♂Benjamin Wenger

Benjamin Wenger (about 1829 – 9 November 1910) was a Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, man who spent his long life in the townships around Jonestown and who, at the age of seventy-three, married a woman of fifty-seven after years in which relatives had repeatedly talked the couple out of it. He was the younger half-brother of Magdalene Holdeman (1821–1885), the great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014); their mother, Magdalena Light (1796–1868), was Ora’s great-great-grandmother.

Early life

Benjamin was born about 1829 in East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, the son of Martin Wenger (1780–1860) and his second wife, Magdalena Light. His mother had been widowed in 1824 by the death of her first husband, Henry Holdeman, and so brought six Holdeman children to the marriage, Magdalene among them. His father had also been married before, to Magdalena’s own sister Elizabeth Light, who had died some years before. The children of that first marriage, several of whom were living in Montgomery County, Ohio, by 1833, were therefore both Benjamin’s half-brothers and half-sisters and his first cousins. In 1833 the county deed books still described his father as Martin Wenger of East Hanover Township.

Adult life

In 1850 Benjamin was living in Union Township, where the censuses of 1850 and 1860 also found his parents. A census index has him in neighboring Swatara Township by 1860, and the indexes for 1870, 1880 and 1900 place him there still, near Jonestown. He had married earlier and raised a family of eight children; the name of his first wife is not established, and the marriage record of 1902 describes him as a widower.

In January 1902 he married Catharine D. Bucks at Jonestown. The marriage record gives his age as seventy-three and his birthplace as East Hanover, and names his parents as Martin and Magdalena Wenger. Both bride and groom were then living at Cleona. A wire report of the wedding, carried as far away as New Jersey, told the story behind it: the marriage had come “after many delays, secured by relatives who strenuously opposed the marriage”, and the couple “would have been married long ago, but heretofore when the day was fixed one or the other was prevailed upon to give up the idea”. The report does not say which relatives objected or why.

Death

A death index gives 9 November 1910 as the date of Benjamin Wenger’s death, when his home was at Fairland, Lebanon County; the Lebanon Courier, which said only that he had “passed away last week”, gave his age as eighty-two and the cause as illness “incident to old age”. His funeral was held from the house on Sunday, 13 November, with three ministers officiating, and he was buried in the Jonestown Cemetery. Three of his sons and a son-in-law carried the coffin. He was survived by eight children, four sons and four daughters, living in Fairland, Jonestown, Lebanon, North Lebanon Township, near Lickdale, Martinsburg and as far away as Detroit, Michigan.

Notes

His year of birth is given as about 1829 by his marriage record and as 1828 by his age at death. The wire report of the wedding appeared in a newspaper dated 13 January 1902, while the marriage record gives the date as 18 January 1902; the difference has not been resolved.