Skip to main content

Exploring my Heritage Part 1: Indian Attack in 1757


Last year Donna gifted me an Ancestry.com DNA test. According to the spit I sent them, I’m:

   38% British
   17% South European
   14% West European
   11% Irish/Scots/Welsh
     9% Scandinavian
     7% East European
     3% Spanish/Portuguese
     <1 finnish="" nbsp="" orthwest="" span="">

That surprised me – I thought I was mostly Scots, German, and Swiss – and got me interested in my heritage.

I have collected a good amount of genealogical information from my mom, who was our family historian. Most of the information I have is on my maternal grandfather’s side of the family tree.

I have records of my mother’s side of the family going back eight generations before me, to the birth in 1704 of Jacob Hochstetler, who emigrated from Germany in 1736 with his wife to the American colony of Pennsylvania. Below is a hair-raising account according to Descendants of Jacob Hochstetler, the Immigrant of 1736, by Rev. Harvey Hochstetler D.D.:
“Jacob Hochstetler, born 1704, his wife nee Lorentz (Amish Faith) with one or more of their children left the German states and arrived in America on September 1, 1736, landing at Philadelphia on the ship Harle. The family eventually settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania. There on September 20, 1757 the mother and two sons were killed by Indians. The father and two sons were taken prisoner. Jacob Hochstetler escaped and returned to white settlements after some three years. The two sons returned to their father, but not until late in 1764 or 1765. The surviving children were John, the former prisoners Joseph and Christian, and Barbara.”

There is no subsequent record of the surviving prisoners. But John Hochstetler married Catherine Hertzler and moved from Berks County to Somerset County about December 1784 and had 10 children.

This is consistent with the background report Ancestry.com provided along with the DNA makeup results:
“In the 1700s, English immigrants came to colonial Virginia to settle its untamed lands. Some were prisoners or indentured servants; others were the second or third sons of landed gentry who chose to leave Britain because of inheritance laws that favored first-born sons. Pennsylvania offered land and relief to the persecuted Scots-Irish, descendants of Scots who migrated to Ulster, Ireland, in the 1600s. Germans escaping the aftermath of wars, harsh winters, and heavy taxes of the Palatinate region in Germany’s Rhine Valley also settled in Pennsylvania.

“When the Ohio River Valley opened for settlement after the Revolutionary War, hearty English, German, Scots, and Scots-Irish farmers moved to the frontier. After a series of brutal wars with native tribes, they pushed west into the prairies. Settlers planted corn and turned the land into what became known as the “Corn Belt.” Over the years, railroads, factories, and auto plants transformed the wilderness region into an urban and commercial land.”



One of John and Catherine’ sons, John, married Frances Mast and had 11 children, including Solomon, who married Barbara Zug and moved to Walnut Creek Township, Ohio. Their daughter, Veronica, married Joseph Miller in 1829. They had two children before Joseph died in 1833. In 1839 Veronica married Elias Egleson and they had Catherine, Anna, Samuel, and Noah, who was born in 1847 at Walnut Creek, Ohio.

In March 1872 at Ragersville, Ohio, Noah Egleson married Margaret Zehnder, the daughter of John and Anna (Herren) Zehnder of Winesburg, Ohio, and they moved to Pickens, West Virginia.

Noah and Margaret Egleson had two sons, William in 1873 in Holmes County and Edwin in 1880. In 1898 in Helvetica, West Virginia, William Egleson married Callie Flora Vogel, daughter of Bernhardt Vogel (1837 – 1904) and Mattie Wenger, who was born in 1846 in Switzerland. William and Callie are buried in Elkins, West Virginia.

William and Callie Egleson had two sons, Harley (1899) and Earl (1902). Earl and his wife, Blanche Leona Harper Egleson, who was born in 1906 in Alpena, West Virginia, had one daughter, Ellen Blanche (March 9, 1931). Ellen is my mother.

I have a picture in my study of an Egleson family get-together from the early 1900s on Turkey Bone Mountain, West Virginia. William is front and center of the 20 or so clan members holding a fiddle. Other men are holding various other musical instruments. His wife Callie is holding her baby Earl, and Harley is in there too. I also have in my study the fiddle that William is holding in the picture.

I may have to take a fact-finding trip to West Virginia this year.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Utah and Las Vegas

Talk about a study in contrast – Utah’s monumental, grandiose natural splendor versus Las Vegas’s monumental, grandiose manufactured opulence. Donna and I got to experience both on a weeklong trip to the Western U.S. during which we logged a mind-boggling 57 miles of hiking and walking over six days. We flew to Las Vegas and rented a car to drive to Zion National Park, then to Bryce Canyon National Park, and finally back to Vegas to spend a couple days with our son Jack. ZION On the drive from Vegas to Zion there are RV parks and campgrounds like at beach towns there are ice cream shops and mini golf courses. We chose to go in early October to avoid the summer crowds and high temperatures and failed on both counts. Zion, the more beautiful of the parks in my opinion, with trails that wend through spectacular vistas, peaks, sheer cliffs, the Virgin River, and beautiful foliage, was hot and crowded. The park tries its best to absorb four million visitors a year with a large vis...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jack and Erin's Wedding!

This past weekend Jack married Erin Breslin in Santa Barbara. Erin is smart, sassy, strong, funny, and beautiful. She and Jack are nearly inseparable, and when they are together, they talk and laugh nonstop like two school kids. As Donna noted in her beautiful, heartfelt remarks at the rehearsal dinner, it's hard to know what they have left to talk about after carrying on this continual conversation for more than three years. It is obvious to anyone who sees them that they are head over heels in love. Donna and I had met Erin's parents last December in Philadelphia. We immediately became friends and found that we shared a lot of common values -- particularly the importance of family. It was great to see them again in Santa Barbara and to meet their son Gerard and many of their siblings and in-laws. It also was great to meet some of Jack's fellow YouTubers. There's a culture of camaraderie in the industry, and many of them were eager to help Jack when he was g...
4 comments
Read more

Romance at the Meadowlands

Is there a more romantic setting than the sprawling parking lot of the massive (8,400 acres) Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey? Especially on a big college-football game day, where 50,000 beer-infused fans crowd together to tailgate, pre-game, and celebrate like the end of the world was imminent? I think not. Forty-four years ago Donna and I and some friends and relatives attended a Notre Dame-Navy game. Donna and I had met a few weeks before, when a mutual friend played matchmaker and brought us together in Washington, D.C., where I was living and working. Our friend, Monica, was trying to set me up with another of her friends, but Donna and I had an immediate attraction. This was our first weekend together. I stayed at Donna’s parents’ house, where she was living. It was a big deal meeting the parents and siblings. The next morning a big group of us headed to the old Giants Stadium in multiple cars and met up. It was cold and very windy. I don’t rememb...
Post a Comment
Read more