♀Anna Maria Gingerich

Anna Maria Gingerich (1767 – 18 July 1846) was a Pennsylvania German woman of the Lebanon Valley, the wife of Lorentz Kuntz and a daughter of John Gingerich of Annville Township, whose 1818 will names her as “Marry the Wife of Laurence Kuns”. She was the third great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John Kunz (1786–1865).

Early life

Anna Maria Gingerich’s birth is given as 1767 at Lancaster, Pennsylvania; no record of it is known. Her father, John Gingerich, farmed 145 acres in Annville Township on the Swatara Creek. When he made his will on 12 September 1818 he left his estate in equal shares to six children: Christian, Michael, Leonard, Mary the wife of Laurence Kuns, Barbara the wife of Bearnhart Braun, and Elizabeth the wife of Jacob Ludwig. The plantation was to be sold at public auction and the money paid out by age, the three eldest first. Sums already advanced to three of the children were to be deducted from their shares, and Mary had received the largest of them, eight pounds. The will was proved in Lebanon County on 25 October 1819. It gives her name as Mary, the form she also carries in the family record beside Anna Maria.

The earliest church record found to give her maiden name is the burial register of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church at Jonestown. In February 1877 it recorded her son Lorenz as “son of Lorentz Kuntz and his wife, Anna Maria (Gingerich)”, and gave his birth as 17 April 1800, against the 1801 of his baptism entry at Stouchsburg. Written long after her marriage, the record does not name her parents.

Marriage and family

She married Lorentz Kuntz (1752–1838), who was, by the dates given for them, about fifteen years older than she was. No record of the marriage has been found; it took place before the birth of their son John on 23 September 1786 in Lebanon Township, then part of Dauphin County. The family name is written Kuntz, Kunz, Kuns and Kuhns in the records, and later Koons.

Two more sons, Lorenz, born 17 April 1801, and Jacob, born 20 February 1805, appear in the register of Christ Lutheran Church at Stouchsburg, both entered as children of “Lorenz Kunz ux Ana Maria”. They were not baptised as infants: the two brothers were baptised together on 10 October 1815, at fourteen and ten. The register gives no sponsors for either boy and does not say why the baptisms were delayed. The two boys are identified as her sons from the parents’ names and the dates alone, since the entries name no grandparents. Her husband’s will of 1838 names ten living children, and the dates are known for four of them: John, Lorenz, Jacob and Christina, who was born on 11 December 1796 and baptized at Christ Lutheran, Stouchsburg, on 12 March 1797, her parents standing as her sponsors.

Widowhood and death

Lorentz Kuntz died in 1838, and Anna Maria outlived him by eight years. Her death is given as 18 July 1846 in North Annville Township, Lebanon County, in the same Annville district where her father had farmed, but no record of the date is known. The opening words of a document drawn up after her death describe her as “Maria Kuhns widow of the late Lorenzo Kuhns of the township of north Annville in the county of Lebanon”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John Kunz (1786–1865) and his wife Cattarina Gingerich, and divide among their children: one through their son Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and his son Thomas Koons (1855–1938), the other through their son Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866) and his daughter Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923). The lines meet again when Thomas Koons married Magdalena M. Koons on 24 December 1876 in Henry County, Indiana, both descendants of Anna Maria Gingerich; their daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977) was the mother of Ora Emogene Walrath. John Kunz’s will, dated 29 July 1864, names a son Jacob as one of his executors; that this Jacob is Jacob John Kunz rests on a family letter of 1916 and on the two men living in the same county.

Notes

Her identification with the “Mary” of John Gingerich’s will rests on the husband’s name, the township and her second recorded given name; the will does not give her dates. Family trees have named her mother as Anna Hostetter (1732–1788), but no register or will has been found that states it; the name rests on compiled genealogies. A compiled card file gives the mother of her brother Christian as Magdalena. The only Anna Hostetter on record among the Gingerichs of Annville was the wife of Christian Gingerich, as her mother Barbara Ebersole’s will of 11 December 1807 names her, so the mother’s name may have been copied up a generation; a pencilled note on the same card gives Christian different parents altogether. Her mother’s identity is therefore unsettled.

A family letter written in 1916 by a descendant, which describes her husband in some detail, says of his wife only “Of his wife we know nothing”. Her name does not come from the family’s own tradition, but from the records above.