♂Johannes Schultz

Johannes Schultz (died before October 1783) was one of the Palatine^W German settlers of the Mohawk Valley in New York, most likely at Stone Arabia, and the husband of Maria Magdalena, whose maiden name is unknown. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his probable daughter Anna Barbara Schultz (born 1750).

Life

He was probably a son of Johann Schultheiss, a tailor who came to New York among the Palatine emigrants of 1710, and his wife Anna Barbara. Little is recorded of Johannes and Maria Magdalena beyond their family. Their daughter Anna Barbara married Nicolaus Walrath, and in 1782 and 1783 the Walraths brought two children to be baptized at the Reformed Dutch Church of German Flatts (Fort Herkimer^W). Schultz godparents stood at the font both times. For a daughter, Rachel, on 7 April 1782, they were Henrich Schultz and Catharina Walrath. For a son, Johannes, on 9 October 1783, there was a single godmother, “Magdalena, Johannes Schultz Wittibbe”: Magdalena, the widow of Johannes Schultz. If she was his wife, as the names suggest, he had died by then; the date and place of his death are not known.

Notes

How the family is known

Henry Z. Jones’s The Palatine Families of New York gives Johannes Schultz a wife, Maria Magdalena, and a daughter, Anna Barbara, who married Nicolaus Walrath. Jones takes both Anna Barbara and her marriage from the work of the researcher Sue McCartney Van Wie, The Shults Family in America, and cites no register or deed for her. He lists four other children of the couple: Johannes, Georg, Maria and Henrich. Henrich’s baptism is in the Stone Arabia Reformed register, which records his birth on 21 February 1766 and his baptism on 2 March, as the son of Johannes Schultz and Maria Magdalena.

The German Flatts register fits that account closely. On 7 April 1782, the day Rachel Walrath was baptized, a Johannes Schultz and his wife Elisabeth had a daughter baptized in the same church, with Georg Schultz and Catharina as godparents, while Rachel’s own godfather was Henrich Schultz. Jones gives the younger Johannes a wife named Elisabetha and Georg a wife named Catharina. Several Schultz households belonged to the congregation, so the match supports the identification without proving it. Anna Barbara’s maiden name itself is on record: a baptism at Stone Arabia in 1790 names her “Barbara, nat. Schultz”.

His parents

Jones names this Johannes among the children of the emigrant Johann Schultheiss, on the strength of the father’s will of 6 April 1759, made as a widower “of Stonerabe”. Jones calls the will unrecorded and knew it through Van Wie’s work, so the link rests on the compilation.

Stone Arabia

Jones records a “Hanes Schulz and wife Magdalena” as godparents at the Stone Arabia Lutheran church on 21 February 1754, which may be this couple; Stone Arabia had more than one Johannes Schultz, and three men of the name were freeholders there in 1763.