The extant records for the Evangelical German Lutheran Church in Madison County, VA, commence with records in 1750. Since Pastor Klug was active from 1738 until his death in 1764, it would seem that records were kept prior to 1750. We are not sure though.
The extant baptismal records were first written in 1775, even though the earliest baptism they mention is in 1750. In this rewriting of the baptismal records, the data was organized by families. No family was included who had children born before 1750. If a family is included in the register, it is safe to bet that the family had no children before 1750.
My view is that the decision was made, not to include a family if they could not provide complete data for the family. I believe, in this view, that no records had been kept before 1750, which led to the decision to include only those families whose first child was born in, or after, 1750.
In the rewrite of the information, the compilers of the data were working with written records, except in the cases of Henry and George Miller, who moved from Pennsylvania. And in these cases the lack of good records is obvious.
In the rewrite, the compilers omitted families who had moved away. This is understandable in light of the purpose of the compiled information. It was to inform the new pastor, Jacob Franck, who came in 1775, what the family situation was in the congregation. There were lots of repeated family names.
Since there were many families who were active in the congregation and who had children born before 1750, one might ask why they were not included. One of the overriding rules seems to be that no family would be included if the information for the family was incomplete. Again, this leads me to the conclusion that no baptismal records were made before 1750.
One interesting case came up with Zacharias Blankenbaker, who married a widow, Els, about 1749. She had two daughters, born before 1750, by her first husband. Were the children of Zacharias and Els to be included in the rewrite? The extended family would include her two daughters born before 1750. Would this prevent the children of Zach and Els from being included? The question was a hard one to solve by the committee. Since the first child of Zach and Els was born in 1750, the family should have had one of the earliest pages. Instead, they were relegated to page 22, while the debate over the inclusion of the family went on. In the end they were included (without her earlier daughters), but much out of place, chronologically.
There were no marriage records, per se, but is possible to infer the names of many wives. Using the communion lists, I found the wife of Peter Fleshman, Sr. There are no explicit death records either, except that a person might appear in the communion lists as widow or widower, indicating the spouse had died.
(13 Dec 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.