two years after he came to Virginia).

This note is about Peter Barnhart, Poet and Postillion. . .

The Postman's Predecessor.

Peter Barnhart began as a post rider in 1798, riding between Winchester and Staunton and back every two weeks.  Along the way he delivered the mail and carried news both verbally and in print from the newspaper publishers.  He followed a regular routine, both in the path and in the time of day that he arrived.  People could congregate at the taverns which served as post offices awaiting his arrival.

As he rode up and down the Valley, week after week, little rhymes came to his mind.  Some of these he wrote down.  At first he was giving them away to the children but friends of his persuaded him to have them printed.  He left a few lines of verse with Lawrence Wartmann, a printer, and asked him to print it.  He did succeed in selling these which appealed especially to children.  After this he always carried a few with him.

He was regular in his rounds, which he kept for thirty years, which allowed people to anticipate his arrivals.  And then he blew a horn as he approached the destinations.  So people could rush to the tavern to leave mail for him or to pick up mail and newspapers.

Originally, Peter was hired to deliver the newspapers up and down the valley but he expanded the service to mail of all kinds plus the sale of his poetry.  He left from his home in Winchester every Wednesday two weeks and he arrived at Rockingham on Friday evening.  The next day he went to Staunton and from there returned to his house.  Though the publisher who had originally hired him went out of business, Peter continued to carry the mail and became the first official mail carrier of the US Postal Service in the Shenandoah Valley.

When there was no post office, he stopped at the taverns.  The last one on the south bound trip was Peter Heiskell's tavern in Staunton.  At first he made one round trip every two weeks but later he had to make the trip every week.  In spite of the very poor roads and the unpredictable weather, Peter had the reputation for faithfulness.

(continued from Note Nr. 1779)

Peter Barnhard led a hard life delivering the mail.  His route from Winchester to Staunton was approximately one hundred miles and then he returned.  All of this was on horseback.  He left on Wednesday and arrived on Saturday so it was three to four days.  At first he made the trip only every other week but later he made the journey every week.  Though his career as a post rider began in 1798 and lasted for almost thirty years, the roads were only slightly better than the original Indian trail.  Today his route is approximated by Route 11.

At first, he was an unofficial carrier of the mail earning his bread by the charges for delivering letters and newspaper.  Later he became the official carrier of the mail but not every place along the route had a postoffice.  Peter had learned the names of many people and if they were not far off his route he might make a �special delivery.� Generally though he used taverns as point for leaving and dropping the mail if there were no post office.

Letters were very expensive.  The postage on a letter might cost as much as a couple dozen eggs or three chickens.  Among his special services, he would accept advertisements for the newspapers of Winchester, New Market, Harrisonburg, and Staunton.  He took orders for Gruber�s and Dietrick�s almanacs.  He carried orders to Solomon Henkel�s drug store in New Market and brought back the medicines.  He continued to sell his own rhymes which he printed with the byline, �Printed for Peter Barnhart�.

His arrival in a town always was an exciting event and the children flocked out to see and hear him.  He had a saying, �Ich bring das Neus, so gut ich�s wiess.� - which, rendered into English, means �I bring the news as well as I know it.�  This inspired Ambrose Henkel, the New Market printer, to cut a woodblock showing Barnhart on horseback blowing his horn and proclaiming his slogan.  Later Henkel used the cut on the masthead of his German language newspaper, Volksberichter, which Barnhart distributed throughout the Valley.  Subscribers to Beyond Gemanna can see it in the May 2003 issue in a reduced scale.

Gradually, the mail system grew more complex and larger and beyond the capability of one rider on a horse.  Stages took over the work and reached to more remote places carrying passengers and freight besides the mail.

I don�t know what happened to Peter Barnhart.  Let�s hope he rested.
(15 Oct 03)

There was a point or two that I failed to make when we talking about the first days, weeks, and months of the Germans at Fort Germanna.  Germans could be very resourceful in finding solutions to problems.  I give, as an example, the case of the Germans at Schoharie in New York.  After the naval stores project on the Hudson River fell apart, several of the Germans decided to move farther west to the area that became Schoharie.  The Germans had next to nothing when they went.  They wanted to plow ground for crops and a garden but they had no draft animals.  They fashioned a plow from a tree trunk and one of its limbs.  For power to pull it, they got lots of vines and tied them to the plow.  Then they called out the women.  A dozen women pulling is equal to one ox.  For freedom and independence, people will do a lot of things.

Did the First Colony people go by land or water to the site where Fort Germanna was to be built?  I suggested by water as much as possible.  From just below the falls on the Rappahannock, the limit of ship travel, to Germanna is just over twenty miles in a line.  One reader suggested that they went by wagon from the assumed staging area near Williamsburg to Germanna.  I would comment that the roads were just not there for such a trip.  When Spotswood left on the trip over the Blue Ridge Mountains, he traveled by chaise for the first part.  At Robert Beverley's place, he left the chaise and mounted his horse because he had reached the limit of decent roads.  Beverley's Place is just more than one-half of the way from Williamsburg to Germanna so it left a distance of more than fifty miles to go by land.

There was significant difference when the Second Colony arrived on the scene.  By then, there were decent roads to Germanna past the limit of water travel.  The problem for the Second Colony was organization.  Though Spotswood said they were "closely joined" for their safety, they were, in fact, about one-half mile apart.  There was one row of homes along the Rapidan River about every one-half mile.  Then in back of them, about one-half mile from the river, there was another row of houses.  They were spread out about six miles up and down the river, and about one-half mile back from the river.  The Indians could easily have attacked any one home.

Again, I must assume that the Germans built their own homes under the guidance of supervisors.  Since the supervisors could hardly travel around to the twenty-odd homes to give directions, the Germans must have congregated at one place where they received their instructions.  Then, later, they were engaged in several activities which required instructions, especially the naval stores project.  They probably had a signaling device to call everyone to a central point.  It could be used if the Indians proved menacing or if they were to gather to receive instructions.  Then again, on Sundays, it might have served as the call to come together.

We don't know how many supervisors there were on the site, but we do know that there was one for a while at Fort Germanna.  This was Francis Hume.  He died after about a year, so the supervision may not have been continuous.
(16 Oct 03)

The emigrants from the Freudenberg Parish in the year 1738 were listed in the Burial Register of the Parish by the pastor.  Otto B�umer published the material in the periodical �Heimatland: Beilage zur Siegener Zeitung�, in 1927.  Don Yoder translated the article and published it in �Pennsylvania Folklife�, Winter 1969-70, Vol. XIX, No.2, p.46.  Another English report appears in B. C. Holtzclaw�s �Ancestry and Descendants......�.  I think I have published it before in one of the notes, and I published it in �Beyond Germanna�.  As a heading to the list of the names, the pastor wrote:

�As information I wished to write down on these pages that today, the 13th of March, 1738, there left for Georgia, the new island under the protection of His Majesty the King of England, out of this land and parish, with the knowledge and consent of the authorities of this our land, the following named persons, some of them householders with wife and children, others single male persons, namely:

From Freudenberg -

Tillmanus Seelbach with his wife Anna Beata, also his son-in-law
   and daughter;

Gerlach Waffenschmidt and his wife Anna Maria with four
   children;

Henrich Ernstorf and his wife Anna Catharin with three children;

Hermann Bach and his wife Anna Margreth with one child;

Johann Fredrich M�ller and his wife Anna Maria with one child;

Hymen�us Creutz and his wife Elisabeth;

Georg Weidman, single status, Heinrich Weidman�s orphaned
   son;

Tillmanus Steinseiffer, Johann Henrich Steinseiffer�s orphaned
   son;

Johannes Hoffman from Dirlenbach, Johannes Hoffman�s son;

Johann Henrich Schmidt, Christian Schmidt�s son;

Johann Klappert, son the former village mayor in the prince�s
   government, Johannes Klappert;

Tillmany Gudelius, Christopher Gudelius� son;

Hermanus M�ller, son of the village justice, Hermanus M�ller.

From Plittershagen -

Johannes Halm and his wife Anna Catharin with two children.

From Boeschen -

Johann Henrich Schneider and his wife Maria Catharin with
   two children;

Johann Georg Hirnschal and his wife Anna Catharin with one
   child whose [Georg�s] father, Tilmanus Hirnschal, had left for
   America two years ago and just now returned and has gone
   back along with the others.

From Anstoss -

Henrich Schneider and his wife Anna Margreth with two
   children;

Hanna Schneider, Johannes Schneider�s widow, with her son
   Johannes Schneider and his wife, born in the Hadamar
   country, with four children.�

The pastor may have been confused about where they were going.  At Rotterdam, they took a ship going to Virginia.  The choice of the ship was most unfortunate.  They would have done better had they followed the Captain.  He had started the journey, but turned around and came back to Rotterdam and resigned his job.  He said the ship was too heavily loaded to venture onto the ocean.  The keel of the ship must have been dragging in the mud, for it took six months to almost get to Virginia.  Actually, it never made it to Virginia, the intended destination.
(17 Oct 03)

After the Freudenberg emigrants left in 1738, their history became very confused.  According to the minister in Freudenberg, they were going to Georgia.  Some people amplified on this theme and gave some particulars, namely that on May 8 they put out to sea from Southhampton and reached Savannah in Georgia in 134 days.  This is 19 weeks and in that sense the story is correct since it was a long voyage.

The point of difficulty that most writers have about this group is that it is very hard to find any records for the people in America.  They became the lost tribes.  B. C. Holtzclaw recognized that five of the parties did come to Virginia.  (Actually it was six.)  Holtzclaw surmised that the rest of the people, after a short stay in Georgia, went to Pennsylvania.  He said though that no trace of any of the people could be found in Georgia.

The point of difficulty in the stories is that the Freudenberg group attempted to go to Virginia on the ship Oliver.  About two of every three people on the Oliver lost their lives.  The story went something like this.  In Rotterdam there was a ship going to Virginia which was willing to take more people.  It had been chartered for a group of Swiss people who were to settle on lands of William Byrd.  Though the Oliver was not a large ship, the owners felt they could take more people, and, so, about 50 people from Freudenberg signed on.

That the ship was dangerously overloaded is told by the Captain who turned around after a few days at sea and returned to Rotterdam where he told the owners the ship was overloaded.  Since they did not want to take any people off, the Captain resigned and the owners found a new Captain.  The Oliver made very slow progress across the ocean.  It left Rotterdam at the end of June, and it was not until after January 1 that Virginia was sighted.  The passengers were slightly crazed from the lack of food and water, and, at gunpoint, they demanded the Captain take a party ashore in the longboat to search for food while the ship was anchored offshore.  Already a significant number of people had died during the crossing.  While the group was ashore, a storm came up and the Captain could not get back to the ship.  Meanwhile, the Oliver dragged its anchor and came onto a sand bar where leaks developed in the hull.  The ship capsized and a number of passengers could not escape.  All together, between the losses on the high seas and the ship wreck in sight of Virginia, about two of every three people died.  The heads of families from Freudenberg who survived are Hermann Bach, Johann Friedrich M�ller, Hermann M�ller, Georg Weidmann, and Johannes Hofmann, plus another one that Holtzclaw did not recognize, Hymen�us Creutz.  The latter generally became Herman Critz, and lived, later, in the southwest of Virginia along with Frederick Miller.
(18 Oct 03)

We were talking about ships between England (Great Britain?) and Virginia and I thought I would give some indication of the number of them.  Data was extracted from the Custom House Books to generate a report to King George I who had inherited a going business and he was wondering how it was going.  (Whether records of the individual ships have been maintained is unknown.)  The report was for the three-year period from Christmas 1714 (the year he came to the throne) to Christmas 1717.  It was their custom in annual reports to use Christmas as the starting and ending dates, maybe because nothing much happened on that day.

In this three-year period, 340 ships cleared English ports for Virginia.  This means that, on the average, about every three days a ship left England for Virginia.  The distribution of departure dates through the year would not have been uniform.  Many ships left England to arrive in Virginia to be ready to pick up tobacco to take back to England.  Here in Pennsylvania, tobacco is drying right now in the barns, but it will be taken down very shortly.  In Virginia, it would be packed into barrels or packed into containers for rolling to market.  I would suspect that somewhere around our New Year, the tobacco might be ready to begin shipping.  But the shipping continued throughout the year perhaps.  Tobacco was stored and inspected at warehouses and the shipping of it might occur at various time through the year.

The weather, no doubt, influenced when many of the ships left England.  From my personal experience in being on the Atlantic Ocean in the winter time, I would not want to schedule my trip for crossing the Atlantic in the winter.  It was not a very pleasant time.  Ships carrying passengers as their main cargo were the minority.  Every ship could carry some passengers, but the ships that specialized in passengers generally sailed west in the summer months and arrived in the late summer or early fall.  There were other factors influencing the choice of these dates, but the main one was the desire of the passengers to travel then.  I think that one problem the First Colony had in finding a ship to take them to Virginia in the winter time was the lack of ships making the trip then.

Considering the average departure rate, the number of ships leaving England in June and July was probably one a day, the peak rate.  Most of the ships were engaged in the tobacco trade, the item which dominated all trade with Virginia.  Ships made only one round trip per year across the Atlantic Ocean

It might be of interest to know that two other colonies sent more goods to England than Virginia.  The two were Barbados and Jamaica.

Ships coming and going did have notices in the newspapers.  The Customs House may have records.
(20 Oct 03)

Most people would not estimate high enough for the number of ships plying between Virginia and England.  As we saw in the last Note, there was about one ship every three days in the early Eighteenth Century.

Ships from Barbados carried goods to England worth 364,000 Pounds Sterling.  Jamaica was only slightly behind this at 332,266 Pounds (these are three year totals for 1714 to 1717).  Virginia and Maryland (combined) were in third place at 250,994 Pounds.  New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, in total, were less than Virginia.  Virginia was large, in comparison, because of the value of tobacco.  Barbados and Jamaica shipped a lot of sugar and rum to England.

Looking just at New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, the total imports to England were 300,000 Pounds Sterling.  Of this, tobacco accounted for slightly for than one-half.  What else did England import?  By value, the rankings were 35,000 Pounds for pitch and tar.  If one adds turpentine, that would be another 17,000 Pounds.  At about 20,000 Pounds each, were rice, logwood, and other goods.  Skins and furs were 17,000 Pounds.  Brown sugar was 10,000 Pounds.  Train oil was almost 8,000 Pounds and whalefins were about 4,000 Pounds Sterling.

Of the goods made in England and shipped to the North American Colonies, woolen manufacturers were 147,000 pounds.  Nothing else was more than one-quarter of this.  The categories of other items were silk, linnens, cordage, gunpowder, leather, brass, iron (this was about 35,000 Pounds), lead and shot, pewter, and other types of goods.

England also shipped goods from other countries, especially linnens, calicoes, East India goods, and iron & hemp.

The total of the exports to the North American colonies was about 431,000 Pounds Sterling while the imports were about 300,000.  It was no wonder that cash was hard to come by in the Colonies.  It was flowing to England in greater quantities than it was coming back.  This was especially true in the New England Colonies.  To make up the deficit there, they were permitted to engage in some overseas trading.

The King was advised that he had a good thing going for himself because he benefited from the custom fees for goods coming into England.  Much of what England imported from the Colonies was traded to other nations.  In 1717, tobacco consumption in England was running about eight million pounds (weight) while seventeen million pounds were being exported to other nations.

In the three-year period, the number of British ships cleared for foreign ports was 5,663, while only 330 foreign ships called in England.
(21 Oct 03)

One of the men on the ill-fated ship Oliver was John Frederick Miller (Johann Frederick M�ller).  More has been published about his ancestry than about his descendants.  He was born on August 2 in the year 1711, the son of Harmann and Anna Margaretha (H�ner) M�ller.  In 1733, he was accepted as an apprentice in the Guild of Steelsmiths and Toolmakers, of which his father was a Master.  He may have dropped out of this program, for he married Anna Maria Arnd on 4 July 1737 when he was 26 and she was 20.  On 2 January 1738, the first child, Matthias, was born at Freudenberg.  Within months the family set out on a new course in life in �Georgia�.  He was accompanied by his brother, Hermann M�ller, who was a bachelor.

It was nine years after landing before John Frederick Miller created any record in Virginia.  He entered for 400 acres on the North Fork of the Mayo River extending to the Piney Mt. Lands in the Patrick-Henry County area (now Lunenburg).  The very next entry in the record book for the same area is for Haman Crites, who is undoubtedly the Hymen�us Creutz of the 1738 Freudenberg emigration list.  Haman Crites has not generally been recognized as a Germanna citizen, and, in fact, we have no proof that he ever lived in the Germanna area.

John Frederick appeared in the court so many times that it is mystery as to where he was in nine years prior to his settlement in southern Virginia.  He may have been married more than once.  His will names a Mary as his wife, but considering the high mortality rate among the Oliver�s passengers, the odds are that his original wife did not survive the trip.  There is no record of the son that was born in Germany.  Eight more children were born in America, and for the five for which there are records, they scattered widely.  The five died in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Tennessee, and in Virginia.

The history of the family has been published in the work entitled, �The Family and Descendants of John Frederick Miller, 1711-1787�, which was produced by Clovis E. Miller in a limited edition.  Copies were filed in significant libraries and distributed privately.

One person from Freudenberg who survived the trip on the Oliver, and who did settle in the Germanna area, was George Wayman, a bachelor when he came with his cousin Harman Bach in 1738/9.  He married Catharine, last name unknown.  Shortly after coming he leased land from Robert Beverly in the Little Fork area in 1739/40.  Four children in this family are known, three of which lived in the Robinson River Valley while the fourth lived in the Little Fork area.
(22 Oct 03)

George Wayman (Weidmann) was a bachelor, age 35, when he emigrated to America with his cousin Harman Back (Bach).  He appeared early in the Virginia records after his arrival when he obtained a life lease on 100 acres on the upper side of Little Indian Run in the Little Fork area.  He married Catherine, maiden name unknown.  B. C. Holtzclaw thought that perhaps she was from the Robinson River Valley where three of their four children chose to live.

Of the four children, Joseph appears to be the eldest and he lived near Jeffersonton all of his life.  He married Ann Elizabeth Coons, the daughter of the 1737 immigrant Joseph.

George's son Harman Wayman lived in the Robinson River Valley near his brother Henry until 1793 when he (Harman) disappears.  Harman first married Elizabeth Clore, daughter of Peter Clore and his wife Barbara Yager.  Elizabeth Clore is identified by the will of Adam Yager, which mentions my granddaughter Elizabeth Wayman.  A child of Harman and Elizabeth, Solomon, is shown in the Hebron Church records as born on 13 May 1777.  Elizabeth died about 1790/91, since in 1792 Harman married Frances Clore, the cousin of Elizabeth.

Mary Wayman married Adam Utz prior to 1776.  Adam Utz was a son of Michael Utz and his wife Susanna Crigler.

Henry Wayman was married twice.  The second wife has been widely recognized and she was (Anna) Magdalena Blankenbaker, the daughter of John Blankenbaker and Mary Margaret Utz.  John's will in 1791 names Mary Magdalena, "...who is now married to Henry Wayman."  However, prior to this Henry Wayman was married to another woman whose name appears also to be Mary Magdalena.  The two women, unfortunately, have been confused and condensed into one by many researchers.

The first wife is Mary Magdalena, the stepdaughter of Zacharias Blankenbaker.  We do not know what this Mary Magdalena's mother's maiden name or Mary Magdalena's maiden name was.  We know only that she was generally called Els at the church.

A book "Some Martin, Jefferies, and Wayman Families, and Connections of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Indiana" has comments about Henry Wayman which imply that he was married twice and that the name of one of the wives was Finks.  There is no Finks who conveniently falls into place for this except the second tithe, in Mark Finks' family, in the late 1730s.  Mark Finks had no sons who were old to qualify as tithes, nor does he appear to have been a slave owner.

The proof that Henry Wayman was married to someone in the Zacharias Blankenbaker family comes from the Church Records at "Hebron" which show that Henry was very closely associated with the family of Zacharias Blankenbaker.
(23 Oct 03)

Siegfried Fischbacher grew up in the outskirts of Rosenheim in the Bavarian Alps.  As a boy he spotted a magic book in a bookstore window.  He couldn't afford the book, even at five Marks.  The fates must have known of his desire to own the book because he happened to find the five Marks on the sidewalk across from the store.  The five Marks did not remain in his possession very long, though the book did.  He memorized and mastered every trick in the book.  Once he performed a trick for his father and this seemed to be the first time that his father had ever noticed him.

Across the country, near Bremerhaven, another boy found solace in the company of his half-dog half-wolf Hexe.  On a walk with Hexe, Roy Horn found himself in danger of sinking in quicksand.  Hexe, sensing the danger, went to find the help that saved Roy's life.  Roy's bond with animals only grew stronger as a result.

Roy put it, "Siegfried and I are alike.  In magic he found a way to escape the unhappy atmosphere of his home life and receive the attention from other people he never got from his parents.  For me, the escape route from a childhood seen through silent tears to solace and peace was through animals."

Roy found comfort at the Bremen Zoo where he religiously visited a cheetah named Chico.  He gained the trust of Chico enough so that the keepers allowed him to help care for Chico by feeding him and taking him on walks.  "Chico and Hexes were my family, my closest confidants."

On a German cruise ship the "Bremen", Siegfried was a steward and Roy was a waiter.  Eventually, Siegfried began to perform on the liner as a magician.  At this time, the two men had never met.  Once, Siegfried asked Roy to assist him in his show.  After the show, Roy asked if Siegfried could make a cheetah disappear like the doves and the rabbit in the act.  "In magic, anything is possible," was the reply.

On the next trip, Siegfried smuggled Chico aboard the ship.  Soon Chico became a part of Siegfried's performance.  Also, Roy became a part of the show and this was the beginning of Siegfried and Roy.  They work mostly in the United States now, especially in Las Vegas.

The combination of Siegfried's magic and Roy's bonds with animals led to the creation of the world-famous duo that has performed live more than 20,000 times.  Besides their passion for performing before audiences, the pair have become leaders in the conservation efforts of the Royal White Tigers and Magical White Lions.  Raising the animals from birth, the pair use many of the animals in their shows.
(24 Oct 03)

The story about Siegfried and Roy in the last note came from the �German Life� magazine for June/July 2003.  Other articles on the index page of this issue are �Enchanted Blaubeuren�, a Schwaebische Alb village, �Complex Koblenz�, the town where the Mosel and Rhein Rivers join, �The Scent of First Love�, the Europa Rosarium, the world�s largest collection of Roses, and �Mr. Martin�s Guitars�, the favorite of Gene Autry.

Siegfried states, �You could say we�ve never grown up.  We still dream as children do, and we want to bring out the children in people, to encourage them to dream as they did when they were children.�  The duo also stresses the importance of people seeing the magic around them and in nature.  Roy stated, �All around us is magic.  Just open your eyes, and you�ll see it.�

One of the stories in �German Life� is about German-American Destinations in the U.S.  One of them was news to me, Anaheim (California), which even has a German name meaning �home by the river Ana�.  A group of German immigrants purchased land and started vineyards.  The Los Angeles Vineyard Society was formed.  The vineyard flourished because of the irrigation and protective steps taken to protect the vineyard from wild animals.  An unknown plague wiped out the vineyards in the late 1800s.  The owners turned instead to developing orange groves at a time when they were novelties.  They became so important that the county was named Orange County.  Even today, Anaheim is the world�s largest exporting center of Valencia oranges and citrus byproducts.

The population grew four times in the years 1953 to 1955 due to the influence of Disneyland.  Tourism became the biggest product of the area.  The German influence had waned during WWI.

Fredericksburg in the Hill Country of Texas exudes its German heritage.  The people have treasured their German ancestry, perhaps because such a large percentage of the people have some German ancestors.  The town was established in 1849, against odds, by Baron Otfried Hans von Meusebach (or John O. M.� as he called himself here).  One hundred and twenty German colonists were the nucleus.  Each settler got ten acres outside the town and a lot in the town.  The farmers built rest stops (Sunday Houses) on their town lots.  Today many of these have been converted into bed and breakfast places (more than 300 hundred available today).  Minna Engel established a trading post named Luckenbach on the family�s ten acre parcel.  For years, the site was home to Schuetzenfests, Saengerfests, weddings, and reunions.  The fame grew when folk humorist Hondo Crouch bought Luckenbach, population 3, in 1970.  It became a refuge for musicians and free spirits.

Long Grove, Illinois; Hermann, Missouri; and Stowe, Vermont, are three more places mentioned in the article.
(25 Oct 03)

Long Grove, Illinois, is German all the way except for the name, though the name was originally proposed to be Mutterscholz.  The first bit of civilization in Long Grove was that it was the crossroads of two Indian paths.  The first European family in the vicinity was the Ruth family in the 1840s.  Shortly thereafter, residents of the town of Mutterscholz in the Alsace-Lorraine sent a scout to the New World and, whether by design or by chance, the attention focused on Illinois.  We often think of the immigrants from the Alsace as Anabaptists who had fled from Switzerland and were still seeking a homeland.  In this case, though, the would-be emigrants were Lutherans.  Their motivations may have something to do with the instability in the area and especially the influence of the French.

Mutterscholz in Illinois quickly filled up with Germans.  The language of choice was German and all private and public documents were written in German.  The first public building finished was a German Lutheran Church, and the first service, in German, was held in 1848.  The English neighbors even purchased a bell for the church but they drew the line at naming the village Mutterscholz.

The bell was welcome addition for, in addition to announcing worship services, it kept track of the time for daily events.  It rang early for a getting-up time and called the farmers home from their fields for dinner (noon).  Births, weddings, and deaths (one peal for each year of the age) were also announced.

Life was a blend of German and American ways.  Christ Sauer served a normal German apprenticeship at the general store but enlisted in the Union army when the Civil War started.  The town grew and had four one-room schoolhouses by 1880 and all of the businesses which make a market town and a support center.  In the 1920s and 1930s the town went into a sleepy decline.  Little was changed but the pace became slower and the number of residents fell.  A revival began in the 1940s when some women started an antique store which was a success.

The county officials then helped by recognizing the unique characteristics of the town and requiring all future modifications conform to the style of the early 1800s (wheel chair ramps are required though).  Today the town caters to tourists and the locals.  Many sites and houses are still called by their original German names.  Today, though, a "foreign element" has crept in.
(27 Oct 03)

As we continue to visit some German-American points of interest in the U.S., we will stop at Hermann, Missouri, located about 80 miles west of St. Louis.  Hermann is not a random pick for a name; it honors Hermann (Arminius in Latin), who vanquished three Roman Legions in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D.

Hermann, MO, began as a joint stock company in 1836 on 11,000 acres of land (equal in size to a square of land a little more than four miles on a side).  The impetus and initial support was provided by the Deutsche Ansiedling-Gesellschaft zu Philadelphia (i.e., The German Settlement Society of Philadelphia).  The Society members, horrified to see the loss of German heritage and traditions among their countrymen in the U.S., dreamed of a self-supporting colony where their culture would flourish in the New World, a kind of "German Athens of the West".  Advertising in the eastern U.S. and in Germany brought 17 colonists, including 8 children, one year later.  They were horrified to find that the grand city of Hermann consisted of two simple log cabins that were already occupied.  The first winter was not easy.

By 1839, an influx of eager colonists had expanded Hermann�s population to 450.  The settler�s industry and persistence were rewarded as their community grew to include five stores, two large hotels, and a post office.  In time, "Little Germany" became home to two German newspapers, two brass bands, shooting clubs, and a variety of theatrical and musical entertainments.  As the Settlement Society had hoped, folk customs transplanted from the Old World continued to thrive in the new.  Fastnacht (Shrove Tuesday) saw masked young people in fancy costumes roaming from house to house, begging for Fastnacht cakes and sweets.  The Maifest (May Festival) celebration featured dancing around a Maypole and special games.  In the autumn, the Erntefest included a procession of wagons each representing a particular crop.

Where is the second tallest monument in the U.S.?  The Statue of Liberty is the tallest.  Would you believe the second tallest is in New Ulm, Minnesota?  Whom do you think is atop this New Ulm monument?  Hint:  In what country is the old Ulm?  So, let�s look for a famous man from that country.  If you should guess (or know) that it is Hermann, then you would be correct.  We just learned that Hermann defeated the Romans in 9 A.D. and halted the expansion of Rome into the areas north of the Rhine River.  Friedrich Beinhorn emigrated from Germany in 1852 and worked with immigrant groups to launch the settlement which became New Ulm in Minnesota, 90 minutes southwest of Minneapolis (if you go by car).  It was not easy to get New Ulm going.  There were two Dakota Indian battles in 1862 followed by a locust plague and a horrific cyclone.

Some say New Ulm is the best way to visit Germany in the U.S.  There are year-around festivals (40 to 60 events listed each year), cultural events, German architecture, culinary delights, a brewery, and a winery (with tasting tours).

Close to the Hermann monument is the Glockenspiel with performances by 12 animated figures telling the story of the early German settlers.  During the Christmas season, these give way to a creche display.  The carillon also plays three times each day.  The Bohemian immigrants also have their own display.  They came from the German-speaking western rim of Bohemia.  They and their descendants are renowned for their rich musical traditions which they parade at festivals and other performances.  A major event is Fasching, the South German version of Mardi Gras, which will falls on February 24 next year, preceding the Lenten season.  It features a "fool�s parade".  Members wear colorful costumes and handcrafted masks.  Originally, it was meant to chase winter away.  On the same day another Fasching will be held at the brewery.  It is called "Bock Fest" (Bock means goat).  The Bock is ancient symbol for winter to be chased away.  In New Ulm, the name of the game is to capture one of the seven B�cke.  A word of warning - all Bock festivities are held outdoors and sometimes the B�cke have not been chased away.

In summer time, July more exactly, the fools of Fasching show up again to entertain visitors.  Also, the Heinzelm�nnchenfamilie, the garden gnomes, show up to entertain.  There is Hans, his wife Carolla, son Johann, and daughter Angelika.  Though these garden gnomes are popular in Germany, they originated in Turkey.  Over the centuries they emigrated to Germany.  The fall of the year brings Oktoberfest.  Need I say more?  There is more.
(30 Oct 03)

Craig Kilby is correct; there are structures taller than the Hermann Monument in New Ulm.  I think the question hinges on the definition of "monument".  Hermann and the Statue of Liberty incorporate a human-like figure in their design, whereas the Washington Monument and the St. Louis Arch do not.  But even this is a technicality right now because Hermann is not resting on the top of the monument.  He was removed for repairs and is to be reinstalled by next year in time for the 150th anniversary of the founding of New Ulm.  The Minnesota weather had taken its toll on Hermann.  (Obviously, the source of my information was not correct.)

Out beyond New Ulm there is another town with a German-like name, Bismarck, North Dakota.  Bismark is not quite as old as New Ulm, being founded only 131 years ago.  Some settlers in the area founded it, as Camp Hancock, at the Missouri River to protect crews working on the Northern Pacific Railway.  Hoping to attract German capital to the railroad, the camp was renamed for the German Chancellor Prince Otto von Bismarck within a year.  It was known as "The Crossing" for the ford of the Missouri River that could be made there.

At about the same time, gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874 and Bismarck became an important business center for the miners.  During the heydays of the gold rush, Bismarck was known as the wildest town in the West.  Duncan McEachran, on his way to Fort Benton, had to make a three-day stopover in Bismarck.  He seems to have sampled all of the enterprises in the town and to have left a written description of them.

"Bismarck was started by the opening of a whiskey shop and though it now contains a population of over 2,000, the example set by the pioneer has been faithfully followed, since at least three-fourths of the buildings are grog shops, gambling houses, or places of amusement."  (There was even an opera house, entered through a grog shop, where the audience smoked or chewed tobacco.)  "About a half dozen women acted as waiters and their dress and manners indicated the life of immorality which they lead."

Incorporated in 1875, it became the Capital of Dakota Territory two years after McEachran�s visit in 1883.  Shortly thereafter, the Territory was divided into two states in November 1889, and Bismarck became the seat of government of the State of North Dakota.  Aside from the name of the place, Germans seem to have nothing to do with the founding or the early character of the Bismarck.  I thought it was of interest as to how it acquired its name.  My information comes from Robert and Barbara Selig.

(I changed email programs recently in an attempt to cut out part of the spam back at the Internet Service Provider (ISP).  So far in less than a week, they have stopped more than 700 emails.  A byproduct of this is that I have to learn another program and there are details that I do not yet understand.)
(31 Oct 03)

A Germanna Colonist could be defined as one of full or partial German-speaking descent, who lived in the Eighteenth Century in the modern counties of Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange, Rappahannock, or Spotsylvania.

Work to be done:  We have many people whose origins are unknown.  From the Second Colony, let me give the names of Barlow, Rouse, and Nonnenmacher by way of example.  They had a major presence in the Robinson River Valley community.  We do not know where they came from.  There are several names in the Robinson River Valley which are also found around Neuenbuerg where the Blankenbakers came from.  The area there is probably a good place to start searching; however, the haunting question is why Zimmerman and Cerny did not find them if they are from that area.  We have got a lot of searching to do.

There are some names for which we do not have a good classification, such as Marr and Rucker.  One finds these names on gravestones and in telephone books in Germany.  Are these two Robinson River Vally families German families or not?  Do we have any signatures of the earliest people which well help tell us?

Then we have a few families for which we know the village of origin, but no search has been done there.  Finding the records may be a problem in itself.  Then they would have to be examined, probably on the site.  A good example of this case is Cyriacus Fleischmann from Klings.  Klings is where he said he was from in his marriage record and the most common name in the Klings graveyard today is Fleischmann.  We are surely right up to that point.  Can we find the records and then can we do some research?  Klings was in the former East Germany where they were casual about the church records.  Several other Germanna people have identified villages in Mittelfranken and I think these remain unexamined.

By my opening definition of a Germanna Colonist, there are some for whom we know nothing, so to speak.  For example, in John Alcock�s book, "Fauquier Families 1759-1799", I find, on a quick scan of the index, these names:  Shultz, Stigler, Swarz, and Funck.  These may not be the best German spelling, but I would bet the names are not Irish.

I will touch on more problem areas but I want to outline some of the work to be done.  A lot of people would vote for an emphasis on the known Germanna names whose German origins are yet unknown.

If you will be in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area tomorrow, drop in to see me at the Hans Herr House.
(01 Nov 03)

I concluded in the last note by mentioning some German names of people who apparently lived in Fauquier County during the Eighteenth Century.  Yet, we don�t list them in among the Germanna Colonists.  Almost in the same category are a number of names for which a little bit is known but not a lot.  Some of these, for purposes of illustration and not necessarily living in Fauquier Co., are Wolfenberger, Lehman, Leyerle, Gerhardt, Crecelius, Ernest, and Wrede.  It would be nice to know what happened to them before and after their stay in the Germanna area.

We need a better inventory of who the people from Germany might be.  Hank Z. Jones reports in "More Palatine Families" about a group of people who left Eiserfeld just south of Siegen in 1763.  Eiserfeld is adjacent to Eisern and the two villages sent people from 1713 up through the 1740s that we know about.  In 1763, there was a mass exodus from Eiserfeld considering the small size of the village.  The traveled on the ship Chance to Philadelphia.  The names of the "men" were Johann Engel Becker, Tilman Becker, Johannes Daub, Johann Henrich L�ck, Johann Wilhelm L�ck, Johann Peter Schneider, Johann Jost Schultz� widow, and Johann Friedrich Still.  The chances are that most of these people settled in Pennsylvania at first and perhaps indefinitely.

But why might the history of these people be important to us?  Consider the Clore family in the Robinson River Valley (RRV).  There were Clore marriages with Stonesifers, Waymans, and Railsbacks who came from the Siegen area and who were of the Reformed faith.  There was also a John Becker who married a Clore girl.  Now John Becker does not appear in the Lutheran communion lists but does appear for baptisms of his children.  This would be what we expect of a Reformed person.  Could this John Becker be from the Siegen area?  Aaron Spencer Fogleman in "Hopeful Journeys" has found more than 300 people in the records for Schwaigern who left in the Eighteenth Century (unfortunately, he does not give us the names).  We are aware of several families such as the Kochs, Willheits, Reiners, Baumgardners, Dieters (Teters), and Lederers who came from Schwaigern but these fall short of the 300.  We are aware of the Willheit branch who immigrated to Pennsylvania.  It is said that they spell the name here as Wilhide instead of Wilhite but I should imagine there were some crossovers.  So it may be that not every Willheit/Wilhite/Wilhoit is descended from Johann Michael Willheit of the RRV.

I leave you now with a question.  Suppose a man leaves Germany in 1717 and goes to England, but fails to find a ship for America.  The English send him back to Rotterdam.  He finds temporary work there and a couple of years later manages to make his way to American, Virginia in particular.  Is this man a member of the Second Colony?  He left at the same time as the Second Colony members but his travels just took a little longer.
(03 Nov 03)

I now turn to a very serious question.  Of the information that we say we know, how much is correct?  Let me give an example from the Rector family.  This was a well-researched family with published genealogies.  In the fifteen years, though, since Beyond Germanna started, we have learned a lot more thanks to some able researchers.  Some of the results are:  John Rector, the son of the immigrant, Jacob Rector, was married twice.  Unfortunately, we do not know with certainty how the children divide between the two women, though we have some suggestions.  In another case, a John Rector turned out to be two John Rectors.  Uriah and Maximilian Rector have now been correctly placed in families.  Each of these items corrects a previous mistake.

What is the situation in other families?  The suggestion from the Rector family is that it not good.  A lot more research is needed in several families to improve the history.  Whether we will ever find the information is not clear.  But more work is needed and a feeling that "my family" is correct may be premature.

As I have read B. C. Holtzclaw reporting the genealogies in Germany, I grow very nervous at the easy going way in which one generation is connected to another generation.  He often has to admit that a first supposition was not correct.  More work is needed in Germany in the church and in the civil records.  A good example where a lot has been done in Germany is the Gaar family where the Theodore Walker family sponsored research in the field.  For Andreas Gaar and Eva Seidelmann, the immigrants, there are about forty-five ancestors, perhaps a record for any Germanna immigrant family.  (If anyone knows a family with more, please advise us here.  I would really like to know who has the most proven ancestors.) There are still some questions about the Gaar family that may be answered.  For one, I would like to know where they came from.

We have not explored all of the records.  There are some in unlikely places.  The last issue of Beyond Germanna reports of some baptisms in London of people we know in the Germanna community (thanks to Andreas and Sandra).  I hope to be able to do some more research in the records there.

So much to do.  As I have been listing all of the work which lies before us, I have been emphasizing the genealogical questions.  We also have the whole field for study of why our ancestors did what they did.  What were their motivations?  It may be harder to get answers here than in the genealogies.  Certainly the answers that have been put forth are full of errors.  People keep repeating the errors.  Marc Wheat suggests a preparation for the three-hundredth anniversary.  What better thing could we do than to know, with some reasonableness, why the people left in 1713?
(04 Nov 03)

"The Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York" report several statistics about the 1710 immigration into that state, all of whom were �Palatines�.  They give the occupations of the men, married and unmarried, as follows:

OCCUPATION	Number
Husbandmen & Vine Dressers	830
Carpenters	68
Linen Weavers	49
Tailors	41
Masons	39
Smiths	35
Coopers and Brewers	34
Shoemakers	28
Bakers	22
Butchers	22
Millers	18
Joiners	16
Wheelwrights	11

OCCUPATION	Number
Schoolmasters	8
Tanners	7
Saddlers	6
Tinoners (Dyers)	6
Brickmakers	3
Herdsmen	3
Hunters	3
Miners	3
Potters	3
Stocking Weavers	3
Lock Smiths	2
Surgeons	2
Statuary	1
TOTAL	1,232

Though this is a biased sample in the sense that these are the occupations that chose to leave Germany, it still gives us some insight into what life in Germany was like.  The first thought is that the majority of the people lived on and from the land.  These are the people who grew the food.  Since about two of every three people were doing this, one sees that a farmer did not produce an abundance of food.  The surplus production, beyond the family�s consumption, of two farmers could also feed a third family.  If it was a bad year for crops, hunger might not be long in following.
(05 Nov 03)

A reader asks if I can identify the John Smith who married Jemima Yager in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century.  I cannot do this positively but if I were forced to make a guess I would say his father was Nicholas Smith.  Let me make that last statement even weaker.  I would say that John Smith, son of Nicholas Smith, should be investigated as a possible candidate.

There were three broad Smith families in the Robinson River Valley, two "German" and one "English".  Matthias Schmidt, the 1717 immigrant, had a son Nicholas, who in turn had a son John who has never been assigned a marriage.  Nicholas married Mary Magdalena Reiner, who came about 1750.  Therefore the son John would not be an impossible husband for Jemima, who, by my notes, is assigned a birth of 1772.

Michael Schmidt, the other German Smith family, also came in 1717.  He had a son Michael (both sometimes used Johann as the first name).  Michael, Jr., had a son John who moved to Kentucky quite early (there is no record in the RRV after 1777).  So there are no candidate Johns in this family.

The English Smith family, from Isaac Smith who married Margaret Rucker, had four sons born just about the middle of the century.  None of these had sons named John.  (I did not explore the next generation.)

In the Culpeper Classes of 1782, in Class 93 there is a John Smith (the only one in the Classes).  Other members of the class are Adam Yager and Godfrey Yager.  Also, in this class there is a Nicholas Smith.  Thus we could have as neighbors, John Smith, his father, and his possible father-in-law.  This juxtaposition, combined with the lack of any marriage for John Smith, makes me wonder if the husband (second one) of Jemima (Yager) Yager might not be this John Smith.  (The first husband of Jemima Yager was Nicholas Yager.)

Though there is only one John Smith in the 1782 Culpeper Classes; the 1787 personal property tax list for Culpeper is loaded with John Smiths.  So the evidence that I have presented here might not be evidence after all but merely a guide to where look in more detail.

The Jemima Yager in the "Hebron" Baptismal lists and in the "Hebron" Communion Lists is the daughter of Michael Yager and Elizabeth Crigler who is slightly older.

The books mentioned here except the tax lists are available from me.  Send me an email for more information.
(06 Nov 03)

(I was hoping someone could tell me what a tinoned was because I don�t know.  My guess would be that they worked with tin, i.e., tin smiths.)

Andreas Mielke and Sandra Yelton had information about the London (England) German churches.  One of these is the Hamburg Lutheran Church, which existed to serve the needs of the permanent German residents in London, plus those on temporary duty there.  The microfilm of the records for this church came in and I spent some time reading the information.  It went fast because the writing was good and it was in English (usually).

Often, the occupations of the people were given.  Here are some of them:

Physician	Surgeon	Apothecary	Spinnet Maker
Chaplain	Coachman1	Button Maker	Posement Maker2
Count	Tailor	Watchman	Swedish Resident
Soldier	Shoe Lapper	Clerk	Postillion3
Labourer	Bookkeeper	Shipper	Periwig4 Maker
Silversmith	Laceman	Showman	One of the Palatines5
Sugar Boiler	Goldsmith	Shoemaker	Quack Doctor6
Artist	Jeweler

¹(for Mylord Portland)
²(my dictionary says "perplexity")
³(A person who rides the near horse of the leaders to guide the horses drawing a coach.)
⁴(A wig worn by men in the 17th and 18th centuries, also called a "peruke".)
⁵(in 1710)
⁶(Those are the exact words used)

Many of these are mentioned more than once but several of the people appear over and over.  There was a permanent core of people.

The range of social standings was tremendous.  It ranged from a Count to day laborer.

The localities where the people lived are mentioned as an aid to identifying them.  Some of the names are:

James Street,
Blackfriars,
Lovelane,
Kensington Square,
Charing Cross,
Lincoln Fields,
Red Lyon Square, and
"Upon London Bridge".

The man who was a postillion lived "in Threadneedle Street over against the Angel & Crown".

One of the names that occurs very often is Sch�tz.  This set me to thinking of John Michael Stoltz who had a land patent in 1725 in Hanover County, Virginia.  As I reflect on this, it would have possible for some of the Germans living in London to decide to move on to Virginia.  Germans who had made the move initially to England may have moved on then to Virginia.  The first entry in the Hamburg Lutheran Church is for 1669.  There must have been a need at that date for the church to have been started.

Later, a relative of one of our Germanna citizens lived in London.  This was Rudolph Ladenberger, whose niece, Friedrika, married Francis Jacoby in St. Martins in the Field Church.  Rudolph was a wine merchant who apparently spent most of his adult life in London.
(07 Nov 03)

George asked for the names of military heroes.  I give him the name of Thomas Mack Wilhoite in this note.  He had a ship named after him, the U.S.S. Wilhoite, DE-397, a destroyer escort.

Thomas Mack Wilhoite enlisted in the Naval Reserve at Guthrie, Kentucky, in 1941 at the age of 20.  After indoctrination training he was sent to the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida, where he was appointed a naval aviator on 6 Feb 1942.  With his new commission, he reported for Advanced Carrier Training at Norfolk.  By the fall of the year he was on the U.S.S. Ranger, a carrier assigned to the invasion of North Africa.

Flying an F4F-4 Wildcat, Wilhoite and others were assigned to attack the Vichy French airdrome at Rabat-Sale, the headquarters of the Vichy French air forces in Morocco.  He pressed a determined attack and put three bombers afire.  His second attack, later in the day, was against the Port Lyautey airdrome.  For the third attack of the day he was sent against another airfield and its planes.  He destroyed one fighter before he was hit by the intense flak of the ground gunners and he crashed without any chance of escape.  In all of these attacks, the method was to strafe the enemy airplanes requiring him to approach very close to them and to the ground.

Wilhoite received the Silver Star posthumously for displaying "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity" during the strikes.  His "superb airmanship and tenacious devotion to duty" were also mentioned.

The keel for the DE-397 was laid 4 August 1943 and was commissioned on 16 December of that year with Lt. Eli Roth in command.  In two months, the Wilhoite was on convoy duty to Gibraltar.  A major duty of destroyer escorts was to provide protection for merchant ships against enemy submarines.  The ship was supplied with radar, sonar, and other electronic countermeasures.  Its principal weapon was depth charges.  Destroyer escorts also served as the outermost contact points for military convoys to provide early detection of enemy submarines, aircraft, and ships.

Throughout the year 1944, the Wilhoite served in the Atlantic Ocean.  At the end of European hostilities, she passed through the Panama Canal to join the Pacific fleet.  Without any significant action in the Pacific, the Wilhoite was decommissioned on 19 June 1946.  Reactivated in 1954, the Wilhoite went to serve in various activities until 1969 when she was retired with seven battle stars.
(08 Nov 03)