ROOTS & BRANCHES

I had the pleasure of working with Katy Barnes, a senior researcher and editor at Legacy Tree Genealogists, but it was only toward the end of that time that I found out she had some Pennsylvania roots.

And not just any Pennsylvania roots but her maiden surname line (Bodenhorn) spent at least a couple of generations in what’s now Lebanon County.

Which is where, for various reasons, that I cut my teeth as a young genealogist back in the 1980s, particularly at the Lebanon County Historical Society’s fine library (it was there I did most of my research for a book on the Daub family in that county).

But first to back up a little. Barnes lives in Utah, so when I confirmed coming out there in early October, she and I linked up for a day of research at the Family History Library.

Barnes’s tree from compiled sources showed a weaver named Heinrich Bodenhorn born in 1777 and died in 1859 in Annville, Lebanon County, and asserted he was the son of a “Jacob Johann” Bodenhorn.

This is latter assertion was a tell that there was something wrong with the tree since Pennsylvania Germans of the time wouldn’t use Johann as a middle name … it was almost always used as a “prefix” name.

We played the Annville clue for Heinrich’s family, looking for Bodernhorns in church and pastoral records from that area but it appeared Heinrich was the first of the surname in that area. Records of Heinrich’s tombstone in the “Old Reformed burying ground” in Annville confirmed his tie, though, as well as U.S. Census records.

A baptism of one of Heinrich’s children in the early 1800s placed him in Fredericksburg, a village in Bethel Township, the extreme northeast corner of what became Lebanon County when that county was erected (previously it had been Lancaster County until 1785 and then Dauphin County from 1785 to 1813).

That’s the point I introduced her to the published works of Gladys Bucher Sower. And in her tax list volume for Bethel Township was a Ludwig Bodenhorn in 1783, just a few years after Heinrich’s birth.

A Google search for Ludwig Bodenhorn brought up a Hessian mercenary soldier by a similar name and showed him being captured several times in Revolutionary War (and it’s known that many Hessians were sent to the Pennsylvania countryside to be with fellow German speakers).

All this made for a good theory, but more research was needed. Required would be trips to the Pennsylvania State Archives and (wait for it, wait for it!) the Lebanon County Historical Society to look some records not accessible in Salt Lake.

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to jamesmbeidler@gmail.com. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler) and follow him on Twitter, @JamesMBeidler.