Urban TANNER, Part 6:
Some people are confused by the variety of names that Urban Danner appears with. Eventually it became Robert Tanner. Along the way, several variations appear in the church records and even more in the civil records. I will discuss the church records here.
In 1775, the new pastor (Franck) entered the name as Dan in the Communion Lists. We can attribute this to his lack of familiarity with the family. He had only come to the community two months previously. Thereafter, it appears in the Communion Lists as Tanner until about 1782. Than it appears as Tana and Tanna, with most of these entries being made by Johann Michael Schmidt, who was not well educated.
In 1787, Rev. Streit wrote it as Danner. He was a visiting pastor who took the place of Schmidt. Except for three times when it appeared as Tanna after this, it appears as Tanner.
In the Communion Lists it never appears as "Gerber", which is ordinarily the German word for "Tanner". (What we're trying to say is "Danner" became "Tanner" in America, but he was never a "Gerber" in Germany.)
In the Baptismal Register, which was rewritten about 1774 by Catechist Heinrich Moeller, who was expected to become the pastor, the family of Friederich Gerber shows the use of the Gerber name. Most likely, Moeller is the one who assumed that if the name in Virginia was Tanner it must have been Gerber in Germany. He never understood that one change had already been made in the name from Danner to Tanner. This alone accounts for seven of the eleven appearances of “Gerber” in the baptismal register. Four other times the name appears as Gerber. The largest number of spellings, about forty, have the spelling of Tanner, Tana, or Tanna.
An additional note that I received today from Hank Jones says that the area around Westhofen was the source of many of the people who left Germany in 1709. This conclusion would have required the study of many church books in the area. That no other records have been found so far is discouraging for the hope of finding more records on Urban Danner. Still, I have ordered microfilms for two more churches in the area.
(21 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.