The September issue of Beyond Germanna was mailed last week and many people will have, or will be receiving, their copy by now. The lead article, by John Blankenbaker, "The Two Wives of Henry Wayman", shows rather clearly, if you read between the lines, that Henry Wayman was married twice. Henry was the son of Georg Weidmann, who came to Virginia on the ship Oliver. Here, George married Catherine, maiden name unknown. Three of their children, Harmon, Mary, and Henry, lived in the Robinson River Valley. The fourth, Joseph, lived in the Little Fork. It had been recognized that Henry had married Magdalena Blankenbaker, because she is called the wife of Henry Wayman in her father's will. It had not been appreciated that Henry was married previously to a stepdaughter of Zacharias Blankenbaker. The evidence for all of this comes from the Baptism and Communion Records at the German Lutheran Church (now Hebron). Unfortunately, we do not know whom Zacharias's wife Els had married before she married Zach.
Cathi Clore Frost points out the combination of Paul Lederer's will and the church records may be used to identify whom Paul's daughter, Mary, married.
John Blankenbaker examines the family of Johannes Henrich Hofmann and Elisabetha Catharina Schuster, which has been reported previously by three different people to have three different sets of children. John concludes that the list of B. C. Holtzclaw comes the closest, but even it omits one daughter, Agnes. The existence and placement of Agnes is shown in the church records at the German Lutheran church.
Sandra Yelton has an interesting note on an Orange County Court action of 1741, where many people were brought in to settle an estate. One result is that we learn something about how business was conducted in the early days.
Andreas Mielke has translated several letters from the original German which tell us of the decision of (Rev.) Henrich Haeger to emigrate to America. We learn about his ill health and retirement. The letters also tell us a lot about how arrangements were made. One letter even tells us the day and the time of day and the conditions under which Henrich Haeger left. Very surprisingly, he did not leave at the same time as other people who constituted the 1714 immigrants.
More of the publications by Klaus Wust are given.
A note with photographs tells a little about Oberfischbach, the village where Henrich Haeger last lived.
(03 Sep 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.