♀Mary (surname unknown)

Mary (living in 1759) was the wife of Michael Shank, a landholder of Conestoga Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and in 1757 she joined him in granting 110 acres near Conestoga Creek to the son whom the deed calls “their said Son”. Through that son, Michael Shank (died before 10 February 1777), she was most likely the fifth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent.

Life

On 29 September 1757 “Michael Shank of Connestogoe Township … Yeoman the Elder, & Mary his wife” conveyed to the younger Michael a tract of 110 acres in Conestoga Township, and he paid them £200 for it. The tract was made up of land her husband had bought from George Gray in 1740 and land patented to him on the east side of Conestoga Creek. The deed was recorded at Lancaster on 28 October 1761. Its opening names the younger Michael only as “one of the Sons of the aforesaid Michl. Shank”, but the clause recording the payment calls him “their said Son”, and she was probably the mother of all eight of her husband’s children.

Three months later, on 7 January 1758, she joined her husband again, as “Mary his wife”, in a deed by which he, as the eldest son of Christian Shank, and the other heirs of Christian released to his brother Henry the half of a 530-acre tract that Christian had held in trust, the children having agreed that Henry should hold it and their own shares having long since been paid.

Her husband was “very Sick & weak of body” when he made his will on 17 March 1759. For his “beloved Wife Mary” he provided her widow’s right in his house, kitchen and cellar for life, and yearly wheat, pork, beef, hemp, wool, cider and apples from the 173-acre plantation he left to his son Tobias, and he bound all eight of his children to make payments to her. He died before 20 May 1759, when the will was proved at Lancaster and his sons Michael and John were granted probate as its executors.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Michael, Michael’s daughter Magdalena Shank (1752–1837), who married Peter Gingerich (1749–1829), and her daughter Cattarina Gingerich (1793–1861), the wife of John Kunz (1786–1865). They divide between Cattarina’s sons Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866), and meet again when Samuel’s son Thomas Koons (1855–1938) married Jacob’s daughter Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923) on 24 December 1876 in Henry County, Indiana. Their daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977) was the mother of Ora Emogene Walrath. John Kunz’s will, dated 29 July 1864, names a son Jacob as one of his executors; that this Jacob is Jacob John Kunz rests on a family letter of 1916 and on the two men living in the same county.

Notes

Mother of the children

Her husband’s will of 1759 names Mary as his wife but does not say that she was the mother of his children. The deed of 1757 is the only record that calls her a mother, and it does so for the younger Michael alone, and in one clause: its opening calls him a son of his father only, and the clause recording the £200 calls him “their said Son”. A family history published in 1994 places the births of the eight children between about 1718 and about 1737, a span of nearly twenty years, which leaves room for an earlier wife. On the deed’s wording she is taken here as the mother of the younger Michael, and probably of his brothers and sister as well.

What is not known

Her maiden name, her parents, and the dates of her birth and death are not known. She was living when her husband made his will on 17 March 1759, and no later record of her is known. An abstract of Lancaster County deeds published in 1973 shows her signing the 1757 deed with her mark.