♂Michael Schenk

Michael Schenk (born 1639) was a man of Eggiwil, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, who married Anna Stauffer there on 21 September 1660 and in 1671 is said to have left Switzerland with her and their four children, among the Anabaptists^W expelled from the Emmental. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Christian Shank (died before April 1737).

Eggiwil

He was probably born in 1639 at Hinten, in Eggiwil, the son of Michael Schenk and his wife, who was also named Anna Stauffer. He and Anna Stauffer were married at Eggiwil on 21 September 1660; the register writes him Michel Schänk. Their first child, Christen, was christened there on 15 June 1662, and three more, Hans, Barbara and Michael, are said to have followed by January 1670.

Exile

According to a family history, Michael, Anna and their four children, the eldest nine years old, were among the Anabaptists expelled from Eggiwil and the neighbouring villages of the Emmental in October 1671. His father, then eighty-one, went into exile with them, while his mother stayed behind in Switzerland. By 1 January 1672 the family was living at Ibersheim, in the Palatinate^W, with his father. He may have spent the rest of his life there.

His son Christian is probably the Christian Shank who reached Philadelphia with a large group of Mennonites in August 1717 and settled in what became Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through Christian’s eldest son, Michael Shank (died 1759), and his son Michael Shank (died before 10 February 1777), whose daughter Magdalena Shank (1752–1837) married Peter Gingerich (1749–1829). Their daughter Cattarina Gingerich (1793–1861) was the wife of John Kunz (1786–1865), and the lines divide between Cattarina’s sons Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866). They 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.

Notes

What rests on the register

Two events of his life rest on the Eggiwil registers themselves: the marriage of Michel Schänk and Anna Stauffer on 21 September 1660, and the christening of their son Christen on 15 June 1662. His birth year and birthplace, his parents, the other three children, the exile and the stay at Ibersheim come from Richard W. Davis, “Four Generations of the Descendants of Michael Schenk and Anna Stauffer”, Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage (January 1994). Davis takes the exile from two refugee lists in the Mennonite archives at Amsterdam; one gives Michael’s age as 32 and Anna’s as 28, which fits a birth in 1639. Davis writes that at Ibersheim in January 1672, living with his father, he was referred to as “his obedient son”.

Two Anna Stauffers

Davis makes him the son of Michael Schenk, christened at Signau in 1590, and of Anna Stauffer, christened at Röthenbach in 1602. Father and son both married women named Anna Stauffer, and the two couples have separate pages. The parentage is Davis’s.

His son Christian

That the Christen christened at Eggiwil in 1662 is the Christian Shank who died in Lancaster County is Davis’s judgment: he writes that the Christian who arrived in 1717 “is probably the child christened at Eggiwil, June 15, 1662”. No record names the Pennsylvania man’s parents or birthplace.

Death

When and where he died is not known. Davis suggests that he may have stayed at Ibersheim for the rest of his life, or lived elsewhere in the Palatinate, where at least two of his children later lived.