Recently I went to a Germanna Reunion in Haubstadt, Indiana, where the emphasis was on the Wilhite family. Before the meeting, Eleanor and I wandered in a cemetery in Haubstadt. My comment to Eleanor was that I was seeing more German names there than I saw in any cemetery in Germany.
Keith Wilhite (with his wife) and Gerald Wilhite have written a note of more than a hundred pages which gives their findings and conclusions with respect to the southern Indiana Wilhites. The earliest Wilhite family in Gibson County was Woodson Wilhite who bought land on 22 December 1825 from Alex Johnson. Woodson Wilhite had married Christina Myers in Mercer County, Kentucky, on 26 August 1820. Woodson was the son of Barnett and Nancy (Broyles) Wilhite and a grandson of Nicholas and Mary E. (Fisher) Wilhite of Mercer County, Kentucky. Woodson is believed to be the great-great- grandson of Johann Michael Willheit and his wife Anna Maria Hengsteler who were early Germanna pioneers. Woodson and Christina had two sons, Lawrence born 1821 and Jefferson born 1823. While these boys were very young, Woodson, their father, died before 16 April 1827.
The estate of Woodson was typical of a young family. There were a cow, calf, and heifer; one horse; and twenty-five head of hogs. His crops seemed to have included corn (55 barrels); perhaps cotton, as there one "tub" of it; wheat; and perhaps flax, as there was a (spinning?) wheel, reel, and heckle (sickle?). The administrators of the estate included James Smith and Christena Wilhite. The appraisers were John Embree and Nicholas Yager. The only purchasers with Germanna names were Christena Wilhite, who purchased a saddle, pots, bacon, cotton, piggin, a chest, a lot of books, and a looking glass; and Nicholas Yager, who bought ten barrels of corn.
A second Wilhite family of Gibson County, Indiana, is Joseph Wilhite, who, with his wife and ten children, is listed in the 1830 census in Patoka Township, IN. Unfortunately, no will or Bible identifies these ten children but other records hint strongly at who they were. This Joseph is believed to be the Joseph Wilhite who married Polly Spilman on 27 July 1813 in Woodford County, Kentucky. In 1810, in Woodford County, there is a Michael Wilhight with one son and one daughter in the 16 to 26 range. Next, in the list to this Michael is the James Spilman family; James had a daughter in that same age range. The John Spilman who is listed as bondsman on the marriage license for Joseph and Polly could be an uncle or older brother. Though the Joseph Wilhight family in the 1830 census is still in Kentucky (in Henry Co. with two sons and three daughters), there is already two Spilman families in Gibson County, Indiana, in the 1820 census.
Also, in 1820, there were three Yager brothers in the Owensville, IN, area. These families, especially the Spilmans, may have contributed to the Indiana attraction.
(08 Aug 05)
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.