One of the statements that I have read more than once is that Peter Broyles married Elizabeth Blankenbaker. This is an error. Peter was the son of Jacob Broyles and Mary Catherine Fleshman. The Elizabeth that he married was the daughter of the wife of Zacharias Blankenbaker. The name of Elizabeth's mother and Zach's wife was Alcy and beyond that we know hardly anything about her.
Zacharias Blankenbaker married a widow with two daughters. The widow's maiden name and even her given name are unknowns. She was called Alcy, which is usually taken as a nickname for Elizabeth. Her daughters by her first marriage were Elizabeth and Mary Magdalena. Elizabeth married Peter Broyles, and Mary Magdalena married Henry Wayman.
One of the children of which Zacharias was the father was John. If you study the baptisms in which this John Blankenbaker was involved, it is possible to discern that Henry Wayman was married twice. The reasoning is very complex, but the conclusion is inescapable. After I had reached this conclusion, some information from the book, " Some Martin, Jefferies, and Wayman Families and Connections of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Indiana ," came to my attention. It stated that Henry Wayman had two wives (confirming my conclusions based on the baptisms), and it gave the surname of one of his wives as Finks.
Tentatively, I have taken the name of Henry Wayman's first wife as Mary Magdalena Finks (his second wife was a Blankenbaker). Thus, Alcy had been married to a Finks before she married Zacharias Blankenbaker. Since the first child of Zacharias and Alcy was born in 1750, Alcy had been married in the 1740's, and had had two daughters from this first marriage. Then her husband died. Who are the Finks that could be her husband? In the 1739 tithe list for Orange County, Virginia, Mark Finks has two tithes in his household. This could be himself and a younger brother (he would not have had any sons old enough to be tithes by 1739).
When the Register of Baptisms at the Hebron Church was rewritten in 1775, the family of Zacharias was put on one of the last pages, not on one of the first pages, which generally start with the births of the early 1750's. This was a puzzle to me for a long time, as Zacharias' first child was born in 1750. As I studied the Register, I realized that no family was included except those whose first child was born in 1750, or after 1750. Zacharias presented a challenge. He had married a widow with children born before 1750. At first, the family of Zacharias was not given a page in the Register because of this. But these were not Zacharias' children . Upon reflecting, and probably debating the issue, it was decided to include a page for Zacharias' natural children, but not his stepchildren.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.