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52 Ancestors: -#44 Jacob Manbeck and Eva Manbeck Out of PA.

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Jacob Manbeck 1773-1853 and Eva Haslet (?) 1777- 1854

When I was researching my father’s German ancestors, I learned that many of them setttled in Pennsylvania before moving farther west.  This is true of the parents of Elizabeth Manbeck Bair, Ken’s 2nd Great Grandmother. I am fascinated (on the edge of obsessed) with the movements of people across the country, and this family did move.

Jacob was born just eight years after his parents arrived in North America in Pennsylvania, and Eva was also born during Revolutionary times in Pennsylvania, in what was to become the United States of America.

They were married in 1800 and had nine children by 1815 and two more by July 1921.They started in eastern Berks County, where Jacob was born, but their third child, Benjamin was born in Cumberland County, closer to central Pennsylvania.

Children of Jacob and Eva Manbeck

  • 1801: John Manbeck (named for Jacob’s oldest brother)
  • 1803: Peter Brown Manbeck
  • 1805: Benjamin Manbeck
  • 1806: Eva A. Manbeck (Gutshall) (named for her mother)
  • 1809 Susann Manbeck (Heidy)
  • *1812: Elizabeth Manbeck (Bair)
  • 1814: Michael Manbeck
  • 1815: Maragret Manbeck (Roser)
  • 1817: George Manbeck (named for the 2nd oldest brother of Jacob)
  • 1818: William Manbeck
  • 1821: David Manbeck

Perhaps thinking that their child bearing years were over in 1817, after their ninth child, George was born in March, they moved over the Ohio River from Pennsylvania,  to Harrison County, Ohio. ( The county east of Tuscarawas County, which is circled on this map of Ken’s relatives in Ohio). Jacob and Eva’s tenth child, William was born in 1818, and their eleventh and last child, David, was born in 1821 in the Manbeck’s  new home in Harrison County, Ohio.

Ohio Counties

Ohio Counties Labeled, from Wikimedia Commons

The middle daughter, Elizabeth, from whom Ken is descended, may have been the first to separate from the family.  About 1831 she marries Daniel Bair and settles in York Township, Tuscarawas County–not far away, but not clustered with the others in the family, either.

By 1837, their son Michael is living in Montgomery County, Indiana, hugging the Ohio River. By 1844, the youngest, David has moved to Harrison County, Indiana, where he marries Sophia.

I do not know whose idea it was to move to Ohio, or what motivated the move–perhaps Pennsylvania was getting to crowded and the near wilderness of the fairly new state of Ohio seemed to hold more promise.  At any rate, by 1850, besides the parents,  sons John, George, William, Benjamin, and daughters Eva, now married to Joseph Gutshall, Susan, married to Thomas Heidy, and Margaret–whose husbamd Eli Roser died that year– have settled in Harrison County Ohio, where they had moved as children.

George (33) and William (32) still live with their parents in Rumley Township, Harrison County in 1850.  William has married and his wife and 10-month-old son are also listed as part of the Jacob Manbeck household.

At some point before 1850, David and Sophia have moved from Indiana to Iowa, where their children are born. Benjamin, David’s older brother, also lives in Iowa by 1856. No doubt one of them went to the new state at the recommendation of his brother. David and Sophia live for a time with their daughter Mary Vida and her family in Iowa. When Sophia dies and Mary’s family moves to Oregon, David  goes with them. His cross country journey completes in 1911, when he dies in Oregon, his fourth state.

When Jacob and Eva die in 1853 and 1854, their son George marries late in life, but is still living in Harrison County in 1860,now listed as a Laborer rather than a farmer.  George seems to have trouble getting settled and he moves to Perry Township of Carroll County, Ohio  by 1880–just north of Harrison County where his parents died and he is back to farming. His move to Carroll County puts him close to his older brother Peter, who moved to that township and county before 1850 when the rest of the family was settling in Harrison County.

This map summarizes their moves.

Jacob Manbeck migration

Pattern of migration of Jacob Manbeck and family.

  • 1773-4: Jacob is born and grows up in Berks County, Pennsylvania
  • 1805: Jacob and Eva have moved to central Pennsylvania.
  • 1818: Jacob and Eva move their family to Harrison County, Ohio
  • 1837: Michael is in Harrison County, in southern Indiana, where he dies in 1858.
  • 1844: David is also in Harrison County,  Indiana
  • 1850: David has moved to Montgomery County in northern Indiana
  • 1856: David is living in Polk County Iowa, and his brother Benjamin has moved from Ohio to Iowa, where he dies in 1857
  • 1900: David is living in Warren County Iowa
  • 1910: David is living in Douglas County, Oregon, where he dies in 1911.

David made a step-by-step move completely across the country, one brother lived and died in Iowa and one in Indiana. The rest stayed in adjacent counties in Ohio. This family does not seem to have lived very far apart. But it is important to remember that their parents came from Germany, and they were raised in a close-knit German community in Pennsylvania. Ohio was certainly not very civilized by 1817, so even though they stayed in counties that hugged the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, that was an adventurous move.

And when daughters or sons married and moved to a different township–even a neighboring township–they were still getting around with horses and carriages, so a visit would take a day of travel. The sons who moved further west, may have had trouble even getting home for their parents funerals. Once they moved, they were pretty much isolated from family. It is interesting to see David moving to states where another brother lives (or persuading them to join him), and then going to Oregon because his daughter’s family moves there. Even he seems closely tied to at least some family.

Their adventures, however, were nothing compared to what their parents went through, and next we’ll take a look at the immigrants of the Manbeck family.

How Ken is Related

  • Kenneth Ross Badertscher is the son of
  • Agnes Bair Badertscher, who is the daughter of
  • Daniel Manbeck Bair, who is the son of
  • Elizabeth Manbeck Bair, who is the daughter of
  • Jacob and Eva Manbeck

Notes on Research

United States Federal Census Reports:  Ohio

1850 (Rumley, Harrison, Ohio) Eva and Jacob Manbeck, Margaret Manbeck Roser;

1850,1860, 1870 (Rumley, Harrison, Ohio) John Manbeck, Susan Manbeck Heidy, George Manbeck;

1850, 1860, 1870  (York Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio) Daniel Bair and Elizabeth Manbeck Bair;

1880 (Stow, Summit County, Ohio) Elizabeth Manbeck Bair.

1850, 1860, Eva Manbeck Gutshall,( Rumley, Harrison, Ohio)

1850, 1860, 1870,1880 (Perry, Carroll, Ohio) Peter Brown Manbeck, William Manbeck. (Also 1880- George Manbeck)

1850 (North, Harrison, Ohio) Benjamin Manbeck

Other States:

1850 Harrison County, Indiana, Michael Manbeck

1850, Franklin, Montgomery, Indiana, David Manbeck

1860, Allen, Polk,Iowa, David Manbeck

1900, Warren, Polk, Iowa, David Manbeck
West Roseburg, Douglas, Oregon,.

Indiana, Index to Select Marriages, 1780-1992, November 1837, Michael Manbeck, Ancestry.com

Indiana, Marriage Index, 1800-1941, March 1844, David Manbeck, Ancestry.com

Iowa, State Census Collection, 1836-1925, Benjamin Manbeck, David Manbeck 1856, (Allen, Polk Iowa)

Selected U.S. Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880, Census Year: 1870; Census Place: York, Tuscarawas, Ohio, Elizabeth Manbeck Bair.

Find a Grave, Jacob Manbeck,  Eva Manbeck. Benjamin Manbeck (Iowa),  Michael Manbeck (Indiana) David Manbeck, (Oregon)

U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, Volume: 278, membership for William Manbeck Peeler, descendant of Jacob and Manbeck and Rudolph and Christina Manbeck.

52 Ancestors #39 The Germans are Coming – Bair

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One thing that we KNEW about my husband’s ancestors–they were Swiss. 100% Swiss. I even said so in the first article I wrote about the Badertschers,  Swiss Immigrants Invade Ohio.

So the challenge to write about something “Unique” today had me floored.  I had several unique things I could find among my ancestors, but Ken’s? No way. Swiss Mennonites, immigrated within the 19th century, dairy farmers, large families. They were dependable.

And then I learned it was not true. He is NOT 100% Swiss. In fact, his mother’s maiden name, Bair, is not Swiss at all–it is German.  Even Ken’s sister did not know the shocking truth. And among his ancestors, that makes the Bairs unique.

Now you may want to quibble. The Swiss Badertschers and Stuckeys and Amstuz’s and Schneiter’s and Müllers and all the rest were German-speaking Swiss, so what’s the difference? For one thing, they thought of themselves as Swiss, not Geman. (Unlike, say, my Scots-Irish ancestors who moved to Ireland but always thought of themselves as Scottish.) But more importantly those census takers who recorded the language the Swiss immigrants spoke as German were wrong. They spoke Schweitzerdeutsch,which  is much more than a dialect. It is a separate language .  In fact, as that article I linked in the last sentence points out, speakers of Schweitzerdeutsch would have to go to school to learn German as a foreign language.

So, briefly, an introduction to the Bair who revealed to us that this branch of Ken’s family was unique and Ken is not 100% Swiss, and learn that there are other things that make them unique in Ken’s line. There is a long way to go on this research, And it isn’t helped by spellings of Bair, Baer, Bear and maybe even Beer. I have held it down to Bair below, although I suspect it was flexible in Germany, tending toward Baer and translated incorrectly as Bear in English. Here is what I know at the moment.

Adam Daniel Bair

Adam Daniel Bair
Jerusalem Cemetery outside of Stonecreek in Tuscarawas County, actual birth was1889.

Ken’s Grandmother Helen Stuckey (of purely Swiss roots) married a Bair.  The father of Adam Dale Bair and Agnes Bair Badertscher (Ken’s mother) was Adam Daniel Bair, born in 1889, Ohio.

The father of Adam Daniel Bair  was Daniel  Bair [Jr.], born in 1850 in Ohio.

Daniel M. Bair’s father was another Daniel Manbeck Bair [Sr.] 1802 in  Pennsylvania according to an 1860 census and in a family tree that looks very accurate so far.

But at the moment that is all the farther I can go with the Bairs.  Too many Daniel Bair/Bear/Baer and too many Abrahams , also. There are Daniel Bair/Bears in the Civil War, and one Abraham Bair that I’ve spotted in the War of 1812, but so far, no way to prove if they’re the right ones.

At least I know that Ken’s Bair generation did come from Germany since besides the probability of the Bairs immigrating from Germany, the family of Caroline LImbach, the wife of Daniel Bair Jr., are definitely from Bavaria, Germany. And the Manbeck line (mother of Daniel Manbeck) may prove to have German roots as well.

So we know that unlike the other lines we’ve been tracing, that only go back 2 or 3, this one reaches back at least 5 and perhaps more generations in this country. And besides–they are not all Swiss. How unusual in this family.

How Ken is Related

  • Kenneth Ross Badertscher is the son of
  • Agnes Badertscher who is the daughter of
  • Adam Dale Bair, who is the son of
  • Caroline Limbach and Daniel M. Bair. Caroline is the daughter of
  • Adam Limbach, from Bavaria
  • AND
  • Daniel M. Bair, is the son of
  • Daniel Manbeck Bair, who is the son of
  • Elizabeth Manbeck Bair

Notes on Research

  • United States Census, York Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio,1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920.
  • Ohio, Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-2007, Ancestry.com and the Ohio Department of Health (index list)
  • Web: Ohio, Find A Grave Index, 1787-2012

There was much more research, and more is ongoing, but you will get those references as I talk about individual people.

52 Ancestors: Two Wives With Same Name? #12 Mary Magdalen Kurtz Butts

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Mary Magdalen Kurtz Butts 1736-1775 (Maybe)

I have decided to go ahead and write about Magdalen Kurtz Butts, the wife of John William Butts, even though as I have been checking her information, I have become more and more uncertain about what I really know about her, and her successor, John William Butts’ second wife (if there WAS a second wife.)

Mary Magdalena Kurtz was born in Hirschfeld Germany where she was baptized on November 1, 1736.  Her father died when she was a young girl and her mother, Agnes Steffens Kurtz married her second husband, Leonard Eltz (also spelled Els, Elz and Olls) who came from Coblenz in Germany. They had four more children.

Magdalen married Johann Wilhelm Butz on November 8, 1761, two years after her step-father died. The couple had two children in Germany, before joining the movement of Hasenclever workers to Ringwood, New Jersey before their third child, John George was born in 1767. Magdalen may have been pregnant on the voyage, but at the very least, she was caring for a child under two and a four-year old as they sailed.

We know that Magdalen’s brother John Henry Els also moved to Ringwood New Jersey, because he was a sponsor to the baptism of John George, the first of the Butts children born in the New World, and again to the 1772 baptism of Christian Butz’ child (Christian was the brother of John William Butz. John Henry Els also followed the Butz family to Pennsylvania when they established their own iron works.

Two more children were born to the family, John Joseph in 1770 and John Henry in 1772.

As you will see in the next section, it is possible that Magdalena Kurtz Butz died in 1775 when she was just under 40 years old, leaving five young children.

What’s This About a Second Wife?

Part of the confusion arises because both the first and second wives may be named Mary Magdalen (sometimes spelled Magdalan or Magdalena). The Mary is the saint’s name and the 2nd name is the everyday name by which they would be known.  Likewise, John William, would have been called William. Except when he wasn’t, which adds to the second source of confusion.

There  is no doubt at all that my 3x great grandfather, Johann Wilhelm (John William) Butz was married to Mary Magdalena Kurtz and she is the mother of my 2x great grandfather, John Henry Butz. I just don’t know for sure if she died in 1775, because the only proof I’ve found is the fact that a William Butz was a widow when he married in 1776.

A major source of information for these German Catholic immigrants who settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania is the meticulous register kept by the traveling priest who ministered to their church in Goshenhoppen (now Bally) Berks County, Pennsylvania.  In those church records, John William Butz name appears frequently as John William, but in one critical entry–a William Butz, widower, marries Magdalen Kuhn in 1776. Is that the same person as John William??

Researchers have assumed that is the same person, and I was going down that path until I found another record in the same church register listing the birth and baptism in 1781 of an Anna Sophia Juliana, whose parents are William Butts and his wife Susanna Schartle. Where did this Susanna person come from? Doesn’t that show that William is a different person because John William and his wife Magdalena continue to have children through the 1780s.

To further muddy the waters, the sponsors of the Schartle-Butts baby are a man named Kuhn (the name of the woman who married that William Butz in the church record) and a woman named Anna Sophia Juliana Struble. Struble is also John William’s sister-in-law’s maiden name, just to show how closely related all the people in those church records are.

What difference does it make?  Well, John William’s life, and therefore the life of his wife, got very, very interesting in the 1770’s and 1780’s.  They had several more children. Many of them died. It was a tragic time in many ways, and I would like to tell you the story of the wife and mother who suffered through those times. But first I have to figure out if it is my 3x great grandmother, Mary Magdalena Kurtz Butts who suffered, or if my 3x great grandfather did indeed have a second wife.

How I Am Related

  • Vera Marie Badertscher is the daughter of
  • Paul Kaser, who is the son of
  • Mary Isadore Butts, who is the daughter of
  • Henry Butts, who is the son of
  • John Henry Butts, who is the son of
  • Johann Willhelm Butz/William Butts and Magdalena Kurtz Butts

 Research Notes

“Whatever Became of Hasenclever’s Germans,”The Highlander, vol. 34, no. 88 (1998) Found at Longpond Ironworks web site.

 

Goshenhoppen Catholic Register: “Goshenhoppen (St. Paul’s Mission, Church of the Blessed Sacrament), Bally, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Marriages 1741-1819;Deaths 1765-1818; Conversions 1781-1785” Found at Rootsweb

The Palatine Immigrant, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring 1991, Columbus, Ohio. copy provided by Jane Butts Kilgore.

Personal Correspondence from  and a paper “The Family of Johann Wilhelm Butz” (2007) by Jane Butts Kilgore.