(In response to a query on the list, I deviate from the ongoing series.)
Zacharias Blankenbaker, the son of the 1717 immigrant, married a widow with two daughters. There are two threads of evidence, but the best one is the church record of baptisms. About 1775, the baptismal list was rewritten and in the process three rules were used:
As the record was being rewritten, a case arose which had not been anticipated. The scribes hesitated and put the case aside. Toward the end of the process, they had to make a decision. The essence of the problem was that a man married a widow who had two children (daughters) born before 1750. All the children of the man were born after 1750. Is anyone to be included? The decision was to include the man (Zacharias) and his wife and their mutual children but not her daughters. The wife’s given name may have been Elizabeth but she seems to be called Els most of the time. Her maiden name is totally unknown from the church records.
The other thing that tells us that Els had been married before is that Zacharias, in his will, refers to a daughter of my wife. This was Elizabeth, and Zacharias was not her father. The other daughter was Mary Magdalena, and she married Henry Wayman as his first wife. She died and he married Magdalena Blankenbaker, the daughter of John Blankenbaker. Zacharias did not mention Mary Magdalena in his will.
I had arrived at these conclusions when a statement from the book “ Some Martin, Jefferies, and Wayman Families and Connections of Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky and Indiana ” came to my attention. It said, “Henry Wayman, b. , d. ; m.1, , m.2 before 1776 Mary Magdalena Finks [according to a descendant].” I had already arrived at the two marriages for Henry Wayman, but I believe that the author and his source got the sequence of the two wives backwards. The first marriage was to Mary Magdalena Finks and the second marriage was (Mary) Magdalena Blankenbaker (d/o John Blankenbaker).
This says that Els married a Finks, probably a younger brother of the senior Mark Finks. He died and she married Zacharias Blankenbaker. Els’ maiden name is unknown. I am of the opinion that she was not from one of the families who attended the German Lutheran Church regularly. I came to this conclusion from an examination of whom she sat with in church after Zacharias died. She was probably several years younger than Zacharias, who was born in Germany and lived in Essex, Spotsylvania, Orange, Culpeper, and Madison Counties.
(21 Jan 03)
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.