♀Maria Bauer

Maria Bauer (living in 1804) and her husband John Schenk had a daughter, Rebecca, who was born and baptized in 1804 at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hummelstown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. She was possibly the third great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Rebecca Shenk (1805–1880).

Family

The baptism is the only certain record of her, and Rebecca is the only child of the couple on record. Nothing in the records of the Rebecca Shenk who married Johann Friedrich Rickert at Harrisburg in 1830 names her parents, so the link between the two rests on name, year and place alone.

Notes

The link to Rebecca Shenk

The baptism is known only from FamilySearch’s index of Pennsylvania births and christenings, which gives neither day nor month and names the child Rebecca Schenk, daughter of John Schenk and Maria Bauer. Its year suits Rebecca Shenk, whose age of forty-five at the census of 1850 places her birth about 1805. Hummelstown lies about eight miles from Harrisburg, where she married at Zion German Lutheran Church on 4 March 1830, and in 1850 she was living in East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, which borders Dauphin County.

The link is weaker on other counts. The sponsors at the baptisms of her four children were the children’s own parents, so none of those entries points to her family. George and Daniel Schenk, whose wives were also named Maria, had children baptized at Hummelstown between 1802 and 1821, and an index cannot rule out a misread father’s name. No other Rebecca of the name born between 1800 and 1810 appears in the indexed baptisms of Dauphin, Lebanon, Lancaster, Berks, Cumberland or York counties, but a daughter of the Mennonite Shenks of the region, who did not baptize infants, would leave no such entry.

John Shenks of Derry and Londonderry

Hummelstown lies in Derry Township, where a John Shenk headed a household at the censuses of 1800 and 1810; other men of the name lived in Londonderry, Swatara, Annville and other townships nearby, and none of them can be shown to be the John Schenk of 1804. Of the two John Shenks of Londonderry Township, which adjoins Derry, one died in December 1825 leaving a widow named Elizabeth. The other made his will on 4 April 1842, naming his wife Maria, a son Jacob and a daughter Catharine and leaving the rest of his estate to his children; it was proved on 20 June 1842. He would fit the couple of 1804, but no record joins them, and his will names no Rebecca.