♂Michael Shank

Michael Shank (died before 10 February 1777) was a landholder of Conestoga Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who died intestate, leaving a widow, Magdalena, and seven children, among whom his land was settled by a deed of 1777 that was not recorded until 1786. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Magdalena Shank (1752–1837).

Family and land

His mother was probably Mary, the wife of the elder Michael, who joined her husband in the 1757 deed that conveyed the land to him. The deed of 1777 names his father as Michael Shank the elder, who by an indenture of 29 September 1757 conveyed to him a tract of 110 acres in the “Township of Connestogee”, running down to Conestoga Creek. The elder Michael made his will on 17 March 1759, and it was proved on 20 May 1759. It left the home plantation of 173 acres to his son Tobias and named eight children, this Michael among them, with Michael and his brother John as executors; it names the elder Michael’s wife as Mary, but does not say that she was the mother of the children. It left the 173-acre plantation to his son Tobias and named eight children: Tobias, Michael, Jacob, John, Henry, Christian, Adam, and Margaret, the wife of Peter Wyland. Michael and his brother John were named as its executors. A typed card in a compilation of Lancaster County Mennonite records gives Michael the elder’s wife as Mary as well. The same card, citing a compilation of early settlers’ records published in 1917, puts men named Michael Shank, “Jr and Sr”, on the Conestoga assessment of 1718 and on the naturalization list of 1729; the card does not show whether either of them is this Michael.

On 20 March 1760 his brother Tobias Shank and Barbara his wife sold him a further 17½ acres adjoining his own land in the same township. By the time of his death he held three tracts in Conestoga, of 5¼, 110 and 17½ acres.

He married a woman named Magdalena, whose maiden name is not known. The deed names their seven children: Michael, Mary the wife of Abraham Brenneman, John, Elizabeth the wife of Daniel Hersey, “Magdalena the Wife of Peter Gingerick”, Freana, and Henry, “yet a minor under the age of twenty one years” in 1777.

Death and the settlement of his land

He died intestate before 10 February 1777. The deed that settled his land is dated that day, and it says that he had “lately died intestate”. A 1994 family history gives his death as 1775. Under the law the land descended to his children, subject to the “Dower or Thirds” of his widow, her right to a third of it for the rest of her life. By the deed of 10 February 1777 the widow and the children of age released all their shares, and the widow her dower, to his son John Shank for £785 14s 3d, and signed a receipt for “our several & respective Parts & Shares”. At that date Michael was of Derry Township; Abraham Brenneman and Mary were of Augusta County, Virginia; Daniel Heisey and Elizabeth were of Lebanon Township; Peter Gingerick and Magdalena were of Hanover Township; Freana, unmarried, was of Conestoga; and John was of Conestoga. Henry, “yet a minor”, was not a party.

The deed was not proved until 1 August 1786. On that day a Michael Shenk, one of the subscribing witnesses, made a solemn affirmation before a justice of the county court that he had seen the widow, Michael, Freana and Abraham Brenneman seal and deliver it, and the deed was recorded at Lancaster. The document spells the family name both Shank and Shenk, and one son-in-law both Hersey and Heisey.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Magdalena, 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

The typed card heads its entry “between 1760-1777”, a range that fits the known dates: he bought land in 1760, and he was dead before 10 February 1777. The card gives Henry the dates 1 January 1758 to 10 October 1836. A 1994 family history gives Henry’s birth as 26 December 1758 and his death as 19 October 1836 in Rockingham County, Virginia, where he was a Mennonite bishop. The card and the family history agree on the years, but not on the days.

Two other men of the name are not him. A Michael Shank appears in the index to Lancaster County letters of administration for 1744–1747, when both this Michael and his father were still living. A Michael Schenck whose daughter Dorothea was baptized at St. Michael’s Church in Germantown, Philadelphia, in 1755 had a wife named Anna Maria and was a different man.