♂Lorentz Kuntz

Lorentz Kuntz (14 April 1752 – 20 April 1838) was a German-born settler of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, who was taxed as a single man in the Revolutionary year of 1779 and who, by two family accounts written generations apart, was buried on his own farm near Union Water Works. He was the third great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John Kunz (1786–1865). A family account written in 1994 adds that his gravestone, lost for generations, was found lying under peach trees in an orchard on the old farm, scarred where a plough had crossed it, and was carried away in the boot of a rental car to be set up in a churchyard.

Early life

Lorentz Kuntz was born on 14 April 1752 at Sebbeterode, in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, now in the German state of Hesse. The family record names his father as Johann Heinrich Kuntz (1718–1795). The records do not name his mother: the family record gave her as Anna Elizabetha Catherine Stoever, but the wedding it rested on is most likely another man’s (see the notes). His name appears in the records as Lorentz, Lorenz and Lawrence, and family papers and compiled accounts add a second name, George, which no record of his own life shows; his surname appears as Kuntz, Kunz, Kuns and, among his descendants, Koons.

A family letter of 1937, known only through a later account, says that he sailed from Holland in 1769 on the ship Charming Nancy, together with two brothers and their uncle, Barnhart Kuntz. No passenger record naming him is known.

The Revolution

In 1779 he was living in Lebanon Township, then part of Lancaster County, where the state tax list assessed him as a “freeman”, the class in which Pennsylvania taxed unmarried men of age who were not householders. The same list carried a column for the extra tax laid on nonjurors, the men who had not sworn the oath of allegiance that the state’s Test Act required. That column is heavily used on his page, largely by the district’s Mennonite and Dunker neighbors, whose faith forbade oaths; his own entry in it is empty, which suggests that he was among the men who had taken the oath, though an empty entry shows only that no extra tax was laid on him. The 1937 family letter says that he served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. The Lancaster County militia return of 1782 lists a “Lorentz Kuntz” in the first class of Captain Mathias Henning’s 8th Company, 2nd Battalion, and he was probably the man enrolled there. Enrollment in a class does not show that he served or fought.

Marriage and family

He married Anna Maria Gingerich (1767–1846) some time after 1779, the year he was still taxed as a single man. By 1838 they had raised a large family: his will names ten living children, four sons (John, Henry, Lawrance, that is Lorenz, and Jacob) and six daughters (Ann Mary, Barbara, Elizabeth, Magdalena, Christina and Susan). An eleventh child, Catharine, had married Henry Moyer and died before the will was made, leaving a son, Henry.

Their son John was born in 1786, and two younger sons, Lorenz and Jacob, born in 1801 and 1805, were baptized together at Christ Lutheran Church, Stouchsburg, on 10 October 1815, when they were fourteen and ten; the register names their parents as Lorenz Kunz and his wife Ana Maria. A daughter, Christina, was baptized in the same church on 12 March 1797, born the previous 11 December, with her parents standing as her sponsors. The will gives no ages, and birth dates for the other children come only from compiled family trees.

Later life and death

On 6 August 1810 he was recorded as the head of a household of twelve at Lebanon, in Dauphin County. By 1830 he was living in Londonderry Township, where the census of that year lists “Lorentz Kuntz” as the head of a household, marked in the column for men aged seventy to eighty. He was then seventy-eight.

On 3 March 1838, by then described as of Annville Township, he made his will, signing it with his mark. His sons John and Lawrance were to be the executors. His wife Mary was to have sufficient bedding, clothing and household furniture, and the money that remained was to be put out at interest so that she could have her living from it as long as she lived. His two unmarried daughters, Barbara and Christina, were to be given a cow and household furniture, as the married daughters had been, and each was to have one hundred dollars when the property was sold. Henry Moyer, husband of his late daughter Catharine, was left five shillings. The rest was to be shared equally among the ten children and the grandson Henry Moyer, who were to settle it among themselves.

He died in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, on 20 April 1838, less than seven weeks after making the will, and the will was recorded on 9 June 1838. His wife Anna Maria survived him by eight years.

A Lutheran burial register records his birth and death on those same dates and gives his age as 86 years and 6 days, which the dates confirm exactly. Where most of the entries on the page name a church burial ground, such as Klopp’s, Bindnagle’s or Stumpstown (the older name for Jonestown), the column for his place of burial is left blank, which agrees with the family’s account that he was not buried in any churchyard. A family letter written on 22 December 1916 by a descendant, David Koons, says that he was “Buried on farm near Waterwork’s, Lebanon Co., Pa.”, and a grave memorial, citing records of the Daughters of the American Revolution, names the place as the Sattizahn farm outside Lebanon.

The 1994 account describes how a descendant traveled from Washington state to find the grave, and was directed by a neighbor to an orchard, where the farmer lifted the stone from under the leaves beneath the peach trees. The inscriptions were in German. With the stone otherwise bound for a landfill, she took it away and arranged for it to be erected in the cemetery of the Waterworks United Methodist Church, where, by that account, it now stands. His grave itself remains on the old farm, unmarked.

Lines of descent

Both of his lines of descent to Ora Emogene Walrath run through his son John Kunz (1786–1865) and divide in the next generation, between John’s sons Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866). John Kunz’s own will, made in 1864, names Jacob among “three of my sons” appointed his executors. The lines meet again when Thomas Koons married Magdalena M. Koons on 24 December 1876 in Henry County, Indiana, both then being descendants of Lorentz Kuntz. Thomas was Samuel’s son and Magdalena was Jacob’s daughter, and their daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977) was Ora Emogene Walrath’s mother.

Notes

The will is recorded in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, Register of Wills, Wills Vol. A-B (1813–1843), pp. 470–471. It opens “I Lawrance Kuntz of Annville Township Lebanon County”, is dated 3 March 1838 and signed with his mark, and was recorded on 9 June 1838 by Jos. Reinhard, Register. The witnesses were William Elliott, Conrad Daub (the spelling of the surname is uncertain) and Jacob Miller. The will’s Lawrance and Jacob are most likely the sons baptized in 1815, and Mary is most likely Anna Maria; the will itself gives neither a surname for his wife nor any ages. The 1830 census placed him in Londonderry Township, and the will in Annville Township; the records do not say whether he moved.

The 1916 letter gives his dates as 1 April 1752 and 8 April 1838, with an age at death of 86 years and 7 days, about a fortnight earlier at each end than the burial register. The inscription on the stone, weathered and plow-scarred, is not clear enough to decide between them. The grave memorial dates the moving of the stone to 1985, where the 1994 account places it in 1994, and gives his death place as Berks County, where the register’s burial grounds are all in Lebanon County.

His parentage is unresolved, and his mother is not known. The family record gives his father’s death in Pennsylvania in 1795, which does not sit easily with a son born in Hesse in 1752; the 1937 letter’s account of a crossing in the care of an uncle points the same way. No baptism of Lorentz is known in Pennsylvania or in Hesse, and the published register of the Lutheran pastor John Caspar Stoever, which runs from 1730 to 1779, baptizes no child of the couple the family record named as his parents.

That couple, Johann Heinrich Kuntz and Anna Elizabetha Catherine Stoever, are given a wedding on 25 June 1738 at Earl Town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and it is a real entry in the pastor’s register. But the bridegroom is called only Johannes Küntz, and the same book shows a John Cuntz at Opequon, in Virginia, with a son born nine months after the wedding and a wife of the bride’s three given names, so the wedding is most likely that man’s. It is therefore not counted as a marriage of Johann Heinrich, and the records do not show her as Lorentz’s mother. A shared online tree gives Lorentz a different set of parents, a Johannes Kuntz and an Anna Elisabeth Erckmann who married in Hesse in 1744, with no sources and with children dated before that marriage. The records do not settle the question.

Sebbeterode as his birthplace comes from his grave memorial, and no record of his own names it. A muster roll of 1775 of the Hessian Knyphausen regiment, abstracted in the database of Hessian troops in America, lists a private named only as Kuntz, born about 1752 at Sebbeterode, aged 22, and nothing more about him; the regiment sailed for America in 1776. If that soldier was Lorentz, he came to Pennsylvania with the Hessian troops rather than in 1769 as the family letter says, but without a given name the entry cannot be tied to him.

His wife’s maiden name, Gingerich, is given in the Jonestown Lutheran burial register’s entry for their son Lorentz in 1877, as “Lorentz Kuntz and his wife, Anna Maria (Gingerich)”. The 1838 funeral register gives his death and age but leaves the place of burial blank, and names no place of death. A Find a Grave index gives Jonestown, a town in Lebanon County, as the place; no record of the time names the town.

The 1782 militia return

The Lancaster County militia return of 1782, printed in the Pennsylvania Archives, fifth series, volume VII, lists “Lorentz Kuntz” in the first class of Capt. Mathias Henning’s 8th Company, 2nd Battalion. A Pennsylvania State Archives Revolutionary War military abstract card is also cited for him, but such cards were most likely drawn from the same printed returns, so it is not a second witness. The identification with this Lorentz is probable, not certain: the battalion holds one rare name that also appears on his 1779 Lebanon Township tax list, and a George Kuntz is listed in the 6th class of the same return. The return is a class roll, so it shows enrollment, not active duty, and it does not bear on the family’s account of his crossing from Hesse.