Apparently Catherine Finks was the eldest child of Mark Finks and his wife Elizabeth. Catherine married Christopher Crigler, and they had children from 1751 to 1778, a span of 27 years. If we say that the youngest child was born when she was 44, the first (eldest) child was born when she was about 17. These are reasonable numbers, so she was probably born about 1734. This was about the time that Mark Finks started appearing in the records in Orange County.
Through this general period, Mark Finks appears in several incidental records. He was a defendant in a 1736 assault and battery case, which was dismissed in 1740. He was a witness on 24 Nov 1736. He appeared in the Orange County list of tithables. In 1737, he was in the list of Davis Phillips with one tithe. In 1737, Timothy Finks was also in the list of Isaac Haddock with two tithes. In 1739, Joseph Pickett included Mark Finks in his list, with two tithes.
So there appeared to have been two male Finks, Mark and Timothy. Timothy could hardly have been a son of Mark as Mark does not appear to be that old. My suggestion has been that Timothy and Mark were brothers. Later, I will even suggest a marriage for Timothy, which occurred after Mark married, so Timothy might have been a younger brother.
On 29 May 1741, "John Kines, Henry Philip Hart, Robert Appleby, Robert McPherson, Margaret McPherson, Alexander McPherson, Susanna McPherson, Joseph Harris & Mark Fink in open court severally made oath they were imported from Great Britain or Ireland immediately into this Colony and that this is the first time of proving their importation in order to obtain land ..." [ Orange County Order Book 2, page 366ff ].
Already it is beginning to sound as if we are discussing an atypical German. Especially when my notes say that when he signed his will, Mark used English script, not German script. Two of the individuals who appeared in court with Mark Finks above appear in the community later. These are Kines (who might be a Kaines) and Hart (Michael Thomas married, as his second wife, a Hart woman). From the importation order, we know that Mark was not born in the colonies. (In my earlier comments, above, I suggested he may have been born in the British Empire.)
Reader comments are invited. One reader suggested that Mark must have owned land to have been on the Jury, since land ownership was generally a requirement of voting (true). But, I don't know whether this was a juror qualification or not.
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.