♀Magdalena Funk

Magdalena Funk (6 July 1764 – 10 April 1841) was a woman of Swatara Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, whose husband Henry Light owned half of a fulling mill^W; his will of 1830 set out, down to the firewood and the three-seat wagon, how she was to be kept for as long as she lived. She was the third great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Magdalena Light (1796–1868).

Family

Magdalena was probably a daughter of Martin Funk (1732–1796) and Judith Wenger (1732–1812) of Lebanon Township, in what is now Lebanon County. She married Henry Light, and she is said to have borne all fifteen of his children, seven sons and eight daughters, born between November 1782 and May 1810. One of them, Magdalena, born in February 1796, carried her mother’s name, and so did every woman in the line that runs from her to Ora: Magdalene Holdeman, Magdalena M. Koons and Ora’s mother, Mary Magdalene Koons.

Her father’s will, proved in Dauphin County on 9 January 1797, left his home place to her brother Martin and divided the rest of his estate among his children, naming each daughter with her husband; she appears as “Magdelena now the wife of Henry Light the younger”. That November her son Johannes died at the age of seven. He was buried in the Light-Hemperly farm cemetery, now in North Lebanon Township, where his parents were later buried too.

Widowhood and death

Henry made his will on 21 May 1830. He left the plantation where they lived, with his half of the fulling mill, to their youngest son Joseph. She was to keep the house she lived in, a share of the kitchen and garden and ground to plant, and Joseph was to give his mother each year wheat, rye, oats and maize ground and delivered, firewood hauled to the house, a cow and its pasture, pork and beef, the use of the horses and the three-seat wagon, and the interest on one hundred dollars for as long as she lived. Henry died that autumn, and the will was recorded on 15 October 1830.

Magdalena outlived him by more than ten years. In the census of 1840 she kept her own household in Swatara Township, a woman in her seventies with a girl of between ten and fifteen. She died on 10 April 1841 and was buried in the same farm cemetery. In March 1842 a Henry Light, as administrator of the estate of “Magdalena Light late of Swatara Township”, brought his account before the Orphans’ Court^W, with a receipt from Martin Light, and the court confirmed it that April. It was most likely her estate, settled by her sons Henry and Martin.

Notes

Her dates and birthplace

Her dates are those of her grave memorial and of the Mennonite family card for her husband. The memorial’s compiler notes that two family histories give 1764 and a third gives 1761, and that the stone reads 1764, though “the 4 is very faint”. A second card, filed under her father, gives 3 July 1761 and 10 March 1841, and a lineage book of the Daughters of the American Revolution also gives 1761. The memorial gives her birthplace as Bethel, then in Lancaster County; a family history published in 1950 places her birth on her parents’ homestead in Lebanon Township. No record of her baptism is known.

Her parents

Her father’s will spells the surname Founk and calls his wife only “Jude”. The maiden name Wenger comes from the card filed under him, which lists Magdalena among the same seven children, married to “Henry Light Jr.” The card for her husband names her father as Heinrich Funk instead; the will points to Martin. DNA shared between her descendants and descendants of three of her sisters, Barbara, Christiana and Elizabeth, agrees with the link.

Her husband

That the “Henry Light the younger” of her father’s will was the Henry Light of Swatara Township who died in 1830 is probable rather than proved. “The younger” set him apart from an older man of the name, most likely Henry Light (1738–1806) of Lebanon Township. In 1807 that man’s children released his land to their brother Joseph; the first of them was “Henry Light of Bethel Township”, and the deed names “the said Henry Light and Magdalena his wife”. An 1896 Light family history, the Mennonite card and the lineage book make that son the Swatara Henry and his wife Magdalena Funk, but the three rest on one compiled descent, and the county held more than one Henry Light. Henry’s will of 1830 names his wife Magdalena and calls Joseph her son, but names none of his daughters; that all fifteen children were hers rests on her grave memorial and the Light card, which list the same fifteen.