♀Maria Reffi

Maria Reffi (living about 1717) was a Palatine emigrant from Ennerich, a village near Runkel on the Lahn in present-day Hesse, who married the widower Gerhardt Walrath in 1695 and bore his children there between 1696 and 1706. She crossed with him to New York among the Palatine settlers of 1710. She was probably the sixth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Johann Adolf Walrath (1700–1759).

Ennerich

Maria Reffi’s German years survive only in extracts from the church book of Runkel. Gerhardt had lost his first wife, Eva Elisabetha, at Ennerich on 16 May 1693. On 12 August 1695 Gerhardt, a widower, married Maria Reffi, whose name was sometimes written Refer.

Between 1696 and 1706 Maria bore him seven children while the family lived at Ennerich, and three of them died young: Johann Friederich in 1696 at three months, a daughter in 1697 two days after her birth, and Johann Georg, born in 1697, most likely the Walrath child buried at Runkel in September 1701. The others were Johann Adolf, born on 15 March 1700, Anna Elisabetha, Maria Philippina and a son born at the end of 1706. Johann Adolf’s godfather, Johann Adolf Reffi of Niederhausen, shared both the boy’s name and his mother’s surname.

New York

The family most likely left Germany in the great emigration of the Palatines^W in 1709. On 4 July 1710 Gerhardt first appeared on the subsistence lists kept for the Palatine settlers in New York under Governor Robert Hunter^W, with a household of two people over ten and two under, and the lists follow the family until September 1712. Another daughter, Christina Elisabetha, was born on 8 November 1711 and entered in the Lutheran church book at West Camp. About 1716–17 Gerhardt and Maria were listed with three children in a register of the Palatine families then living in New York.

In 1718 the Palatines of Schoharie sent Gerhardt to London as one of their deputies; he is said to have died on the voyage home, between 1718 and 1721.

Notes

Sources

Every church-book date in this life comes from Henry Z Jones, The Palatine Families of New York 1710 (1985), volume 2, pages 1055 to 1057, which abstracts the Runkel church book for the German years and the West Camp Lutheran church book for the 1711 birth; the original entries are known only through his extracts. Jones also gives the subsistence lists (the Hunter Lists, number 779) and Ulrich Simmendinger’s register of about 1716–17, which names “Gerhard Wallerrath and his wife Maria with 3 ch.”. The deputation to London is told in Walter Allen Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration (1937), page 204.

Her name

Jones gives her as Maria Reffi, sometimes written Refer, and heads her children’s list “(Anna) Maria”. At the baptism of the son born on 30 December 1706 the parents are entered as Gerhardt Walrath and his wife Maria Lucretia, of Ennerich. A Maria Gertraud Refer of Ennerich, a reading Jones marks as uncertain, stood godmother to Maria Philippina in 1704. Her own baptism and parents are not known.

Later life

Simmendinger’s register of about 1716–17 is the last mention of her. Her death is not recorded, and nothing shows whether she outlived Gerhardt.

The line to Jacob Walrath

The descent runs through Johann Adolf, also called Johann Adam in New York, to Jacob Walrath (1723–1790) of Stone Arabia. Jones lists Jacob as a probable child of Johann Adolf, on the evidence of names and godparents, because the Mohawk Valley church books that would settle it are lost.