♂Hans Wenger

Hans Wenger (about 1705 – before June 1772) was a farmer who came from Rotterdam to Philadelphia with his sons in 1748 and ended his days on a plantation in Bethel Township, then in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was probably the fifth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Judith Wenger (1732–1812).

Crossing to Pennsylvania

By the family’s account he was born about 1705 in the canton of Bern, in Switzerland, and moved as a young man to Zweibrücken, then the seat of the duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken^W, where his children were born. On 16 September 1748, at Philadelphia, he took the usual oaths to the government with the men who had come over on the ship Patience, Captain John Brown, from Rotterdam and last from Cowes. His sons Stephen, Christian and John signed with him, John under the name Hans and with his mark. The list names only the men; his wife and daughters most likely made the crossing with them.

Bethel Township

On 1 March 1749/50 he bought from Caspar Sherick and his wife Madalina, for £250, 170 acres on Swatara Creek in Bethel Township. A family history calls it the land “whereon he already resides”, near Jonestown, in what is now Swatara Township, Lebanon County. The log house he built there is said to have still stood in the 1940s, lengthened at each end and covered in weatherboard so that the logs no longer showed.

On 3 July 1767 he sold part of the Sherick tract, 129 acres and 52 perches, to his son John Wenger Jr. for £373 6s 8d. The same day he released two other parcels of it to Christian Wenger.

His will mentions no wife; she had most likely died before him, and her name is not known. Four of his children, Stephen, Christian, John and Maria, are named in the will. Judith, who married Martin Funk of Lebanon Township, was probably another.

Will and death

On 15 September 1771, “being Old and Weak of Body”, he made his will as John Wingert of Bethel Township, yeoman, and signed it Hans Wenger. He left his son Christian a third of the Bethel plantation, with a meadow by John Snevely’s land, and the rest to his son John, whom he named executor. Stephen had already had £12 10s. Maria, who is said to have lived with him unmarried, was to have £25 over her equal share, and what remained was to be divided “amongst all my Children”. He died within the next nine months. The will was proved at Lancaster on 1 June 1772, and letters testamentary went to his son John.

Notes

His birth and origins

His birth about 1705 in the canton of Bern, his years at Zweibrücken and the belief that his children were born there come from Edward Bowman Espenshade’s My American Ancestors and Their Descendants (1950), whose chapter on the family drew on research by Lottie M. Bausman and Norman Wenger Nauman. The book itself says only that he was “said to have been” born there. No record of his birth or baptism is known, and the names of his parents and of his wife are not known.

His arrival

Espenshade’s history dates the family’s arrival to 1743, but the passenger list it quotes is that of the Patience, whose men took the oaths on 16 September 1748, and on it Stephen, Christian and John sign with their father. A lineage bulletin on the Eisenhower family puts his arrival in 1737, but in the same passage it makes him the father of a son born in 1780, and it most likely runs two generations together.

His name and his will

The clerk who copied the will into Will Book C wrote him as John Wingert, and his son and executor as John Wengert; the signature in the copy reads Hans Wenger, and the ship list of 1748 has him as Hans Wanger. A later abstract of the county’s wills dates the will 10 September 1771 rather than the 15th. Espenshade’s history gives him eight children, adding three sons, Henry, Abraham and Martin, the last born in 1742; the will names none of them.

His daughter Judith

No record names Judith as Hans Wenger’s daughter, and his will does not name her, though it leaves the residue “amongst all my Children”. The link rests on the will of his daughter Maria, written in German in April 1775. When it was proved on 6 May 1775, letters went to “Martin Funck and John Wengert the Executors”: Judith’s husband beside the son who had been executor of Hans Wenger’s own will. Espenshade’s history, working from an abstract of Maria’s will, reads its gifts of clothing as going to her nieces, among them five daughters of Martin Funck and Judith Wenger. The Mennonite family card filed under Judith’s husband gives her birth as 19 January 1732 and calls her a daughter of “Hans- Sherrick (?)”; the name Sherrick most likely comes from Caspar Sherick, from whom Hans had his land in 1749/50, rather than from a mother.

The land deeds

Both the purchase of 1 March 1749/50 and the sales of 1767 are recorded in Lancaster County Deed Book P. The purchase is at page 94 and was recorded there on 5 November 1770; the deed cites the land’s original patent, dated 29 November 1745. The 1767 deed is signed “Hanß Wenger”.