Recently, I was browsing in the “ House Family ” book which had been originally published in 1972 by the late Susie House Cooper. This book was sold out before 1990 and it was retyped by Gary Lee House in December 1991 and updated in 2004. I happened to notice an error in the Blankenbaker history on page 108. In writing about Susannah (Susan) House, who married Joel Blankenbaker in 1795 in Culpeper County, Virginia, it notes that Joel was the sixth child of Lewis Blankenbaker and Susannah Utz.
The errors that were made were in the statement that, “Lewis was the fourth child of Matthias Blankenbaker, the 1717 immigrant to Virginia and Mary Utz.” There are two errors in this statement. Lewis was actually the son of Christopher Blankenbaker and his wife Christina Finks. Christopher was the son of the 1717 Matthias. Also, this 1717 Matthias did not marry Mary Utz. He had married (Anna) Maria Mecklin (or Mercklin) in Germany. They were the parents of George, Christopher, and John.
Probably, this error was made by Susie House Cooper in the original book. This was before the extensive research by Gary Zimmerman and Johni Cerny into the church records in Germany. Their extensive research clarified several relationships; however, there are a few errors in their work.
(17 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.