John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1646

To help understand the will of John Deer, we should remember that he married a widow, Catherine ? who had been married to Frederick Baumgardner.  They apparently had five children before he, Frederick Baumgardner, died:

1. Adam,
2. George,
3. Frederick, and
4. Joel,
   (who each received 100 acres)
   and a daughter,
5. Dorothy,
   (who received the value of her share).

The evidence that Eve was another child of Frederick Baumgardner comes in the will of John Deer.  John Deer and Catherine had six children also:

1. John,
2. Moses,
3. Catherine,
4. Susanna,
5. Mary, and
6. Elizabeth.

Dorothy Baumgardner married Robert Fleshman, the son of Peter Fleshman, and grandson of Cyriacus and Anna Barbara Fleshman, the 1717 immigrants.  Dorothy and Robert moved to Greenbrier County in 1790.

Adam Baumgardner married Elizabeth Clore, and he died as a young man.  After he died his son Jesse was born, and Elizabeth and her second husband, John Becker, brought Jesse for baptism.  The record at the church does not note that his father was a Baumgardner and one might assume, incorrectly, that he was a Becker.  (One of the sponsors of Jesse was the brother of the actual father.

George and Joel Baumgardner never married.  Frederick Baumgardner married Sarah Swindell.

I don't have the spouses of John Deer's own children, except that son John did marry Mary Blankenbaker, the daughter of Christopher and Christina Blankenbaker.  This is proven by a lawsuit that went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court and turned upon the decision of which laws were in effect at the time of the Revolution.  John Deer's daughter Catherine married ? Rider, and his daughter Susanna married ? Brown, which is known from John's will.  The spouses for the other children are blanks in my book.

It would be nice to know the maiden name of Catherine who married, first, Frederick Baumgardner.  We do know that Frederick was baptized Johann Frederick Baumgardner, in 1706, in Schwaigern, as the son of Hans Jacob Baumgarter and Catherine Willheit.  This Catherine (Willheit), was the sister of Johann Michael Willheit, early Germanna pioneer.  Michael Willheit's children were first cousins of Frederick Baumgardner.

These families have been difficult to sort out, with two posthumous births and a similarity in the married name of one daughter to an executor.  The Moses Fleshman who was a witness to the will of John Deer was the son of his step daughter, Dorothy.  I don't know who Reuben Fleshman was unless it is a mistake for Robert Fleshman, Dorothy's husband.
(16 Apr 03)