[Forgive me for the slight interruption.]
I have been studying the 64 Communion Lists, which run from 1775 to 1812, at the Hebron Lutheran Church in the Robinson River Valley. These lists are an important tool in studying the community. Of course, the people you are studying must have gone to the communion services.
Knowing the people that a person sat next to tells something about the person. One of the people I am studying is Els Blankenbaker, who was the wife of Zacharias Blankenbaker, the son the 1717 immigrant, John Nicholas Blankenbaker. Els outlived Zach by several years, and attended church by herself for eleven Communion Services.
Els' maiden name is unknown. She was married, first, to someone besides Zach, and she had two daughters by that first marriage. (One book says that her first husband was a Finks, but the author offered no evidence.) My primary objective is to determine her maiden name. So I am looking at the people with whom she sat to see if there is a pattern there. I have not solved the puzzle yet, and may never solve it.
My current subproblem, in this particular maze, it to identify several Hofmann women who were sitting next to, or close to, Els:
At Easter 1797, Els was sitting next to Anna Hofmann and Rosina Hofmann.
At Easter 1798, Els was two away from Margaret Hofmann.
At Easter 1799, Els was two away from Elizabeth Hofmann.
On 18 Nov 1804, Els was next to Magdalena Hofmann.
On 18 May 1806, Els was two away from Magdalena Hofmann.
This is a rather unusual number of people from one family (taken in the broad sense). There may be a reason.
Remember that these Hofmanns may have acquired the Hofmann name by birthright, or by marriage. In the Huffman/Hoffman histories I cannot find all of these people. If anyone thinks they can identify any of them, please let me know.
One of the interesting aspects of the 64 sets of names of people taking Communion is that there are no male Huffmans/Hoffmans. This suggests that the males were adhering to their German Reformed beliefs. The women, such as those above, may have been Lutherans who married Huffmans. They had no objections to attending the Communion Services. Another possibility is that in the generation previous to these women, a Hoffman man married a Lutheran and the children were raised in the Lutheran faith. Therefore, these might be maiden names.
(27 Aug 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.