the genealogy book
, furthering the Whitteker line: Germantown, Palatines, Bavarians + a quote from Sue Landers,
While the Whitteker genealogical volume, produced December 1989, offers little on or beyond Peter Whitteker (1771-1843), the Ancestry website claims he the son of Kingston, Ulster, New York-born Barend Whiteker (b. 1742) and Geertruy Minkelaer (b. 1754), which would make them my sixth great grandparents. My birth mother’s mother, of course, being a Whitteker. There is so much more available information online now than was possible during the 1980s (with the caveat of requiring the skills to parse out the false trails). Further research offers that Geertruy the daughter of Harmanus Minkelaer (1717-1790) and Margaretha (Grietje) Hoff (b. 1721) of New York; he of Germantown and she of Kingston. The trail falls cold from there, but traces, at least, that Harmanus (said to be a Latinized version of the Germanic name Herman) and Margaretha were married in Germantown, Philadelphia, on January 28, 1747. The Latin element suggests a shift, somewhere, and may even suggest an earlier Dutch lineage. The details seem a bit scattered (I suspect some of the dates are off, as the first two of their children have 1771 birthdates, unless they were twins), but it offers that Barend and Geertury had eight children in total: Peter, who was born in Williamsburg Township, Ontario (1771); Petrus (b. 1771) in Trivoli, Redhook, Dutchess, New York; Grietje (1773) in Red Church, Trivoli; Catharina (1774) in Germantown; Hermanus (1775) in Kingston, New York; Rachel (1780) in Albany, New York; Anna Gerth (1782) in St. Paul’s Lutheran, Schoharie County, New York; and Annatje (1784) in St. Paul’s Lutheran as well. That’s a lot of geography, suggesting the family hadn’t quite settled, or were caught in the chaos of the American Revolution. Or perhaps there are further factors, of which I am unaware.
A Rootsweb page, Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches, by Roxy Triebel, offers information replicated from their grandmother’s book of the same name, published in 1987. It writes of Killian Minkler, born in Germany in 1663, married to Anna Margretha [last name unknown] about 1709, who “migrated from their home in the Palatine area, probably because of religious difficulties – went to Rotterdam, Holland. In May 1709 they went by ship to England, lived in huts on the beaches of England until January 1710. They were then loaded aboard ships and listed as Palatine Germans. Their ships did not sail until March 1710, arriving in New York 13 June 1710.” With groups of settlers into the United States including Pennsylvania Dutch and New York Dutch, the Palatines were a group from the western region of Germany, the Palatinates, controlled directly by the Holy Roman Empire until it fell in 1806 (after which it became part of Bavaria, which suggest I’ve now numerous Bavarian threads). As the Puritans moved around, citing religious differences, so, too, the Palatines. A passenger list includes thirty-six year old Killian with wife and five children, which will soon be an eventual thirteen, of whom Hermanus was number eleven. As Triebel’s website offers:
HERMANUS Minkler / Minkelaer born in New York State and died after 1790 in Ulster County, New York. He married 18 November 1747 Margreittha Hoff baptized 12 March 1721 Kingston (daughter of Andries Hoff / Hoef and Catherine Arensteil).
In the fall of 1777, when Vaughn came up the Hudson River with his troops on shipboard, they burned the barn on the Whitaker Farm, near what is now Saugerties, New York. It stood on the brow of the hill north of the house of HERMANUS MINKLER. Minkler talked Vaughn out of burning the house, saying it would only make bad feelings, and too much damage had been done already. He had, at their request, butchered a young bull to afford them fresh meat, and Mrs. Minkler cooked the meat for them in a large pot outdoors. Thus the Whitaker house was saved as well as the MINKLER buildings.
The page writes of but one of Hermanus’ offspring, Josiah/Esiah, born September 10, 1748 in Germantown, New York, who would marry a Rachel Whitaker in September 1770. Their daughter Catherine, married Abraham Osterhoudt (1748-1817) on December 22, 1769.
Ancestry also offers a trace of Peter Whitteker’s wife, Margaret (or Margaretha) Catherine Barkley (1770-1843), born in Albany County, New York, as well as information on her parents, Eberhard Barkley (1744-1803) and Regina Christina Schell (1737-1803). Eberhard was born in Weil im Schönbuch, Germany, as was father, Eberhard Barkley (Buercklin) (1710-1788), who was the son of Hans Peter Buercklin and Catharina Maichinger. Eberhard the younger’s mother, Margaretha Hoss (1720-1797), was the “daughter of Joachim Hoss and Anna Barbara Burkhardt. (Misspelled as Hoff.)” According to Eberhard’s Find a Grave listing:
EBERHARD BARKLEY Sr. – Burial record – “Buried 1804 – Jan. 1st – EBERHARD BARKLEY Sen. of Williamsburg, born in the year 1740. Died Dec. 30th, 1803 aged 63 years”. Source: original Parish records.
Eberhard Barkley was the eldest son of Eberhard Buercklin and his wife Margaretha Hoss, and was born in Weil im Schonbuch, Wuerttemberg, Germany on October 15, 1740. The family immigrated to the Americas in 1753-54 with five sons (three more sons were born in the U.S.). Five of their sons fought with Butler’s Rangers as Loyalists during the Revolutionary War (Eberhard, Christian, Peter, Andrew and Joachim). The first Barkleys, Eberhard and Margaretha died in 1788 and 1796 respectively, and are buried on their homestead just east of Helleberg, New York. Their tombstones are still legible (info from Murray Barkley of Avonmore, Ontario who has done extensive research on his family).
Eberhard Barkley (1740-1803) enlisted and served with Butler’s Rangers, Captain George Dame’s Company, and was on Philip Crysler’s raid on New Dorlach, Oct. 1780. Three children Everhart, Margaret and Barbara were granted land as the children of a Loyalist. Son Philip Barkley U.E.L. married Maria Stata, daughter of Henry Stata U.E.L., on 26 Dec. 1797.
The Everhard Barkley family was on the Return of Persons under the Description of Loyalists in Capt. George Dame’s Company in the Corps. of Rangers at Niagara, 30 November 1783, age 48, wife Rachel (Regina) age 36, with children Margaret age 12, Christian age 11, Philip age 9, and Barbara age 7.
The name Buercklin gradually became Berckle (Burkle), Berckley, and finally Barkley.
The Loyalist Everhard Barkley family settled in Williamsburg Township, Dundas County, Upper Canada.
Born in Wurttemberg, Germany, Regina’s parentage is listed as Franz Josef Schell (1715-1801) and Maria Clara Allgeier (1726-1782), both of whom were born in the same place as their daughter. Just how far back can this particular line trace? The Geni website provides but two further generations back along the Schell line, to Jakob Shell (1662-1710) and Maria Magdalena Koch (1661-1739), all of whom are born in Gamshurst, currently a German neighbourhood originally the site of a Catholic monastery, first mentioned as a village in 902 AD, and sits close to the current French border. The FamilySearch website, thanks to those detailed keepers of genealogical archives, The Church of Latter-day Saints, offer six more generations back through Germany, along a line that evolves backwards from Schell to Schall. Stoffel “Stephen” Schall (1522-1606) and Anna Kauffmann (1526-1585), my fourteenth great grandparents, and his father Symon Schall (1499-1570). What does it all mean?
The German name Allgeier, said to be a variant of Allgäuer, a habitational name for someone from the Allgäu, a district of southern Bavaria (the small, southernmost tip of what is now Germany), which was named with Old High German alb, meaning ‘mountain pasture’ with gouw, meaning “area” or “region.” On the other side, Schell: said to be a nickname for a loud or obstreperous person, from Middle High German schel or schellic, meaning “noisy,” “loud” or “wild.” There are some that might suggest this fits me too well. The loud parts, at least.
Germantown, an area that currently sits in northwest Philadelphia, said to be founded by Palatine, Quaker and Mennonite families in 1683 as an independent settlement that became absorbed into Philadelphia proper in 1854. Germantown, although historical research has revealed over time that nearly all of the thirteen original founding families were, in fact, Dutch. It was largely Dutch speaking until 1709. How is it the term “Pennsylvania Dutch” refers to German settlers from the Palatine region? How do stories originate? The Dutch settlement of Germantown, and a dream of origins. It was the Quakers of Germantown who birthed an anti-slavery movement in 1688, offering a legacy worth noting, distinct from other avenues of American history. Why do we hold to such links from the distant past? As American poet Sue Landers wrote of Germantown in her Franklinstein (2016), a book subtitled “Or, the making of a modern neighborhood”:
And when I went there to see that place – the place that was with me from my very beginning – I thought, this will breathe life into my pieces. This will be the soul of my parts. I thought: if I could write the story of this place and its beginnings, this writing would be the right thing, a kind of living.
This is where my writing began.