Peter Dehaven and Sidonia (Elizabeth) Levering

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Husband Peter Dehaven

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           Born:  - Muelheim, Germany
     Christened: 12 Mar 1688 - Evangelisch, Muelheim, Germany
           Died: 23 May 1768
         Buried:  - Old Blue BEll Church

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         Father: Evert Inderhoeven (Inderhoffin) (1660-      )
         Mother: Elizabeth Schipbower (Abt 1666-      )

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       Marriage: 24 Dec 1711

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Wife Sidonia (Elizabeth) Levering

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           Born: 23 Apr 1691 - Muelheim, Germany
     Christened: 
           Died: Abt 1736
         Buried: 

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         Father: John Wigard Levering (1648-1745)
         Mother: Magdalena Boekers (Baker) (1650-1717)

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Children

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1 M Edward Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Margaret Op den Graef (      -      )
           Marr: 1760 - prob Germantown, Pennsylvania

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2 F Modlin (Magdalen) Dehaven

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           Born: 25 Nov 1716 - prob Philadelphia Co, Pennsylvania
     Christened: 
           Died: 28 Sep 1801
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Hance Supplee (Souple) (      -      )

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3 M John Dehaven

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           Born: 1715 - prob Philadelphia Co, Pennsylvania
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Maria (      -      )
           Marr: 1760

         Spouse: Elizabeth Potts (      -      )

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4 M Peter II Dehaven

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           Born: 1719 - prob Philadelphia Co, Pennsylvania
     Christened: 
           Died: 11 Nov 1815
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Sarah Hughes (1722-1760)

         Spouse: Elizabeth Knight (      -      )

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5 F Elisabeth Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: John Yocum (      -      )

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6 M Samuel I Dehaven

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           Born: 8 Mar 1724 - prob Philadelphia Co, Pennsylvania
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Susanna Spaulding (1726-1814)

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7 M Gerhard Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Anna Frey (      -      )

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8 F Mary Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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9 M Jacob Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died:  - broke from loans to George Washington
         Buried: 

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10 M John Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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11 M Abraham Dehaven

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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12 M William Dehaven

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           Born: 1714 - Whitpain, Montgomery, Pennsylvania
     Christened: 
           Died: 10 Sep 1784 - Whitpain, Montgomery, Pennsylvania
         Buried:  - Boehm's Church, Blue Bell

         Spouse: Hannah Cramber (1717-1786)
           Marr: 31 Mar 1739 - 1st Presb Ch  Philadelphia

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General Notes (Husband)

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Peter I Dehaven on most Dehaven genealogical charts.

(with a dozen aliases) b 3/12/1688 Muelheim, Germany or Germantown, Philadelphia m 12/24/1711
d 5/23/1768 He is listed in Philadelphia as a merchant. His activities are quite mysterious. He probably was involved in international shipping. The only story that survives about it is that a Dehaven ship was sunk by the British off the coast of France - with its Dehaven owner on board! There is no reason to suspect disreputable activity, but the Dehavens, paranoid to the max, used ten versions of their name, most of them Dutch; kept bags of money under their beds ready to flee at a minute's notice - partly because they did not trust banks. He owned enough land to prosper as a farmer, and a number of his immediate descendants owned mills and taverns. My own theory is he may have benefitted indirectly from Van der Walle connections of his wife's grandmother. The Van der Walles were wealthy aristocrats or such in Holland, and members of the circle of wealthy investors who purchased the land on which Germantown was founded. They are much of the source of the wealth that some Leverings in this country still have. Even though Wigard Levering himself was a weaver/ laborer in Muelheim, and has been called illiterate, though he wrote the family vital information in the family bible, in his own German language.

The dozen ways the Dehavens said and wrote their name, all Dutch, are part of the reason why the early history of this family was lost. A descendant of Peter had married a Swiss or Austrian aristocrat, and upon his wife's death, that gentleman came to Pennsylvania to settle her estate; and he drew provided a complete genealogical chart of the family to a local justice of the peace.

The use of different forms of their name was not unusual among Dutch, but it was unusual among Germans in Pennsylvania by the end of the 17thcentury.

Like all of Jesse's line, and his father before him, Peter was extremely involved in his Reformed church as an elder, a donor of land to build the church on, etc.

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General Notes (Wife)

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Her parents were Anglo-Dutch and Dutch, her father was a weaver, they had moved over the border into Muelheim, Germany. The Leverings probably left the region around Ipswich, Suffolk County, England (the county where, to judge from my ancestry, all true nuts are originally from) to escape Stuart persecution of the Puritans; one of tens of thousands of Protestants who fled to HOlland. There they married Dutch women for atleast two generations, and with the other English Protestants dispersed across HOlland, except for the Massachusetts Pilgrims, relatively well-off people who chartered the Mayflower and headed for America. One of the Dutch wives had a brother or uncle, Jacob VanderWalle, who was a wealthy Pietist member of the committee who organized Germantown.

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