John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 2505

Urban TANNER, Part 2:

The village of Westhofen is northwest of Heidelberg (the majority of the Second Colony came from southeast of Heidelberg).  The nearest larger town is Worms, which is on the Rhine River.  I would not have thought of looking in the Rhurch Registers in Westhofen except that Henry Z Jones made a suggestion that Urban Danner might be found there.  I will say more about Hank’s role in this process later but I would like to say now that his suggestion was all important.

Urban Danner appears in the records in 1709 when he was a passenger on a ship from Rotterdam to London.  He is listed in this so-called third party as:

Urban Danner en vrou 2 kindr 4

This is in the Dutch language.  It could be read that Urban Danner and wife were two people and they had four children.  The date is 10 June 1709.  (One of these four children would be Anna Catharina, who is almost one year old.)  Not that it is very important but the Captain of this ship for the crossing of the Channel was Wilkens.

When the ship docked in London, the English made another list of the third party.  Published records of the English arrivals have many errors but Hank Jones says that he was listed as Urban Tanner, aged 33, with his wife and daughters aged 6, 4, 3, and 1.  His occupation was cooper and brewer (good middle class occupations).  So, as he moved from the Continent to English-speaking lands, the name changed from Danner to Tanner; however, there were several variations on these two names.

There should be three more Baptismal Records, at least, and a marriage record for the Danner family, but they are not in the Westhofen records.  I have yet to make a more exhaustive search, but it is doubtful that I will find more records in Westhofen.

At this point in the story, we need to look at what was happening in 1709.
(17 May 07)