We had four names of Germanna people who were naturalized on 19 April 1745 using Form A . The men were Zachariah Blankenbecker, John Thomas, Henry Ahlar, and John Zimmerman. Let me digress for a moment to show the power of association. These were not four random names, as they were related by blood or marriage.
Zachariah Blankenbecker and John Thomas were first cousins. Zachariah’s father was John Nicholas Blankenbuehler, whose sister, Anna Maria, married John Thomas [Sr.]. Then, John Thomas’ sister, Margaret, married Henry Aylor, so John and Henry were brothers-in-law. Finally, John Zimmerman married Ursula Blankenbuehler, the sister of Zachariah, so these two men were also brothers-in-law. Given any two of them, there was a relationship. For example, John Zimmerman and Henry Aylor had wives who were first cousins.
It was not too many years ago that the true name of Henry Aylor’s wife was discerned. Margaret Thomas was mentioned in her stepfather’s will as Margaret Collier. We should have been alerted to the poor spelling in general in Michael Kaefer’s will that Collier may not have been correct. Unfortunately, it was close to an associated name in the larger German community, so that we were misled. It was not until Nancy Dodge put all the pieces together that we saw that Collier was a mistake for Aylor.
On the same day (19 April 1745), two of the Willheit men went to Williamsburg for naturalization. They appear together on one Form ( A ) as Tobias Wilhoid and John Wilhoid, where they said they were natives of the Electorate of Mentz in Germany. It has always bothered me that they said they were natives of Mentz. As is so often the case when we read the name of a German locality written by an Englishman, there isn’t any such place. The closest we can come is Menz, which would be pronounced as Mentz, but the two villages named Menz in Germany are too far away to be valid. There is a close call in Mainz, which is on the Rhine River, where someone from Schwaigern would have passed on the way to Rotterdam and the New World. The Willheit family could have stopped in Mainz on their way (it was not unusual for a family to pause for a short period at an intermediate point). If one of the men had been born there, he would have been a citizen and native of Mainz. The fact that both of them said they were natives of Menz could easily be attributed to a general misunderstanding between the Germans and the English.
On the same day that all of the above appeared, Peter Fleshman appeared and he merely said that he was a native of Germany. In more detail, he came from Neuenbuerg and it is surprising that he did not appear on the same form with Zachariah Blankenbecker et al, since Peter was an uncle of Zachariah, though of about the same age. Peter could also have said that he was a "native of Nienberg in the Bishoprick of Spire".
(08 May 06)
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.