Another family which moved to East Tennessee was a member of the Lotspeich family. The earliest known member of this family is Johann Conrad Lotspeich of Frankenthal, a village a few miles northwest of Ludwigshafen. Conrad was a tailor and church deacon there. He married Catharina Elisabetha Wilhelminia Ladenberger and they had nine children. Three of these moved to Virginia.
The one in which we are most interested in this note is Johann Christoph Lotspeich, who was born in Frankenthal in 1750. He died at the age of 80 in Greenville, Tennessee. So far we have observed that the air in East Tennessee seems to be good for your health, especially if you take note of the Wayland family in the last note.
On the land that Christopher owned in Tennessee, one of his next door neighbors was a Broyles. Of his fifteen children (all by Rebecca Barbara Hartley), fourteen are named in his will. One daughter, Barbara, married Matthias Broyles 18 Jul 1808, in Greene County. Matthias was the son of Ephraim Broyles and Grace McCain. He, Matthias, had been born in Greene Co. in 1789, so he would seem to qualify as an early resident.
Christopher was a Quaker who would not allow any work, even cooking, on Sunday. His wife was a Methodist. Two of the sons, Ralph and Samuel, became Methodist ministers.
A grandson of Christopher, Henry Whittenberg, married Eliza B. Rector. Henry's brother, John, married Eglatine Broyles. Maybe someone can fill in more about these two Germanna people. Mary Ann Broyles, of Barbara and Matthias, married a Rector, but I have no other information.
From the number of children that Christopher Lotspeich had, and the size of the families of these children, there ought to be several descendants in East Tennessee, even though many of the people moved to other, generally westward, states. Certainly they did spread out, for at the Lotspeich Reunion last summer in Greenville, Tennessee, there were about seventeen states represented with about five families from Tennessee itself.
A brother of Christopher Lotspeich, Johann Wilhelm, also came to Virginia, and he married Magdalena Klug, the daughter of Rev. George Samuel Klug. Her sister, Eva, married Matthias Broyles. Matthias gave a power of attorney from Greene Co., Tennessee, to William Lotspeich, to sell some land in Culpeper Co., Virginia. William moved to Kentucky, not Tennessee, but the incident just cited shows that there were Klug family descendants in East Tennessee. So, in this note we have added the Lotspeich family, the Rector family, and the Klug family to the Tennessee list. Lots of ties among the families. I am not counting the Broyles and Willheits who were mentioned much earlier.
(26 Jul 01)
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.