Urban TANNER, Part 4:
Perhaps I had not made myself clear but I am writing about the man known as Robert Tanner in Virginia. He came to Virginia in 1720. There he was once called Urban Tanner . I have found, using a clue Hank Jones gave me, an Urban Danner in Westhofen, Germany, (in the Palatinate) who had a wife and daughter with the correct given names of Urban Tanner's/Robert Tanner's family in Virginia. This family, after going to England in 1709, was sent to Ireland where they remained for several years before they moved to Virginia. The girls in the family appear to have been born in Germany, but the son Christopher was born in either England or Ireland. As a consequence, I believe he would have been an English citizen. In Germany, the name appears to have been Danner but after leaving Germany the name is usually rendered as Tanner. Giving the name as Gerber in Virginia would be a mistake as the original name was not Tanner. (German Gerber =English Tanner , but this person's surname wasn't Gerber in Germany, it was Danner , which became Tanner in Virginia.)
I will still be looking for additional records in Germany as only one has been found so far. In Westhofen, where the one record (the baptism of Anna Catharina Danner) was found, it appears there are no other records of the Danner family. The Catholic Church in Westhofen, where this record occurs, has baptisms from 1690 to 1714 which are not indexed, i.e., only the original records are available. The following records are indexed in a neatly typed document:
Births (Baptisms) from 1714 to 1779;
Marriages from 1702 to 1722, and 1726 to 1779;
Deaths from 1702 to 1779.
None of these indexed records show a Tanner or Danner.
Why the Baptisms from 1690 to 1702 were not indexed is not known. I want to obtain printed copies of these earlier baptismal records for additional study but it appears there is no Danner in these. (Being Catholic records, many Latin words are used.)
I have already looked at the baptisms in the Protestant church in Westhofen. I wrote to the Heimatverein in Westhofen. The LDS place-name catalog suggested there was a book of the homes and people of Westhofen and I wrote to the author in Germany. Both of these sources responded, saying that the name Tanner was not known in Westhofen. I will write to the author again and see if he has suggestions of other nearby churches where I might look. It may be the case that this one record will be all that I will find; however, Tanner researchers could use this as a starting point and search in nearby church records.
I have no doubts but that we have found the last village in which Urban Danner (i.e., Robert Tanner) lived in Germany. Whether we will find any earlier records is not known now.
(18 May 07)
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.