The question was raised recently about the wife of John Frey. Virginia Frey (Fray) Lewis has stated that John's wife was Rebecca Yowell. There is no question but that her given name was Rebecca, but, as B. C. Holtzclaw pointed out, there is no evidence that a Rebecca Yowell ever existed. He did not go on to suggest who she might have been. Fortunately, we have the baptismal records at the German Lutheran Church in Culpeper County (now Hebron and now in Madison County) to rely on.
The problem is that people do not want to take the time to study documents such as the baptismal register to understand what it is telling us. They want the answer laid out in black and white so that it can be grasped in sixty seconds. Some of our best evidence, though, takes more study to understand what it is telling us.
This is another case of studying the community versus studying just one individual . In the Eighteenth Century, there were many events that were either not recorded, or such records no longer exist; we can search forever and not find any records of marriages or other events for some individuals. Documents such as the Baptismal Register at the Hebron Church tell us a lot, though, because of the rigorous patterns of behavior the people followed.
We soon learn that sponsors at the baptisms of infants were not randomly chosen, but were usually chosen for being relatives by blood or marriage. When we look at the baptisms in which John and Rebecca Frey participated, we find a confirmation of this.
John Frey and Rebecca, his wife, chose Michael Schwindle (her brother) and Hanna (Weaver) Swindle (her sister-in-law). Michael Schwindel and Elisabetha (Utz), his wife, chose Rebecca Frey. Then, for Peter Klor (Clore) and Maria, his wife, Rebecca Frey was chosen twice. Had she been a Yowell, there would have been no relationship to Peter or to Mary (Frey); however, as a Schwindel, Rebecca was a sister-in-law to Mary Frey.
These relationships have made the study of the records at the German Lutheran Church such a fascinating study. Not only are they informative and just loaded with genealogical information, they tell us something about the customs in the community. In many cases, they are the only sources of information that is available to us.
For this reason, I have published a 52-page booklet on the baptisms at the church in which I have tried to identify every individual by his or her relationship to others in the community. For more information, contact me by email at:
or by USPS at:
P.O. Box 120
Chadds Ford, PA 19317-0120.
(12 Jan 04)
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.