(Continued from Note Nr. 1613.)
Descendants of James Yager referred to Uncles Elijah and Cornelius. There is one family in the Germanna colonies who had sons Elijah and Cornelius. This was the family of Nicholas Yager and his wife Susanna Willheit. The age of children in this family would be just about right for James Yager and his descendants. Certainly a lot of time was spent on a study of this family for a solution of the problem.
Nicholas wrote his will on 12 Sep 1779, and it was probated on 20 Aug 1781. It named seven son and three daughters. Because of the time difference between the writing and the probation of the will, it is a valid question whether another child could have arrived then. Some of the ten children were relatively young so that this was not an impossibility. But, because most of the children were young, guardians had to be appointed. Again, there was no James on the list of children for whom a guardian was appointed.
William Yeager, who had done most of the research on the question of James, tried a different tack. In Kentucky, two Houston brothers married two Yager sisters on the same day of 19 Mar 1818. With several active members in genealogy research, William Yeager asked if they had been successful in finding James Yager. But they were no help.
In spite of the evidence which said that he should be looking in the Culpeper County area of Virginia, the search there was unsuccessful. Mr. Yeager enlisted the aid of two researchers, Shirley Minor and Barbara Vines Little, to help him. They were able to find a few things which proved to be very material for the solution.
The published material which Mr. Yeager had been using included A. L. Keith's " Nicholas Yager and Descendants " in the William and Mary Quarterly. This was used by Claude L. Yowell in Germanna Record Ten . Counting the immigrant Nicholas as the first generation, it would seem that James Yager should be of the fourth generation, to judge by the ages. (James was married in 1796.) In the very numerous fourth generation, there is only one James Yager.
Yowell wrote that this James married Malinda Yager and they had one child, Henry, who was born in 1810. Already, the dates are not encouraging for this James to be the missing James. Not long after the birth of Henry, John G. Brown administered the estate of James Yager, and John became also the guardian of Henry Berry Yager. Again, this shows we are not talking about the James of William Yeager.
When one examines the Yowell story though, it is seen that the marriage of James Yager and Malinda Yager involves Malinda as the niece of James Yager for she was the daughter of James' sister Jemima. Also, the ages of James and Malinda are not a good match. So the first step was to try and correct the story on the one known James Yager.
(10 Mar 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.