The family of Hans Jacob Holtzclaw fascinates me because of some unanswered questions. By his first wife, Anna Margaret Otterbach, the eldest child, John Holtzclaw, married Catherine Russell, who seems to be a widow who had married a Thomas man. According to B. C. Holtzclaw, she had a son, Jacob, by this Thomas husband.
The two youngest sons of Hans Jacob Holtzclaw by his later wife Catherine were Jacob and Joseph. Their wives were descendants of the Thomas family of the Second Colony who lived in the Robinson River Valley. Not only did they marry Second Colony descendants but they lived in the area where most of the Second Colony people were living.
How did this come about? We do not know, so everything that follows here are speculations and unanswered questions.
Was Catherine from the Second Colony? This might account for the introduction of Jacob and Joseph to people in the Second Colony. Some people might even say that this is a valid argument for Catherine being of the Second Colony.
Is it just a coincidence that the first son of Hans Jacob Holtzclaw married a woman who had married a Thomas man and that the two youngest sons of Jacob married women who were named Thomas? This thought could be extended in this way. Catherine Russell Thomas had a son Jacob Thomas. If this son was related to the Thomases of the Second Colony, perhaps the Second Colony Thomas family kept in contact with this Jacob and his mother, and thereby fostered acquaintanceships between some of the members of the Holtzclaw and Thomas family.
The problem with this last thought is that there were no spare known male members of the Thomas family who could have married Catherine. Therefore, the occurrence of the Thomas name with the oldest and youngest members of the immigrant Holtzclaw family was strictly a coincidence. This would tend to increase the chances that Catherine was from the Second Colony.
My personal interest in this problem is increased by the fact that descendants of eight of the eighteen grandsons of Jacob Holtzclaw have a Blankenbaker ancestor. Anyone surnamed Holtzclaw by birth today has a good chance that they have a Blankenbaker ancestor. However, this thought does not affect the original problem of whether the multiple appearances of the Thomases in the immigrant Holtzclaw family are a coincidence or not.
(29 Nov 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.