♂Henry Holdeman

Henry Holdeman (3 June 1792 – 27 September 1824) was a resident of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, who, with his elder brother, administered their father’s estate in 1819–1820, and who died at thirty-two without a will, leaving six children under age and an estate too small to pay his debts. He was the great-great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Magdalene Holdeman (1821–1885), her daughter Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923) and Magdalena’s daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977).

Early life

Henry was born on 3 June 1792, by one account at Lancaster, one of the eleven children of John Holdeman, a landholder of Bethel Township, which then lay in Dauphin County and became part of Lebanon County in 1813.

His father died without a will in December 1819, and on 24 December letters of administration went to Henry and his eldest brother, John. In September 1820 the heirs, Henry among them, declined to take the land at its valuation, and the Orphans’ Court at Lebanon appointed the two brothers to sell it, each bound in $8,422.74, with a Henry Light, a fuller, as surety. That year’s census found Henry heading his own household in Bethel Township.

Marriage and family

About 1814 he married Magdalena Light (1796–1868). Their six children were Elizabeth, Catharine, Thomas, Mary, Magdalene and Henry, the youngest born in April 1823. After 1820 the family evidently moved to Swatara Township, where he held a seventeen-acre lot with a one-story house and a stable.

Death and estate

Henry died on 27 September 1824, aged 32 years, 3 months and 24 days, and was buried in the Wolfs Union Meeting House Cemetery in Lebanon County. He left no will. Samuel Light took out letters of administration on 9 October, and in August 1825 told the Orphans’ Court that the six children were all under twenty-one and that the personal property would not cover the debts. The court ordered the Swatara lot sold.

The children’s shares took years to settle. In 1831 their guardians, Henry Light and John Light, acknowledged money received from Samuel Light for all six, still minors. In 1834 his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Jacob Badenhorn, released Henry Light from his guardianship of her share of her late father’s estate; in March 1838 Catharine, now of age, gave John Light a release for her share, $101.53. Magdalena later married Martin Wenger and died in 1868.

Notes

Dates and places

The date of death was long given as 27 November 1824, which cannot be right: letters of administration on his estate were granted on 9 October 1824. His gravestone, photographed for a Find a Grave memorial that names him Heinrich Haldeman, gives his age as 32 years, 3 months and 24 days; reckoned from 3 June 1792, that age ends on 27 September 1824, the date used here, and the birth date itself is worked out from it. The birthplace given here, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, rests on no record, and one compiled family tree gives Upper Mahantongo, Schuylkill County; no record names the place.

The census of 1820 places him in Bethel Township. The county’s index to estates, the Orphans’ Court petition of 6 August 1825 (“late of Swatara Township”) and the guardians’ receipt of 1831 all place him in Swatara Township at his death.

The family’s name was written Holdeman, Haldeman, Holderman and Holdaman, sometimes in the same document; the 1834 release writes it Holleman.

Marriage

No record of the marriage is known. A lineage book of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which rests on an applicant’s compiled descent, and an online memorial both give the year as 1814; another account gives 1810, when Magdalena would have been fourteen. Catharine, the earliest of the children with a known birth year, was born about 1817. The youngest son’s birth date, 24 April 1823, comes from his grave memorial.

Parents

His father is known from the record: the Orphans’ Court of September 1820 names Henry among the heirs of John Haldeman. His mother is taken to be Elizabeth Stetler, who was John Holdeman’s wife by June 1772, twenty years before Henry was born; no record names her as Henry’s mother. Several lineage compilations name John’s wife as Maria.