♂Nicolaus Walrath

Nicolaus Walrath (3 March 1750 – 1806) was a Mohawk Valley militiaman of the American Revolution, listed as an ensign in the Second Regiment of the Tryon County Militia, who was wounded in the elbow of his right arm and was afterwards carried on the federal rolls as an invalid pensioner. He was the third great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his probable son Johannes Walrath (1783–1850).

Early life

Nicolaus is said to have been born on 3 March 1750 at Stone Arabia, then in Albany County, New York, one of the Palatine German^W settlements on the north side of the Mohawk River. He was in all likelihood the eldest son of Jacob Walrath (1723–1790), who had married Magdalena at Stone Arabia on 27 June 1747; family tradition calls her Elizabeth Magdalena Fuchs (1726–1797), and a family history of 1942 makes Nicolaus the first of the couple’s fourteen children. Neither Stone Arabia church register has his baptism, although both cover 1750, and neither has any child of the couple before 1756: the family’s earliest children are missing from the surviving books. Six younger brothers and sisters were baptized at Stone Arabia between 1756 and 1767.

The Revolution

The roster of New York’s Revolutionary forces published by the state in 1898 lists “Ensign Nicholas Walrath” in the Second Regiment of the Tryon County Militia^W, and a state index places a Nicholas Wallrath in Tryon County in 1776 with the same regiment. The 1942 family history names the regiment’s colonel as Jacob Klock^W and says that Nicolaus was later granted a pension. A list of invalid pensioners, men pensioned for a disability incurred in service, enters Nicholas Walrath under the regiment of “J. Klock”, with the disability “wounded in the Elbow of his Right arm”.

His pension application does not survive. The federal file is an empty jacket marked “No papers”, and in 1934 the Veterans Administration explained to an enquirer that the papers had been destroyed when the War Office burned in 1800 and 1814. What remains are the lists: the New York pension list of 1813 and a list of New York pensioners published in 1835 both carry him at 36 dollars a year, and both give his rank as private rather than ensign. The records do not explain the difference. The pension lists give no residence, and the name was a common one in the valley; they are joined to him through Klock’s regiment. Printed rolls of this kind repeated a pensioner’s name and do not show that he was still alive when they appeared.

Marriage and family

He married Anna Barbara Schultz. The register of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of German Flatts (Fort Herkimer^W), known from a transcript made in 1918, records two children of “Nicolas Walrath and Anna Barbara”: a daughter, Rachel, born on 6 April 1782 and baptized the next day, and a son, Johannes, born on 11 September 1783 and baptized on 9 October. A Schultz stood sponsor at both baptisms: Henrich Schultz for Rachel, and for Johannes a single godmother, Magdalena, the widow of a Johannes Schultz.

By 1790 the family was back at Stone Arabia, where a son, Abraham, born on 20 April 1790, was baptized on 2 May as the child of “Nicolaus Wallrath” and “Barbara, nat. Schultz”, the register giving her maiden name outright. The family history makes the baptized Johannes the man who married Leah Bradt and later moved his family to Iowa, where that branch adopted the spelling Walrod; that he is this child rests on the name and on the history’s matching birth date, which may come from the same register entry, since no record of him as an adult names his parents.

Death

Nicolaus made his will at Springfield, Otsego County, New York, on 12 July 1806, “being sound in mind though weak in body”. His estate was made up chiefly of a bond for sixteen hundred dollars at interest, given by Levi Gray on 7 May 1806, a suit then pending in the Court of Chancery between him and John Robinson and Daniel Hale, and his cattle, horses and household furniture. The will divided all of it into six equal parts: one to “my loving wife Barbara”, and one each to his sons Jacob, John, Abraham, Nicholas and George. No daughter is named.

Joseph White, Joel B. Potter and Abraham Pickard were named executors, and the will was proved before the Otsego County surrogate on 2 August 1806. He therefore died in the three weeks between, most likely at or near Springfield. The death at Camillus, Onondaga County, New York, in 1835 that the family record gives, with burial at Elbridge, appears to belong to another man of the name, perhaps his son Nicholas, whose brother John was at Camillus by the War of 1812.

Notes

His birth

His birth on 3 March 1750 at Stone Arabia is given by a Find a Grave index, a Sons of the American Revolution application and the 1942 family history compiled by Walter Bruce Walrod; none of them rests on a baptism. The Reformed register has entries for 1750 and 1751 but none for him, and the index of the Lutheran church there has no child of a Jacob Walrath in 1749 or 1750.

The will

The will is a copy in the New York probate records, 1629–1971, Otsego County, Wills and administrations 1792–1813, book B, pages 83–84 (FamilySearch). It is headed “Copy of the Will of Nicholas Walradt”, and it was witnessed by Peter J. B. Walradt and Adolphus J. B. Walradt. The will gives the wife no surname, but two of the sons it names tie it to this couple: John, baptized at German Flatts in 1783 as the child of Nicolas Walrath and Anna Barbara, and Abraham, baptized at Stone Arabia in 1790 as the child of Nicolaus Wallrath and Barbara, born Schultz. The year at the head of the Stone Arabia page that records Abraham is damaged; 1790 comes from a FamilySearch index of New York births, and a second index gives February 1789. The will names no daughter, although the German Flatts register records a daughter, Rachel, born in 1782. A comment added to his memorial in 2022 had already named this will as his. The place and the window of death are inferred from the dates of the will and of its proof.

The 1835 death

The family record gives his death as 1835 at Camillus, Onondaga County, New York, with burial at Elbridge nearby. A memorial compilation, drawing on the 1942 family history, says he was living at his death with one of two sons who had married sisters of the Redman family, and that he lies in the Redman Cemetery at Elbridge; the grave is unmarked, and its contributor found no stone there. His son John was living at Camillus during the War of 1812, and the Camillus account could have passed to the father from the family of a son of the same name.

The children were baptized at German Flatts, some miles up the valley from Stone Arabia. The joining of the German Flatts couple to the Nicolaus born at Stone Arabia rests on the names, the Schultz godparents and the 1942 family history, not on a record that states it.

A Sons of the American Revolution application approved in 1967 dates the marriage to about 1791 and calls Anna Barbara his first wife. The date cannot be right: the German Flatts register baptizes the couple’s children in 1782 and 1783.

The invalid roll

The list of invalid pensioners that names his wound is undated. Its age column for him looks like 56, which would fit a man born in March 1750 on a list drawn up about 1806, but the figure is hard to make out.

The father

The 1942 family history makes Jacob Walrath (1723–1790) the father of Nicolaus, and a Find a Grave memorial lists Jacob among the family. The memorial and the history seem to draw on the same contributor and the same book, so they are not two separate witnesses. Henry Z. Jones Jr.^W gives Jacob’s dates, 25 February 1723 to 1 February 1790, and his marriage to Magdalena on 27 June 1747, both from the Stone Arabia Reformed church book, and notes that some sources give her surname as Fuchs or Fox; Jacob’s own burial entry in that book repeats the marriage date. Jones names no children of Jacob’s, so he does not name Nicolaus. The history also gives Nicolaus a brother born 9 June 1764, which is the day an online index gives for the birth of Petrus Walrath, one of the six younger children; a second collection gives September 1764 for the same child. The one matching date is some support for the history’s family detail. A handful of DNA matches traced through other children of Jacob’s also fall on the side of the family the link predicts, though the paths behind them rest on family trees built by others. The link rests on these points, not on a record that names Nicolaus as Jacob’s son. The six younger children are known from online indexes whose months disagree where they overlap, so no months are given in the biography.

His mother

No record of his names his mother. She is taken to be Jacob’s wife Magdalena, the mother of the six children baptized at Stone Arabia. Jones lists a Magdalena Fuchs only as the woman whom “descendants say” married Jacob, and the fuller name Elizabeth Magdalena Fuchs is family tradition.