John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 803

For a break, here is an early Germanna immigrant who did NOT come from the same area as many others did.  That is John Harnsberger, with a name that looks very German, and is simple, but gave people fits in spelling it.  It turns out that he was from Switzerland, where his immediate ancestors are to be found in the village of Thurgau.  The church was Evangelical, which usually means Lutheran (but I thought the dominant Protestant group in Switzerland was the Reformed church).  When one sees the spelling of the family name, Heerensperger (Swiss), one better appreciates the difficulty of spelling it in English.  In the German-speaking areas of Switzerland, the same given names, when found in Germany, duplicate the Swiss names, judging by these earlier names in the Harnsberger family:  Susanna, Margaretha, Hans Cunrad, Jacob, Hans Joachim, Ursula, Dorothea, Hannss Hansmann, Dorothea, and Hanss Caspar.  Several of our Germanna people have an element of their ancestry in Switzerland.  (Thanks go to Pam Benckhuysen for some of the information here.)

Michael Holt ( Hold in German) came as a young bachelor and found a wife in Virginia.  He was accompanied by his mother and step father (John Spade/Johannes Späth).  They were from the village of Stetten am Heuchelberg , which is a bigger name than the village.  There are four roads out of town, one to Gemmingen, one to Schwaigern, one to Zaberfeld, and one to Brackenheim.  All four of these villages have been mentioned and none are more than a few miles away.  Incidentally, descendants have sponsored some research, which has disclosed some technical errors in the " Before Germanna " account.  Michael Holt's claim to being a member of the Second Colony is based on the lawsuit of Spotswood against him, and having land patented in 1726.

Andrew Kerker's claim to fame in the Germanna community is that he is an ancestor of all of the Carpenters who descend from John Carpenter.  Andrew Kerker immigrated in 1717.  (He stated this in his proof of importation, which also noted that his wife, Margaret, and daughter, Barbara, came with him.)  In Germany, he was Andreas Kercher, a miller at Zazenhausen (in 1709); however, it appears that he may have moved from village to village to find work.  At Zazenhausen, the birth of Barbara is noted (she was born 2 Apr 1709).  Today, Zazenhausen is a northern suburb of Stuttgart.  As such, it is hard to distinguish as an entity on the map.  It is outside the region from which most of the Second Colony came.  Harnsberger and Kercher are two Second Colony families that did not live on the one page of my map atlas.  (The early John Broyles was also off the page, but he was on the page at the time of emigrating.)

When did the Second Colony come together?  Probably not until they found themselves looking for a ship to take them to Pennsylvania.  Some of the people traveled together from the day they left their homes, but the group, as a whole, did not coalesce until later.