John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1599

I return to Germany for more discussion of what it was like there when our ancestors were living there.  I have before me the book, " The Pastoral Years of Rev. Anthony Henckel, 1692-1717 ", by Ann Hinkle Gable.  The book has been very popular and is now in its third printing by the Picton Press.  The book, with its story, is especially appropriate for a variety of reasons:

  1. Rev. Anthony Henckel was the ancestor of several Germanna people.
  2. He lived very close to the area from where many of the Second Colony people came.
  3. He came in 1717 to Pennsylvania, and perhaps his motivations were similar to others who came in that year.

The book has nothing about what happened to him or his family after they arrived in America.  Its primary purpose is to examine what happened to him in Germany and to determine why he left Germany.  The author of the book was able to enlist the aid of many qualified helpers in the search for documents and in their interpretation.

Rev. Henckel lived in the area just to the southeast of Heidelberg, but not quite to the area from where many of the Second Colony people came.  If you have a detail map of Germany, look for Heidelberg and the curve of the Neckar River which flows from the south and then curves west and goes by Heidelberg.  Tucked in the area surrounded by the Neckar River is where Rev. Henckel worked.  (He owned a farm about ten miles from Heidelberg.)  Just to the south, and it is only a matter of a few miles, is Gemmingen and Schwaigern.  Wagonbach is not too far away.

One of the difficulties that Rev. Henckel lived under is the elaborate structure of jurisdictions, both political and ecumenical.  Politically he lived in the Palatinate under the Elector of Palatine.  By faith, he was a Lutheran.  The area was a mixture of Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran.

He was born in 1668, though, in Darmstadt, Hesse, which was the subject of a few notes, to Georg Henckel, a teacher, and his wife Anna Eulalia Dentzer.  The father taught in Merenberg.  Both parents came from a "professional" background and wanted their son to have the advantage of an education.  There was a setback when Anthony's father died when Anthony was ten years old.  The mother moved to her hometown of Steinmerk (or Steinberg) near Giessen.

Anthony Jacob Henckel was able to enter Giessen University in 1688, when he was 20.

He finished the university at the end of four years and received a call to be the Pastor in Asweiler in the Palatinate.  For some reason, he did not follow through on this, but took the pastorate at Eschelbronn in the Palatinate, about ten miles southeast of Heidelberg.  The year was 1692 and he could hardly have picked a worse time to go there.
(20 Feb 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.