♀Cattarina Gingerich

Cattarina Gingerich (19 March 1793 – 7 December 1861) was a Pennsylvania German woman of East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, who married John Kunz at the Salem Lutheran Church^W in Lebanon in 1811 and brought up a large family there. She was the great-great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, through her sons Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866); John Kunz’s will of 1864 names Jacob among the sons it appoints executors.

Early life

The family record gives her birth at East Hanover, in what was then Dauphin County and became part of Lebanon County when that county was formed in 1813. Her name appears in several forms: Catarina Gingrich in her marriage register, Catharina Gingrich on her memorial stone, and Catherine Gingrich in a family letter written in 1916.

The family record makes her the daughter of Peter Gingerich (1749–1829) and Magdalena Shank (1752–1837) of East Hanover, one of Peter Gingerich’s ten children. The 1835 release of Peter Gingerich’s heirs, recorded among the Lebanon County deeds, gives a “Catharine Kuntz” an equal share of his estate, with her husband John Kuntz signing for her; the release never calls her his daughter, and no record found so far names her parents. That she is Cattarina Gingerich, and so Peter’s daughter, rests on her given name, her husband’s name and the family record. A typed family card for Peter Gingerich, from a compilation of Lancaster County Mennonite records, names his father Michael and his wife Magdalena Shenk and lists four children, Henry, Anna Mary, Elizabeth and John, and she is not among them. The card is incomplete: the 1835 release names Anna Mary as a separate heir, and ten heirs in all. The records do not yet decide between these.

Marriage and family

On 5 February 1811 she married Johannes (John) Kunz (1786–1865) at the Salem Lutheran Church in Lebanon; the parish register names the witnesses as Henry Kunz and Johannes Gingrich. The family tree places her in East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, in 1850 and again in 1860, but no census entry is attached to those residences.

The family record holds nine of their children, among them Jacob John, born in 1814, and Samuel, born in 1825. Pennsylvania church baptism entries naming Cattarina as the mother survive for seven of them: Johannes, George, Lorenz, Magdalena, Mariana, Rebecka and Samuel. A letter written in 1916 by a descendant, David Koons, names nine children, the same seven together with Jacob and a daughter Catherine, who married Samuel Lightner.

Two of her sons founded lines that met again. Samuel moved west to Henry County, Indiana, before 1860, while Jacob stayed in Lebanon County. In 1876 Samuel’s son Thomas Koons married Jacob’s daughter Magdalena M. Koons. Samuel’s place in the family rests on church records and Jacob’s on John Kunz’s will of 1864, so two of her grandchildren married each other, and she and John Kunz stand twice in the ancestry of their descendants.

Death

She died on 7 December 1861 and was buried two days later, on 9 December, as her pastor, Abraham Romich of Jonestown, recorded in his burial register, which names no place. An online memorial gives 9 December as her death date, at Grantville, Dauphin County, near the Lebanon County line. Her husband died four years later, on 11 December 1865, a date that the family tree and the 1916 letter both give.

Where she was buried is not settled. The family record gives East Hanover; another entry in it gave the Zion Lutheran Church cemetery at Jonestown; and the 1916 letter says that she and her husband were both buried at “Zion Church above Harpers” in Lebanon County. Her name is now carried on a modern granite memorial bearing twelve names in two columns, each with only a pair of years, of the kind raised when older graves are brought together on a single stone. Her line reads “CATHARINA GINGRICH 1793 - 1861”. The other eleven people named on it are not known to be related to her.

Lines of descent

One line runs through her son Samuel Kunz and his son Thomas Koons (1855–1938), the other through her son Jacob John Kunz and his daughter Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923); both reach Ora Emogene Walrath in the fourth generation, through Thomas and Magdalena’s daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977). The lines meet again when Thomas Koons married Magdalena M. Koons on 24 December 1876 in Henry County, Indiana, as described above.

Notes

Her birth date is settled by her pastor’s burial register, which gives 19 March 1793. The 1916 letter has the same day and month but the year 1792, and its age at death, 69 years, 8 months and 20 days, is counted from that year to her burial on 9 December. The 19 November 1793 date in an online memorial listing is a miscopy, and the memorial stone gives only the year 1793.