♂Jacob Walrath

Jacob Walrath (25 February 1723 – 1 February 1790) was one of the Palatine^W German settlers of Stone Arabia, then in Albany County, in the Mohawk Valley of colonial New York, where six of his children were baptized between 1756 and 1767. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his probable son Nicolaus Walrath (1750–1806).

Life

He was probably the son of Johann Adolf Walrath and his wife Anna Barbara. On 27 May 1744, at the age of twenty-one, Jacob joined the Reformed church at Stone Arabia, or was confirmed there, on the same day as Amalia and Lisabet Wallratt. Three years later, on 27 June 1747, he married Magdalena at Stone Arabia. By family tradition she was Elizabeth Magdalena Fuchs (1726–1797).

Their eldest son was probably Nicolaus, born in 1750, but neither Stone Arabia church book records a child of the marriage before 1756, nine years after the wedding. Six younger children of the couple were baptized at Stone Arabia between 1756 and 1767. Lea came first, at the Lutheran church, and Rahel, Magdalena, Petrus, Jonas and Amalia followed from 1760. The couple are said to have had fourteen children in all. A compiled genealogy gives him as a private in Colonel Jacob Klock’s regiment of the Tryon County militia, between 1775 and 1783. Jacob died on 1 February 1790, a few weeks before his sixty-seventh birthday. The register records that he died suddenly and was buried at Stone Arabia on 3 February.

Notes

How he is known

Jacob’s dates, his joining of the church and his marriage come from Henry Z. Jones Jr.’s^W The Palatine Families of New York (1985), volume 2, pages 1056–1057, which takes them from the Stone Arabia Reformed church books. Those books give his dates as 25 February 1723 to 1 February 1790. They record that Jacob, Amalia and Lisabet Wallratt joined the church, or were confirmed, on 27 May 1744, and that Jacob married Magdalena on 27 June 1747. Jones adds that some sources say her surname was Fuchs or Fox. His entry names no children of Jacob’s. Neither Jones nor the family record gives the place of Jacob’s birth or death.

His wife

Jones’s first volume, page 262, lists a “Magdalena Fuchs, whom descendants say md. Jacob W. Walrath” among several Fuchs-Fox family members of the Mohawk-Schoharie region whom he could not place in any household. A family history compiled by Walter Bruce Walrod in 1942 calls her Magdalena Fox. The fuller name Elizabeth Magdalena Fuchs is family tradition.

The children

The six younger children are known from online indexes of the two Stone Arabia church books, which disagree on the months for the children that appear in both, so only years are given here. A typescript of the Reformed register enters Rahel in 1760 as the child of Jacob Walrad and Magdalena. The 1942 family history speaks of “the fourteen children of Jacob W. Wallrath, 1723, and Magdalena Fox”; seven are accounted for here.

His son Nicolaus

The 1942 family history makes Nicolaus, born on 3 March 1750 at Stone Arabia, the first of those fourteen children, and a Find a Grave memorial lists Jacob among his family; the memorial appears to draw on the same book, so the two are not separate witnesses. Neither Stone Arabia register has a baptism for Nicolaus, although both cover 1750, and neither has any child of the couple before 1756, nine years after the marriage; a son born in 1750 would fall in that gap. Two other points fit the history. It gives Nicolaus a brother “Peter J.” born on 9 June 1764, the day an index gives for the birth of Petrus. And a handful of DNA matches traced through other children of Jacob’s fall on the side of the family the link predicts, though the paths behind them rest on family trees built by others. The link is probable, not documented.

His parents

Jones lists Jacob first among the probable children of Johann Adolf Walrath, also called Johann Adam, whose wife was called Anna Barbara at the Stone Arabia Reformed church in 1751, and marks the placing as his own deduction. He takes Amelia and Elisabetha, who joined the church with Jacob in 1744, to be Jacob’s sisters, and he leans on the godparents. Isaac Paris, or Berry, stood sponsor twice in Jacob’s family at the Stone Arabia Lutheran church and also sponsored Anna Barbara Walrath Hillegas, a certain daughter of Johann Adam. In 1760 Johannes Walrath, the unmarried son of another Johannes, stood sponsor in Jacob’s family, and in 1762 a Magdalena, whom Jones also places in the family, did the same at the Reformed church. Jones notes that the loss of the Mohawk Valley church books makes the second and third Walrath generations extremely difficult to compile.

Revolutionary war service

The service comes from the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Lineage Book, volume 27 (1898), pages 81–82, which gives it in the entries for national numbers 26222 and 26224. The entry is a compiled statement and cites no original record of the service. The same lineage book names his wife as Magdalena Klock, where this site has Elizabeth Magdalena Fuchs.

Roberts’s New York in the Revolution (1898), pages 175 and 177, lists a “Walrath Jacob” and a “Walrath Jacob H.”, the second a son of Henrich, in the same regiment of the Tryon County militia. Two men of the name appear, so the roster cannot show which one is meant. It is a possible second source, not a confirmation.