♀Maria Magdalena (surname unknown)

Maria Magdalena was the wife of Johannes Schultz, one of the Palatine^W German settlers of the Mohawk Valley in New York, most likely at Stone Arabia; her maiden name is unknown. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her probable daughter Anna Barbara Schultz (born 1750). Widowed by 1783, she was probably the godmother entered as “Magdalena, Johannes Schultz Wittibbe” at the baptism of her grandson Johannes Walrath that October.

Life

Little is recorded of the couple 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. By then her husband had died. A grandmother standing for a grandchild was a common choice, and the entry fits her, though it gives her no surname.

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”.

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.