Conrad Waltman's Children



Revised
September 16, 2010

 
The Waltman Family
of Northampton County

Part II:  

The Children of Conrad Waltman


by Neil A. Boyer


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        The preceding chapter focused on the arrival of Conrad Waltman in America in 1738, and on the debate over whether he was the man named “Conrad Waltman” who was listed in official records as a private in the Revolutionary War. This chapter focuses on his numerous children, with special attention to his son Valentine Waltman and on Valentine’s son Conrad Waltman (who is called "Conrad Junior" in this text in order to distinguish him from his grandfather). The third chapter discusses Peter Waltman, of Allentown, son of Conrad Junior, and Peter’s son, Joseph Waltman, of Easton, and his descendants. The genealogical researchers and information sources that are mentioned in this text and footnotes are discussed in detail in the preceding chapter.

        This part includes the following sections:



LINKS
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A List of Conrad Waltman's Children

        Lora LaMance’s book The House of Waltman contended that Katherine Bierly and Conrad Waltman Senior had 13 children. Other studies of the family[1] – especially those submitted to the “OneWorldTree” program of Ancestry.com. -- have produced different numbers of children and different listings. 

        The approach here is to take the most recently discovered genealogical data and present a list of children that takes into account the conclusions of  genealogists, including their doubts about the family tree. The list below totals 14 individuals who may have been children of Conrad, although there is question about several of them. Readers will note that some of the reported birthdates appear too close together to be realistic and that the order of birth of the children needs more study. (A critique of the LaMance book on the Waltmans is at the end of Part I of this paper.)  A genealogical chart of Conrad's family is attached but should not be considered definitive, given the nuances and debated issues discussed in this section. Neither the chart nor this section should be considered as cast in concrete. More work is to be done.

        As indicated in the individual sections below, LaMance's work contained numerous errors, including dates and places of birth, and names of spouses and children. At least two of the children -- Valentine and Eleanor -- appear to have been born in Europe before Conrad traveled to America in 1738. A few children of Conrad were omitted, and some that were included in LaMance's book may not have belonged to Conrad at all. In regard to at least three of the children -- Eleanor, William and Michael -- LaMance seems to have relied on records that actually applied to descendants of the immigrant Emanuel Waltman, of Loudoun County, Virginia, and not to descendants of Conrad. The list of potential offspring below should therefore be considered with caution.
1. Valentine Waltman lived in Northampton County.  At one time, he owned property close to Zion Church in Kreidersville, and later he lived in the Schoenersville area, near the property known in 2007 as Lehigh Valley International Airport. He was a Second Lieutenant in the Revolutionary War and apparently was a leader of the Waltman family and of his community. There is dispute over when he was born. LaMance said it was 1742, and this date has been copied by some other students of the family. However, genealogist Hannah Roach and others thought it might have been before 1733, since Valentine’s first wife, Catharina Brücker, was recorded as born in 1732. If Valentine was born before 1738, he probably was not born in America but likely traveled to America on the Davy with his father. There is evidence that Valentine was still alive in 1810, but there is no proof of his death or burial. Church records about him include mention of a second wife, Magdalena, who could have been a sister of his first wife, Catharina Brücker. Catharina’s burial record said they had 10 children but not all have been identified. See the discussion below.

2. Eleanor Waltman apparently was married to George Lutz, although LaMance thought Eleanor's husband was Michael Lutz.  LaMance said Eleanor was born in 1740, but a baptismal record in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, showed that Eleanor and George Lutz had a son in 1748. This suggests that Eleanor may have been born as early as 1730, before Conrad Waltman traveled to America in 1738, and thus Eleanor may have been born in Europe. A tax record suggests that George and Eleanor Lutz moved from Montgomery County to Berks County about 1752. Eleanor was a widow as early as 1767, and tax records show she had considerable property in Amity Township, Berks County. The last record of her life was in 1781, and she must have died after that, presumably in Amity Township. One of her children, George Lutz, Jr., died there in 1802, and her daughter Susanna Lutz Ludwig died there in 1818. LaMance believed that Eleanor and George Lutz had a daughter, Eleanor Lutz (junior), born in 1767, but no evidence of this child has been found. LaMance said that Eleanor took in two children, George and Samuel, of her brother William Waltman after William was killed during the war. However, there is doubt about whether Conrad had a son named William Waltman (see below). LaMance said that William's son George married Eleanor Lutz (junior), his cousin and foster sister, but this has not been confirmed either. LaMance said that Eleanor and family moved to Bedford County in 1790, and it was there that cousins George Waltman and Eleanor Lutz were married. But Eleanor Waltman Lutz probably was dead by that time, and records show it was another Waltman family, descended from the immigrant Emanuel Waltman, that moved to Bedford County in 1790.  If there was a George Waltman who married an Eleanor Lutz, one possibility is that it did not happen in Bedford County; another is that this George Waltman was descended not from Conrad and William but from the line of the immigrant Emanuel Waltman.  More details are below.

3. Margaret Waltman married John Yonce (or Yunt or Younce), who had been born in Germany, a son of Melchior Yunt. LaMance said she was one of twins, born in 1738 on Christmas Day, just after Conrad arrived in America. Other genealogists have offered different dates for the birth of the twins. However, if their brother Valentine was born much earlier, before the trans-Atlantic trip in 1738, the twins might also have been born earlier and traveled to America with their parents. Reportedly, Margaret and John had eight children. LaMance said Margaret’s husband and sons served in the Revolutionary War. The family lived in Lancaster County and later in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.  A handwritten note in LaMance’s book said John Yonce died in 1812 at the age of 97.  Margaret reportedly died in Dauphin County in 1815.

4. Katherine Waltman, according to LaMance, was one of the twins born on Christmas Day in 1738. LaMance said she eloped at 15 and married Barnett Hampsher (or Hampshire). She was a mother at 16 and lived in York and possibly Lancaster Counties. “Bernard Hamsher” was in the tax list of Shrewsbury Township, York County, in 1781, 1782 and 1788, and in the 1790 census for that township.[2] LaMance said that Katherine’s sisters Margaret and Eleanor also ran away from home, and that Katherine found husbands for them. One website said that Katherine had nine male children. One of her sons, Daniel Hampshire, married a cousin, Elizabeth Waltman, daughter of Katherine's brother Valentine. Both Daniel Hampshire and Valentine Waltman were in the Allen Township tax list for 1788. LaMance thought Katherine was still alive in 1811, when she signed legal papers.

5. John Peter Waltman (1741-1817), known as Peter Waltman, or Waldmann, married Maria Elizabeth Boyer, lived in Northampton County and was listed as a soldier during the Revolutionary War. Extensive information about him is included below.

6. Frederick Waltman (1742-1779) was a fifer in the 6th Regiment of Northampton Troops of the Continental Line. His date of birth, as given by LaMance, is likely in error, since it is incompatible with the birthdate of his sister Elizabeth (below). She said he was killed or died in the War. Pennsylvania State Archives show that 12 pounds were provided to his estate through a certificate dated November 24, 1785, and 52 pounds on another occasion. An Ancestry.com source said he had four children. LaMance said he had five.  LaMance said that Frederick’s brother John Peter made a home for Frederick’s son Nicholas after Frederick died, and that Nicholas was a farmer in Northampton County. He should not be confused with another of Frederick's brothers, Nicholas Waltman. 

7. Elizabeth Waltman was born on July 25, 1742, and she died on December 14, 1821. She married Johannes (John) Joseph Dreisbach, a member of the prominent Dreisbach family of the Kreidersville area. Both were buried in Zion Church Cemetery in Kreidersville, as were many other Dreisbachs. Elizabeth had not been included in lists of the children of Conrad Waltman assembled by LaMance and others. The date of her birth is not compatible with the birthdate given by LaMance for Frederick (above). More information on Elizabeth is included below.

8. William Waltman, born in 1745, is reported to have enlisted in August 1778 as a private in the 2nd battalion, Philadelphia City, under Capt. Robert Duncan, and he was paid on September 9, 1779, according to a certificate in the Pennsylvania State Archives. LaMance said that this man was the son of Conrad Waltman. However, all of the tax and war records presented by LaMance in her book relate to the William Waltman who was not a son of Conrad but the son of the immigrant Emanuel Waltman, an entirely different family line. Research by Garry Heagy uncovered no other person in this era named William Waltman, raising the question of whether Conrad actually had a son named William. LaMance said that William died during the war and that his estate was settled in Philadelphia in 1783, but the William of Philadelphia was still alive in 1791, according to a citizen list. LaMance claimed that Conrad's son William married Elmina Hackett, born about 1746, but no evidence of this marriage can be found. LaMance said that Conrad's son William had sons named William, Jr., George and Samuel, but William the son of Emanuel also had children by those names. LaMance claimed that George and Samuel Waltman went to live with their aunt Eleanor Waltman Lutz when William died. She also said George Waltman married his cousin and foster sister, Eleanor Lutz (Junior) in Bedford County, but there is no evidence of this marriage.[5]  The George Waltman family of Bedford County was descended from Emanuel Waltman. William Jr., born about 1766, reportedly moved to Lycoming County, where one of his children was born about 1790.  It is possible that William Junior moved to Lycoming County about the same time as John Waltman, the son of Conrad Waltman, Junior. William Waltman Jr. also had a son named William Waltman, born about 1798, and he also lived in Lycoming  County.  (One student of the family referred to them as William-1, William-2 and William-3.) However, the father of the first William is still in doubt.

9. Anna Barbara Waltman was born on January 13, 1745, and baptized at Dillinger’s Lutheran Church in Upper Milford, Lehigh  County. Her parents, Conrad and Maria Katharina Waltman, were present. Sponsors were Johanna and Anna Barbara Ort. This is the only baptismal record found for any of Conrad’s children and the only church record showing that Conrad existed. LaMance said she married Jacob Kuder, born about 1743.  However, there has been confusion between this Anna Barbara Waltman and the Susanna Barbara Waltman, a daughter of Valentine, who married George Kuder, born 20 years later, in 1763. There is speculation that the two husbands and the children were mixed up by family historians. More information is provided below.

10. Ludwig Waltman (1745?-1822) was a war veteran and pensioner and lived in York County. When he applied for a pension in 1818, he said he was then 64, and thus born in 1754. (This is the same information given for his brother Michael, suggesting there has been some error regarding one of them.) A certificate showed that he was paid 10 pounds on January 4, 1787. Baptismal records show that Ludwig’s wife’s name was Anna Catharine Fellebahn,[6] born about 1747.   One record shows that their daughter, Maria Margretha Waldmann, was baptized at Hain's Church in Lower Heidelberg Township, Berks County, on April 2, 1769.  If Ludwig had been born in 1754, he would have been only 15 at the time of his daughter's birth, and this suggests that the date of Ludwig's birth must have been earlier. Garry Heagy thought he was born about 1745.   York Township tax lists showed Ludwig owning 171 acres in the years 1779 to 1783. In the 1790 census, his household contained one male over 16, two males under 16, and five females. One report said they had seven children. LaMance said he was not to be confused with a Ludwig Waltman who did not serve in the war and came from the Baltimore line of Henry Waltman, a different family.

11. John Waltman?  There is evidence that a John Waltman, born about 1750, lived in Upper Saucon Township, Lehigh County.  There is no apparent link, in church or other records, between this man and Conrad Waltman or any of the other identified descendants of Conrad, and he was not mentioned in the LaMance book. Nevertheless, records show this John Waltman living in the same general area as others in Conrad's family, and he falls in the same general range of birthdates of Conrad's children.  He seems clearly to be a different person than others known as John Waltman, such as the son of Conrad, Jr. This John appeared in the 1785 tax list and the 1790 and 1800 census reports for Upper Saucon Township, and in the 1810 census for nearby Whitehall Township. He and his wife Eva appeared at the baptisms for two children, Heinrich Waldman, born on November 14, 1775, in Upper Saucon Township, and Johannes Waldman, Jr., born February 1, 1779, in Whitehall Township. The second child was baptized at St. Paul's Blue Church in Upper Saucon Township.

12. Nicholas Waltman (1750?-1778). LaMance said that, at age 19, Nicholas went with his brothers to the defense of Philadelphia in 1775. This would indicate he was born in 1756. She said he died or was killed in battle during the War. LaMance said Nicholas was the favorite child of his father, and his death is what drove Conrad crazy. LaMance may not have been correct about his age. Northampton County tax lists for Lehigh Township in 1772 list "Nich's Waltman," a farmer, having paid about two and a half pounds.  If this is the same person and if LaMance had his birthdate correct, Nicholas would have been only 16. It is possible that he paid taxes, but if he was a farmer and had to pay, he would have been older than 16 at the time. Genealogist Hannah Roach suggested Nicholas had been born about 1750.[7]  There is a “Nicholas Waldman” in the Pennsylvania State Archives listed as serving with the 1st German Battalion under Capt. Benjamin Weiber, but it is not clear if this was the same person.  The report of the early death of Nicholas also is unclear. In 1784, a Philipp Waldmann, son of "Nicolas and wife," was baptized in Hain's Reformed Church in Lower Heidelberg Township, Berks County, the same church where children of Ludwig, brother of Nicholas, were baptized. This suggests Nicholas was still alive in 1784 and did not die during the War.

13. Maria Waltman was reported by one source to have been a child of Conrad, born about 1752, but LaMance and an Ancestry.com site said it was 1758.  LaMance said that Maria stayed at home to help her mother care for Conrad while her siblings were at war, and that she helped wrest Conrad's family Bible from his destructive hands.  LaMance also said Maria was married about 1786 to Melchior Ruckel (also spelled Rookel), and that they stayed in Northampton County when other relatives moved to Ohio. However, there is evidence that the person who married Melchior Ruckel was not this Maria but rather Maria Catherine Waltman, a daughter of Valentine.  It is possible that LaMance confused the two individuals, or even that this Maria did not exist. 

14. Hiram "Michael" Waltman was born in 1748 or 1750, according to family genealogical accounts, but his record is unclear. There were two Michael Waltmans. LaMance seems to have confused a Michael Waltman, the son of Conrad, with Michael Waltman, the son of the immigrant Emanuel Waltman in an entirely different line.  Michael the son of Emanuel lived in Philadelphia. It appears that Michael who was the son of Conrad lived in Frederick County, Maryland, and was shown in the census of 1800 and 1820 in Emmitsburg. LaMance erroneously said that prior to the war he lived in Philadelphia, near his brother William; both Michael and William were the sons of Emanuel Waltman. (She similarly confused William with a child of Conrad.) LaMance's book said that In 1784, Michael married Maria Magdalena "Polly" Prutzman. Michael died in 1829, when he would have been 81 if born in 1748, or 75 if born in 1754, and Polly died in 1850, both in Frederick, Maryland. The DAR Patriot Index said he was born in 1754, apparently on the basis of his application for a pension in 1818, when he said he was 64. (It is not clear which Michael was being addressed in the DAR index.)  They were buried in the Apple Church Graveyard in Frederick County, Maryland.   An article about Michael in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly gave his wife's name as "Magdalin Waltman" when she applied for a widow's pension in 1847, at age 81. She said they had 11 children. An account written for LaMance by a descendant of Michael said that they had eight children, of whom Thomas Waltman married Catherine Wolf, had 11 children, and moved to Brown County, Indiana. However, the NGS listing of children did not include a Thomas. More research is required to sort out these two Michaels.
 
        Not included in this list is Andrew Waltman, who LaMance believed was also a child of Conrad, born in 1760. Andrew was a soldier in the War, and married Anna Maria Margretta Zerfass.  LaMance said Andrew cared for the elder Conrad and his wife after the War until their death. Andrew and Margretta lived in Northampton County, and then moved to Huntington Township in Luzerne County. It was reported that they had at least nine children. At least one student of the family argues convincingly that the Andrew Waltman who married Margretta Zerfass and was a captain in the Revolution was born in 1765, not 1760, and was actually a child of Conrad's son Valentine Waltman and therefore a grandson of Conrad.  See the discussion below.

        Also excluded from this list is the younger Conrad Waltman, born in 1759.  While some students of the family believed he was a child of the elder Conrad, evidence makes clear that Conrad Jr. was the son of Valentine Waltman and thus a grandson of the immigrant Conrad Waltman. That question is discussed later in this section. 

        As noted, there have been other attempts to compile Conrad's family membership. See also the genealogical charts for various branches of the Waltman family.

Back to Top of Part II


A NOTE ON NAMES

The German naming customs used in the 18th century often cause confusion, and this is true of the children in the Conrad Waltman family.  Males who had two given names often were given "Johann" as the first name, although they were usually known by their middle or second name.  Johann Peter was known as Peter, Hiram Michael was known as Michael.  A useful account of the customary naming system in this period can be found at the website http://www.kerchner.com/germname.htm. 



The Key Players

Among this family, several of the children are notable for genealogical importance, and details are provided here.


Valentine Waltman (1733?-1810?)

        Conrad’s son Valentine Waltman appears to have been a prominent and respected citizen of Northampton County. He was very active in church affairs, first in Kreidersville and later in Schoenersville, where he was named to represent his church at a Lutheran synod in Philadelphia. He was a second lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, and he was a member of a number of court juries dealing with estate settlement. There is extensive genealogical evidence of his activities. Church and tax records include numerous mentions of Valentine, in contrast to the almost total absence of such information about his father, Conrad Senior.    

        The date of Valentine’s birth is in dispute.  LaMance said it was 1742, after Conrad's 1738 arrival in America.  But Roach and others thought it was prior to 1733.  The earlier date is based in part on Valentine's marriage to Catherine Brücker. Her burial record said that she was born in 1733 and that she married Valentine in 1755.  If that record is correct, the theory is that Valentine must have been about the same age. If he was married in 1755, he would have been only 13 if born in 1742.  Their first child, Conrad Junior, was born in 1759, when Valentine would have been only 17 if born in 1742.

        If Valentine was born about 1733, that would mean he must have been born in Europe and traveled to America with his father aboard the Davy in 1738. This in turn suggests that the tombstone of his mother, Katherine Bierly Waltman, was correct in saying she had been born in 1708.  LaMance argued that the tombstone was wrong, that Katherine actually was born in 1718, but that would make her only about 15 when Valentine was born about 1733. Another consideration is that the naming practice of the times was to give the first-born son the name of his grandfather. Since Conrad's father was named Valentine, it would be expected that his first son would also be name Valentine. More discussion of Valentine's birth date is below.

        LaMance said Valentine was one of the few Waltman boys who could get along with their father, and he was always on intimate terms with his brother Peter and with Andrew, apparently his son, who remained living nearby. She said that he was called "Felty," a common nickname for Valentine, by his German-speaking neighbors, and that he had countless dangerous encounters with Indians while attempting to maintain a farm. It appears that Valentine was still alive in 1810, but there is no record of his death or burial. He would have been about 77 if he was born in 1733 and died in 1810.

        These are some of the high points of the genealogical research:

    *          Valentine appears in the Northampton County tax lists for Lehigh Township from 1761 through 1770, as shown in Pennsylvania Archives, 3rd Series, Volume XIX. In 1765, records show that he owned 24 cleared acres, 26 wooded acres, 2 horses, 3 cattle, and 3 sheep. In 1776, he had 50 cleared acres and 40 acres of woodland. From 1779 to 1788, he had 150 acres, 3 horses, and 3 cattle. Zion Church records, noted below, showed that Valentine owned land in Lehigh Township in 1771 on the north border of the new Zion Church. A list of “taxables” in Allen Township in 1780 showed “Valentine Waldmore, farmer,” having property with an assessed value of 650 pounds. By contrast, Simon Dreisbach, father of John Dreisbach, who married Valentine’s sister, Elizabeth, had property valued at 1,291 pounds.

    *          Northampton County Archives, available in the Court House, recorded Valentine on the tax lists of Allen Township from 1781 through 1799, suggesting that he moved a few miles southeast about 1781. This was probably the Schoenersville area. He appeared in Hanover township tax lists (after its split from Allen Township) in 1799 and 1800, but not after that. (No land transfer deed or will has been located for Valentine.)

    *          In 1762, Valentine and his wife Catherine received money from the estate of Catherine’s deceased father, Jacob Brücker, according to Orphan’s Court records.

    *          In July 1764, Valentine purchased 100½ acres in Moore Township from Richard Peters of Philadelphia. In May of 1765, a year later, Valentine and Catherine sold the land to Samuel Summoney. When the new owner sold the property in 1770, court records showed that Valentine was a witness.[8]

    *          From 1764 through 1770, there is frequent mention of Valentine, his wife Catharina, and other family members as Lutheran communicants in Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Petersville, Moore Township, Northampton County, two miles northeast of Kreidersville.[9]

    *          On February 25, 1771, Valentine was appointed a member of a committee to investigate erection of a new church, which became Zion (Stone) Church in Kreidersville. On November 14, 1772, as a trustee of the Lutheran congregation, he signed the Union Church agreement, making additional contributions in the name of his daughter Elizabeth and brother Peter. He was named among church communicants from 1773 to 1776. A history of Zion Church says that the church was built on land near Indian Creek, bounded on the north by the township lines of Allen and Lehigh, and land of Valentine Waldman.

    *          He signed the Oath of Allegiance on August 5, 1777.[10]

    *          He is recorded as a Second Lieutenant on a general muster roll of the Fourth Battalion of the Northampton County Militia, on May 14, 1778. He would have been 36 years old if born in 1742, 46 if born earlier.[11]

    *          In 1779, he was a member of the building committee, from the Lutheran side, of Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church in Schoenersville (also called Dryland Church in some records).[12] He and other family members were regularly included in the list of communicants through 1794. In 1784, Valentine and Catherine Waltman, “the grandparents,” were present at the baptism of John Valentine Hamscher, son of Daniel and Catharina Elisabeth Hamscher.

    *          In 1795, Valentine collected money for a new organ for Christ church.

    *          The 1790 U.S. census revealed that in Allen Township, there were only two heads of household named Waltman. One was Valentine. In that household, there was only one male over 16 (Valentine may have been 58), one male under 16 (possibly Peter, who was 11), and 4 females. Valentine’s wife, Catherine, and Conrad Junior had died by 1790. Conrad Senior was still alive, but, as noted earlier, he seems not accounted for by the census. No age is given in the census for the females, and thus it is not possible to speculate on whether one might have been Valentine's second wife. (The other Waltman in the Allen Township census was Andrew, apparently the son of Valentine, born about 1765. As noted earlier, the elder Conrad Waltman never appeared in any census or tax records.)

    *          In May 1793, Valentine, as a member of Christ Church, was sent as a delegate of the church to the Lutheran Synod in Philadelphia. He was there to present copies of sermons and testimonials favorable to the current pastor, the Rev. G. Joseph Wichterman, and to urge renewal of the minister’s license. Two days later, the license was renewed.[13]

    *          In 1794 (and at other times), Valentine – obviously a well-respected member of his community -- served on a jury of 12 men to consider the settlement of estates. He was on a jury on April 17, 1794, for the estate of John Sterner of Allen Township, 150 acres, and on November 12, 1794, for the estate of Henry Faust of Allen Township, 193 acres.[14] In 1782, he was a witness in the settlement of a debt of 600 pounds of mortgagor Michael Bieber, of Allen Township, and his wife Mary Barbara. Michael was the father-in-law of Valentine’s son, Conrad Waltman, Jr. (Note: There were a number of interconnections between the Waltman and Sterner families. The John Sterner mentioned in this paragraph, who died in 1794, was not the man who married Valentine's daughter Barbara but the uncle of the John Sterner who married Barbara Waltman. The man mentioned here, who died in 1794, was a brother of Nicholas Sterner, and both were sons of Caspar Sterner, Jr. There were further Waltman-Sterner connections in the next generation. See the notes here and here.)

    *          The 1800 census listed a Valentine Waldman in the town of Northampton, which is about two miles south of Kreidersville and four miles west of Schoenersville. If this is the same Valentine, he may have moved into the town, or the census taker may simply have used “Northampton” to designate the general area where Valentine lived. Aside from his brother Peter, Valentine was the only Waltman in the Northampton County census. The household showed a man and woman, both over 45, and two males aged 10-15. Valentine may have had a son named Valentine Jr. (this is in doubt), but he would not have been 45 in 1800, and so this must have been the older Valentine. The young ones in this census report would not have been Valentine’s children, but might have been grandchildren.

    *          Valentine was recorded appeared at the Lord’s Supper in Christ Church on October 25, 1800, as “Valendin Waldmann.”

    *          In 1802, Valentine was one of the people listed as being owed money in the settlement of the estate of John Hays of Allen Township (probably the John Hays who declined to serve as a Flying Camp captain in 1776 in the company that included Conrad Waltman).

    *         On August 19, 1808, Christ Church records show that Valentine acknowledged an agreement that he had signed in 1784 as one of two Lutheran “Baumeisters” (German for “building master”) regarding the church. Fourteen people had signed the agreement in 1784. Three of them, including Valentine, appeared before a Justice of the Peace in 1808 to acknowledge that they had signed the agreement.[15]

    *          On August 25, 1810, Valentine was listed as one of those to whom cash was due from the estate of Daniel Kliest. Peter Anewald and John Sterner, Waltman in-laws, were also on the list. This is the last reference found indicating that Valentine might still be alive.[16]

        There is no record of the death or burial of Valentine. (LaMance said he was buried at Zion Church in Kreidersville, but there is no record of this.) It seems likely he was buried at Christ Church in Schoenersville, where he and his family were active participants, but there is no record of this either. A DAR memorial at the Schoenersville Cemetery does not mention Valentine (or any other Waltman). He was last noted in an estate settlement in 1810, but neither Valentine nor his wife was mentioned in the 1810 census.
 
      There has been confusion about the date of Valentine’s birth and the name of his wife and children. LaMance claimed that Valentine was married to Catherine Bieber (or Beaver), and that they had seven children, including Peter Waltman (born in 1779). But LaMance had a number of things wrong. She said that Valentine had been about 20 when he married Catherine Beaver,[17] which would have been about 1762 if Valentine had been born, as she said, in 1742. However, the Beaver family history indicated that Catherine wasn't born until 1761, and it is not likely she would have been married off when she was one year old.

        The answer is in the burial record of Conrad Junior, quoted below, which shows that he was the one married to “Catharina Bieber,” not Valentine. The Bieber family history, quoted in the previous chapter, also made clear that Catherine Bieber had been married to Conrad Waltman Jr., not to Valentine, and that Peter Waltman was one of her children.[18] In fact, all known versions of the Waltman lineage agreed that the mother of Peter Waltman was Catherine Bieber, but they disagreed about the identity of Catherine's husband. Otherwise, there was agreement on many other facts about Catherine, including acceptance that upon the death of her first husband (whatever his name), she married a man named Sendel. Both Beaver and LaMance made the same point.[19]

        LaMance never accepted the corrections that were supplied to her by Rev. Schmoyer regarding Catherine Bieber and Conrad Junior. Her own copy of her book, which contained numerous handwritten corrections when she died, left unchanged her contention that Valentine was the person who married Catherine Bieber, and it continued to exclude any reference to a Conrad Waltman Junior. In fact, she maintained the entire Chapter XVII of her book, on Valentine Waltman, as in the original, without a single penciled correction on these issues.

    The Brücker Complication. Wilkins, who was a trained genealogist, seemed to have solved the marriage problem through her discovery in the burial records of Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville that Valentine was married not to Catharine Bieber but to Catharine Brücker (also written as Brucker or as Bricker). The church’s detailed record read as follows:
Waldman, Catharina, 20 May 1786 (buried), Wife of Valentin Waldman, born Petersbach in Elsesz. Parents were Jacob Brücker and wife Magdalena. Born the 21st of Feb 1732. She was married to Valentin Waldman in 1755. Lived 31 years of married life and had 3 sons and 7 daughters. Was ill 15 weeks and 5 days with consumption. Died May 18th at 5 AM. Age 54 years and about 3 months.[20]

        Largely because of this, Wilkins wrote to the DAR on April 25, 1951, to reiterate changes in her lineage from what she had presented in her 1943 DAR application. The “major correction,” she wrote, “is the addition of another son, name of Conrad Waltman, Jr., who married Catherine Bieber, instead of his brother, Valentine Waltman, whose wife was Catherine Brucker.” (Wilkins was correct that Conrad Junior had married Catherine Bieber, but wrong in saying that Conrad Junior was a brother of Valentine.)

        However, there was still a problem with the dates. If they were correct, and if Valentine had been born in 1742, Catherine Brucker would have been 10 years older than Valentine, and when they married in 1755, she would have been 23 and he only 13!

        Genealogist Hannah Roach decided that the solution to this problem was that LaMance had been wrong in giving a birthdate of 1742 to Valentine. Roach seems to have calculated that Catherine Brücker and Valentine must have been about the same age. If Catherine had been born in 1732, Valentine must have been born before 1733. This idea challenged much of the content of the opening chapters of the LaMance book. LaMance had claimed that Conrad Waltman and Katherine Bierly had run away from their parents in Bavaria in 1738, gotten married in Holland, and arrived in Philadelphia in October 1738. She said their first children, twins Katherine and Margaret, were born in December 1738. And she said that, to minimize the complaints from his family in Bavaria, Conrad had named his fifth child Valentine, after his father, in 1742. Was the story true? If Conrad Senior was going to name a child after his father, Valentine, it would have made sense for him to do so with his first child rather than wait for a child much farther down the line.  It is thus more likely that Valentine was the first child, born in 1732-33, and that he came to America with his parents in 1738.

        Valentine is recorded in the Lehigh Township tax lists as early as 1761. If he had been born in 1742, he would have been only 19 at that time. It is possible that he owned property and paid taxes at age 19, but it more likely that he was older than that in 1761. And if Valentine had been born in 1742, he would have been only 17 when his son Conrad Waltman, Junior, was born.  LaMance introduced confusion into this issue by claiming that Valentine signed, "September 1757, a petition to the authorities of the Colony, begging protection for the Northampton County families from Indians."  If he had been born in 1742, he would have been only 16.  This appears to be further evidence that he was born much earlier than 1742.

        This raises other questions:  Were Conrad and Katherine married earlier than 1738 when Conrad  came to America? Was Valentine born in Europe in 1732 or earlier, and did he come to America with his father Conrad in 1738? There is no record that a Valentine Waltman came to America then, or at any other time, although children under 16 were usually not included in ship passenger lists. (There is one account in Ancestry.com that says Valentine was born in Pennsylvania in 1735, but no explanation is given.)

        If Katherine Bierly Waltman had been born in 1708, as her tombstone says, she might have had a child (Valentine) in 1732, at age 24. LaMance claimed that Katherine had a son, Andrew, in 1760.  If true, it seems not likely that Katherine would still be having children at age 52. If she had been born in 1718, as LaMance said, it is not likely she would have had a child (Valentine) in 1732 when she was 14, although that is possible.  One theory is that the 1708 birthdate for Katherine on her tombstone was correct, that Conrad was three years older (as LaMance said), thus born in 1705 (not 1715), and that Andrew Waltman, reported to be born in 1760, was not a child of Katherine at all, for she would have been too old to have a child at that time.  See the section below that offers evidence that Andrew Waltman was really a child of Valentine Waltman and not of Conrad.  A major puzzle, then, is to reconcile the claims of Valentine’s birth date with the age of his wife, as given in her burial record, the date of their marriage, the reported ages of his parents, and the date of his father’s trip to America, with all of the church and tax records of Valentine’s activities in America. The problem deserves further study.

        In November 1989, the DAR issued a list of “corrections” in its journal, page 791. It said that Valentine Waltman, b. 1742, d. after 1790, had been married to Catherine Brücker. In this, the DAR apparently accepted the Wilkins view that Valentine had been married to Catherine Brücker (although it maintained the 1742 birthdate provided by LaMance). It appeared that the correction was published because Valentine had been a Second Lieutenant in the Revolutionary War from Pennsylvania. However, Valentine was not listed in the DAR Patriot Index because no one had applied for DAR membership on the basis of his service. (A DAR staffer has pointed out that not even General George Washington is listed in the Patriot Index, for the same reason.) In regard to potential new DAR members who might be interested in citing Valentine as a patriot, the journal said that “future applicants must prove correct lineage,” and that policy remained in effect in 2007. Nevertheless, his participation in the military seems firmly established.

    A Second Wife. The records of Valentine’s appearances in services at Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville show that, after Catherine Brücker Waltman died, Valentine was married to a woman named “Magdalena.” On May 27, 1786, just nine days after the death of his wife Catherine, Valentine attended church with another Catherine Waldman, the widow of Conrad Junior (who had died the year before), and with Maria Margaret, Anna Barbara and Andrew Waldman, all still single and all apparently children of Valentine. But at least by 1792, Valentine had remarried. Church records for those years show the attendance of “Valentine Waldman & wife.” In 1793, “Valentine Waltman & Magdalena” (presumably his wife) were sponsors for the baptism of John Sterner and Barbara’s son Valentine.[21] In 1794, “Valendin Waldmann & w. Magdalena” appeared as communicants in the records at Christ Church.

        Who was Magdalena? The records of the Northampton County Orphans Court suggest that she could have been Magdalena Brücker, a sister of Catherine Brücker Waltman.  Jacob Brücker, the father of Catherine, died intestate in May 1761, when Catherine was 29 (if born in 1732). His widow, listed as “Anna Maria Brücker,” was granted letters of administration for his estate in 1761. Court records in a 1762 proceeding named the widow as “Anna Mary Godlieb Brücker.” These names are different from the “Magdalena Brücker” who was listed as the mother of Catherine in the Catherine’s 1786 burial record, 25 years later. Perhaps the name was a mistake, or perhaps Jacob was married twice and his first wife, Catherine’s mother, was named Magdalena, and she had died and/or Jacob Brücker had been remarried to Anna Mary Godlieb. Since Catherine had a sister named Magdalena (see below), it would make sense that the girl could have been named after her mother. Before June of 1762, less than a year after Jacob Brücker died, Mary Godlieb Brücker had remarried, to George Schrader.

        The estate of Jacob Brücker, which amounted to 293 pounds, was basically divided into thirds. About one third, 89 pounds, went to his widow, who was by then the wife of George Schrader. One third went to his eldest son, Adam Brücker (no other son is mentioned in the record).[22] And one third was divided between his two daughters. Of this, 44 pounds went to “Valentin Weltman & Katherina” and 44 pounds went to “Magdalena Brücker,” showing that Catherine had a single sister named Magdalena.

        Earlier, on May 6, 1761, just after her father died, a daughter of Jacob Brücker had petitioned the Orphans Court to choose her own guardian. The girl was over the age of 14 but still a minor, under 21, and needed a guardian to care for her property. The court record called her “Maudlin Brücker, daughter of Jacob Brücker.” This could have been an error, with the name “Maudlin” confused with “Magdalena,” and thus these could be references to the same person. On the other hand, it is also possible that Jacob had three daughters and, in administration of his estate, the one who was a minor got nothing. In any event, the girl who selected a guardian chose “Felti Waltman,” the husband of her sister Catherine.[23] Since her mother had gotten married to George Schrader and moved elsewhere and she had chosen Valentine as her guardian, it seems logical that Magdalena/Maudlin could have moved in with Valentine and Catherine (and with their son Conrad Waltman, Junior, then just two years old). Catherine died 24 years later, in 1786, and several years after that, Valentine is recorded appearing in church with a wife named Magdalena. If this is the same person, judging by her age at the time she chose a guardian, Magdalena would have been born between 1740 and 1747, and was thus around 45 when she appeared as Valentine’s second wife. There is no other record of her. Census reports of 1800 and 1810 provide no link to her. On the other hand, the Magdalena who was Valentine's second wife may have been an entirely different person.

       Waltmans and Brückers.  In regard to the whereabouts of the family of Conrad Waltman, Senior, it should be noted that there is evidence that they lived in Bucks County in the area around Bedminster, east of Quakertown, during the period 1745-1760.  This comes from the baptism record of their daughter Anna Barbara in 1745, the marriage of their daughter Elizabeth in 1758, and the baptism of two sons of Elizabeth in 1759 and 1760.  Similarly, at Tohickon Reformed Church in Bedminister Township, there is a record that Catherine Brücker's parents, "Jacob Breucker" and his wife, were sponsors, on October 14, 1759, for the baptism of a Susanna Konig, suggesting that the Brückers also lived in this area. 

        If Valentine Waltman married Catherine Brücker in 1755, as has been recorded, it is possible that the marriage took place during this period when both Waltmans and Brückers lived in Bucks County. This may not have been their permanent home.  It has been reported by genealogist Hannah Roach that many people from Northampton County temporarily moved south to Bucks County during this time to avoid trouble with Indians.  When Jacob Brücker died in 1761, his estate was handled in Northampton County courts.  It is not clear, but both the Waltman and Brücker families may have been regular residents of Northampton County residing in Bucks County only on a temporary basis. Nevertheless, Valentine and Catherine may well have been married in Bucks County in 1755.

       Valentine’s Children. The burial record of Catherine Brücker Waltman said that she had ten children, three sons and seven daughters, but not all of these can be identified. LaMance said that Valentine had seven children, who were Andreas (or Andrew, born in 1765), Elizabeth (b. 1767), Valentine, Jr. (b. 1769), Susannah (b. 1770), Margaret (1776-1840), who married Adam Lerch, Peter (1779-1836), and Maria Barbara (1781-1852). However, available records make clear that she was wrong about Margaret. The woman who married Adam Lerch was not Valentine’s daughter Margaret but John Peter’s daughter Magdalena. Valentine did have a daughter named Margaret, but she married Jacob Riemel. LaMance was also wrong about Peter and Maria Barbara, who were children of Conrad Jr., not Valentine. Also, it is not clear that Valentine actually had a child named Valentine, Junior, for whom no evidence has been located. Further, LaMance did not include Conrad Junior as a child of Valentine since she did not believe he existed. Nor did she include the Mary Waltman who married Jacob Riemel, or the Elizabeth Waltman who married Daniel Hamscher. Thus, her account was very flawed. On the other hand, the Andrew listed above, born in 1765, probably was the Andrew who served in the War and married Margetta Zerfass. It appears that LaMance simply connected this Andrew with the wrong father, Conrad Senior instead of Valentine.

        Available evidence is that Valentine’s children, interestingly baptized in three different churches, were those listed below.  See a genealogical chart for this family. 

1. Conrad Waltman, described here as Conrad Junior, was born February 7, 1759, and died December 1, 1785, at the age of 26.  Except for LaMance, most genealogists believe this is the “Conrad Waltman” who was a private in the Revolutionary War. On September 15, 1778, he married Catharine Bieber, and they had four children. Records of Christ Church in Schoenersville say that he was buried on December 3, 1785, presumably in the cemetery there, although no marker has been found.  There is no baptism record identifying his parents, and some students of the family believe Conrad Junior was the son of Conrad Senior. However, church attendance records clearly refer to Conrad Junior as a son of Valentine. His birth date also fits logically within the birthdates of other children of Valentine. (If Elizabeth had been born in 1761, as the Hamscher family claimed, Conrad Junior would have been Valentine’s first child.) After Conrad died, Catherine married George Sendel and they had five children. See the detailed section on Conrad Junior below.

2. Barbara Waltman was born on November 26, 1760, as indicated in her burial record. Roach said Barbara was confirmed at Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville in 1776, at age 16, and was thus born in 1760. Zion Church notes show that she "communed for 1st time" in 1776. She appeared at Zion Church in Kreidersville with Conrad Waltman (apparently her brother) in 1777. She also appeared at Christ Church on numerous occasions with Valentine and other members of her family, as well as with John Sterner, whom she married in 1788. John had been born on November 12, 1760, and he died on March 14, 1843. Barbara died on May 23, 1839, at the age of 78. The dates of birth and death for Barbara and John Sterner are from the burial records at Schoenersville Cemetery. It appears they had at least four children, and two of them married children of Catherine Bieber Waltman Sendel, Barbara's former sister-in-law, the widow of Conrad Waltman, and George Sendel.  Their daughter Maria Anna "Polly" Sterner (born 1799) married Michael Sendel (1792-1861). Their son Nicholas Sterner (1797-1882) married Catherine Sendel (1803-1873), and they had at least 11 children. Tombstones in St. Peter's Church Cemetery in Rittersville called them "Nikalaus" and "Catharina" Sterner.

Barbara Waltman Sterner Johannes Sterner in Schoenersville Cemetery
The tombstones of Barbara Waltman Sterner, left, and her husband, John (Johannes) Sterner, in Christ Church Cemetery in Schoenersville.  It appears that Valentine Waltman and his family lived near Schoenersville.


3. Elizabeth Catherine Waltman in various records is called Catharine, Elizabeth, Catharina Elizabeth and Elizabeth Catharina. She was confirmed as “Elizabeth” at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, in Petersville, about two miles from Kreidersville, in 1769. When she was born is not clear. If she was 16 at the time, the normal age for confirmation, she would have been born in 1753, but that date would mean she was born two years before the marriage of Valentine and Catherine Brucker in 1755. A website devoted to the Hamsher family[24] said that “Elizabeth Catherine Waldman” was born in 1761, which is more likely correct, and that her husband was born in 1760. Their first child was born in 1783, and it seems unlikely that Elizabeth would have married a man seven years younger and waited until she was 30 to have her first child. Perhaps she was actually confirmed when she was nine, since a birthdate of 1761 would make more sense. As a communicant in Emmanuel church, she appeared in the records seated with Valentine and Catharina in 1770, alone in 1772, and with family in 1773.

Elizabeth married her cousin Daniel Hamscher (1760-1835) on October 14, 1783, at Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville. The record book noted that they were married “after proclamation three times." If the indicated birth dates are correct (1760 and 1761), he was 23 and she was 22. Daniel was the son of Barnett Hampshire and Katherine Waldman, sister of Valentine and an aunt of Elizabeth. On November 4, 1784, Daniel Hamscher & "Catharine Elizabeth" appeared in that church for the baptism of their son, John Valentine. Sponsors were “Valentine Waldman & Catharina, the grandparents.” On January 2, 1785, Daniel Hamscher & "Catharina Elizabeth" were sponsors for the baptism of Elizabeth Catharine, a daughter of Conrad Waldman, Jr.,  and Catharine. In 1785, a "Catherine Hamscher" attended Christ Church with the Lutheran congregation in Schoenersville. The record noted "husb. Reformed" (it was not clear if he was present). In 1786, present was "Catherine wife of Daniel Hamscher." In 1788, at the baptism of their son Daniel, the parents are Daniel Hamscher and "Elizabeth," and in 1794, present at the baptism of their son Bernard “Hampscher” in Zion Church were “Daniel and Catherine,” with Peter Waltman and wife as sponsors. Daniel was recorded as a ranger on the frontier from Northampton County between 1778 and 1780.  During the years 1780-1783, Daniel was a private in Captain John Deter's comapny of the militia.  His father, Adam, was a lieutenant and two brothers also served in the same company. One Ancestry.com source said that Elizabeth and Daniel had 11 children and that she died in 1827 at the age of 66 in Sparta Township, Livingston County, New York.

4. Andreas (Andrew) Waltman, the fourth child of Valentine and Catherine Waltman, was confirmed at Zion Church in 1780, at age 15, and thus was considered born about 1765. LaMance wrote in her own copy of her book that this Andrew married Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of Peter Hamilton, that the family "went south" and that they lived in Mississippi.  She said that Andrew died in "Sabuta," Mississippi, in 1837 or 1839, and that his children were born in Sabuta. (Modern maps of Mississippi show no town of Sabuta, although there is a Shubuta in Clark County, population 651 in the 2000 census. This may be the town meant by LaMance.) 

Recent research by Garry Heagy suggests that LaMance was wrong about several other points. Most importantly, he concluded that this Andrew Waltman did not go to Mississippi. Rather, this Andrew Waltman is the one who fought in the Revolution, married Anna Margretta Zerfass and moved to central Pennsylvania. LaMance thought that that Andrew had been born in 1760, a son of the elder Conrad Waltman. Heagy argues, to the contrary, that there was only one Andrew Waltman living in Northampton County at this time and that the Andrew who fought in the Revolution was a  child of Valentine, born in 1765, the one under discussion in this section.  If there is a family connection to the Mississippi Waltmans, it is John Waltman, a son of the Andrew born in 1765, who is the Waltman who went to Mississippi and married Elizabeth Hamilton. More research on the theory would be beneficial. See more about the Mississippi Waltmans. See more details about Andrew below.   
 
5. Margaret Waltman, “dau of Valentine, aged 17,” was confirmed at Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville on October 12, 1783. She was thus born about 1766. She married Jacob Riemel (or Remmel), as shown in the baptism of their daughter Susanna at the same church on March 17, 1793. “Jacob Ramel” is also listed in the 1790 census for Allen Township, with a household of one male over 16, one under 16, and three females. The property was next to that of Andrew Waltman in the census account.  In the census for 1810, 1820 and 1830, they lived in Ross Township, Northampton County (later Monroe County), and they had seven children.

6. Maria Catherine Waltman was born on March 2, 1769, according to a baptism report. Valentine and Catharina, the parents, were present at the baptism in Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Petersville. There is evidence that this is the "Maria Waltman" who married Melchior Rockel (or Ruckel or Rookel) about 1786, as claimed by several genealogists, and that LaMance was in error in saying that the daughter of Conrad Senior of that same name is the one who married Melchior Ruckel.  Garry Heagy said that if two women of the same name each married a man named Melchior Rockel, it would be quite a coincidence. It seems more likely that Conrad Waltman did not have a daughter of this name.

Of at least nine children of Maria and Melchior Rockel, there were twins Peter Henry and Henry Peter born November 27, 1798, according to Peter's birth certificate, a copy of which was in the possession of a Ruckel descendant, Robert L. Keener. A brother, George Ruckel, born in 1811, recorded his mother's death in his family Bible, saying that Mary Ruckel died on April 14, 1832, at the age of 63 years, one month and 12 days. That would put her birth date on March 14, 1769, almost precisely on the date of birth of the woman discussed in the baptism report. In 2008, the original Bible was in the possession of Robert Keener, a descendant of George Ruckel. Apparently, Maria and Melchior's family lived in Northampton County at least until 1800. Melchior's deed for 143 acres of land in Bloom Township, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, was recorded in the Northumberland County Courthouse in Sunbury on February 1, 1809.  He reportedly died on July 14, 1826, in Columbia County, six years before Maria died. Their son Peter Ruckel moved to Medina County, Ohio, in the 1830s. His brother George Ruckel moved to Ohio in 1847 and eventually farmed on land in Summit County. George's son, Albert Herman Ruckel, sold that land in 1912 to Frank Seiberling, founder of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, who wanted to establish Goodyear Heights, a housing development created for Goodyear workers near the factory in Akron.

7. Valentine Waltman, Jr., was believed by LaMance to have been a son of Valentine and Catherine. She said he was two years old in 1771, and thus was born in 1769. Her book said his father honored Valentine Jr. and a sister by having their names listed among contributors to the construction of the new church. However, the church records show these contributions were made in the name of Valentine’s daughter Elizabeth and his brother Peter. No other information about Valentine Jr. has been located, and the birthdate suggested by LaMance conflicts with the recorded baptism of Maria Catharine. His inclusion in Valentine’s family is thus in question.
8. Susanna Barbara Waltman had her birth recorded at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Petersville, Moore Township, on July 13, 1771 (not 1770, as in the LaMance listing). She was baptized on September 15, 1771.  She married George Kuder (also spelled Kuter) who was born in 1763 in Germany and died after 1830. Susanna and George first lived in Northampton County and attended communion services at both Dryland Church, in Hecktown, Lower Nazareth Township (1789), and Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville (1803). By 1810, Susanna and George had moved to Columbia County, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River, and they died in that county in Fishing Creek Township. Susanna's sister, Maria Catherine, and her husband Melchior Rockel, also moved to Columbia County. An extensive article about the family appears in the History of the Western Reserve, page 1654.  Among other things, it says that when George came to Pennsylvania in his youth, "that section of the country was mostly a wilderness; but there he settled, flourished, married and multiplied, becoming the father of sixteen children."  It also said that one of his sons, Adam Kuder, had twelve children. At least seven children have been documented as offspring of Susanna Barbara and George Kuder.

The marriage of Susanna Barbara Waltman and George Kuder has been confused with the marriage of Anna Barbara Waltman (daughter of Conrad Sr.) with Jacob Kuder, who was born about 1743, about 20 years earlier. (The relationship between the Kuders has not been established.) Some of the children of Susanna Barbara and George Kuder were erroneously listed by LaMance as children of Anna Barbara and Jacob Kuder. 

* * * * *

         As noted, this listing of the children of Valentine does not add up to the three sons and seven daughters mentioned in the burial record of Valentine’s wife, Catharine Brücker Waltman, but this is the only evidence of their children discovered thus far.

Back to Top of Part II


Eleanor Waltman Lutz (1730?-1781?)

        There are many unknowns in the story of Eleanor Waltman, and the result is substantial confusion. The LaMance story appears to be full of errors. LaMance thought that Eleanor, a child of Conrad, was born in 1740, and that she was married to Michael Lutz, born in Switzerland in 1727.[3] Other records suggest, probably correctly, that Eleanor married a George Lutz.  A baptismal record at New Hanover Lutheran Church, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, shows that George and Eleanor Lutz had a son, Johannes, baptized in December 1748.  If this is the same Eleanor and if she was about 18 when Johannes was born, the date suggests that Eleanor herself may have been born as early as 1730, before her father Conrad traveled to America, and that she was born in Europe. 

        There is evidence that many people named Lutz lived in Pennsylvania in this era, and LaMance appears to have attributed relationships between them that were not merited. Believing that Michael Lutz was the one who married Eleanor Waltman, LaMance said that the father of Michael Lutz was named George Lutz and that he had come to America aboard the Davy in 1738, the same ship that carried Conrad Waltman, and that therefore the Lutz and Waltman families knew each other. (At least one version of the Davy passenger list called him “George Sutz.”)  A book published in 1736 showed a Michael Lutz, born in 1697, as a member of the New Goshenhoppen Reformed Church, in Upper Hanover Township, Montgomery County.  A church record showed that a Michael Lutz and his wife (Eleanor?) were sponsors at a baptism in 1756 at Tohickon Church, Bedminister Township, Bucks County. This is the same church where Conrad Waltman's daughter, Elizabeth Waltman, married Joseph Dreisbach two years later, in 1758. These records appear to show that the Waltman and Lutz families both resided in Bucks and nearby Montgomery counties and that they were acquainted at an early stage. This could have led to the marriage between George Lutz and Eleanor Waltman, but it is not clear how George was related to Michael. 

        It appears that Eleanor's family moved from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, about 1752 to Amity Township, Berks County. At least three children had been born in New Hanover Township, Montgomery County -- George, Jr. (about 1746), Johannes (1748), and Susanna (1750). But George Lutz appeared in a tax record of Amity Township, Berks County, in 1752, and at least one child (Jacob in 1760) was born in Amity Township. Eleanor's husband George Lutz died before 1767, when the tax list for Amity Township showed Eleanor Lutz as a widow. This same tax record for 1767 also showed Eleanor's son George Lutz, a single man, apparently living with or near his mother. Tax records in subsequent years showed separate entries on this property for "George Lutz" and "Widow Lutz" or "Eleanor Lutz." She appeared in the tax lists up through 1781, indicating that she died after this date. The family seems to have remained in Amity Township. Eleanor's son George died there in 1802 and her daughter Susanna Lutz Ludwig in 1818. George appeared in the tax lists as late as 1785. He married Anna Regina Fritz in 1769 in the Lutheran Church in New Hanover Township (probably near the Fritz home). He died in Amity Township, Berks County, in 1802; Regina died there before 1800. 

            LaMance named a number of children that she said belonged to Eleanor, but they seem to belong to other Lutz families. Among the names she found, LaMance said that Hiram, Andrew Adam, George and Conrad Lutz had military records,[4]but while military records for people of these names exist, there is no proof that these were children of Eleanor. Research shows there were many Lutz families in the same general area, and it is possible that LaMance simply found Lutz names in the records and attributed their parentage to Eleanor. After her book was published, LaMance made handwritten notes in her personal copy of her book. Among other things, she said that, when Eleanor Waltman Lutz’s brother William Waltman died during the Revolutionary War, Eleanor took in and raised two of his children, George Waltman and Samuel Waltman, then about 10 and 13. She said that George, born  in 1769, married his cousin and foster sister, Eleanora Lutz (Junior), early in 1790. (She thus would have become Eleanor Lutz Waltman, in contrast to her mother, Eleanor Waltman Lutz.) However, no evidence has been discovered that Eleanor had a daughter named Eleanor, or that there was a marriage between Eleanor (junior) and a George Waltman.  Also, doubts have arisen about the existence of a William Waltman (see below) who LaMance said was a son of Conrad and brother of Eleanor. Nevertheless, this story has been copied from LaMance by others.

        A final complication is that LaMance said Eleanor and her family moved to Bedford County in 1790, and it was there that Eleanor Lutz (junior) married George Waltman. But Eleanor probably was dead by that time. It is established that descendants of the immigrant Emanuel Waltman, founder of a different line of Waltmans in America, moved to Colerain Township, Bedford County, from Loudoun County, Virginia, about 1790. Records indicate that some segment of the Lutz family also moved to Colerain Township from Loudoun County, over a period of years. A similar move was made by members of the Exline family, and one of them married one of the Emanuel Waltman descendants in Bedford County. The three families appear to have been part of a migration from Loudoun to Bedford counties. When LaMance was researching Waltmans in Bedford County, it seems more likely that it was descendants of Emanuel Waltman that she discovered in the records, not descendants of Conrad.  Indeed, an Exline family history said that these were the only Waltmans in Bedford County at the time.  There is no record that any of Eleanor's children lived in Bedford County. Also, since tax records showed Eleanor and children with substantial property in Berks County, it is more likely that Eleanor remained there rather than move to Bedford County, a substantial distance to the west.  If there was a George Waltman who married Eleanora Lutz (junior), he may have been a descendant of Emanuel, or they were married in some place other than Bedford County.  No evidence of such a marriage has been located.

John Peter Waltman (1741-1817)

        John Peter Waltman, known as “Peter,” was born on May 9, 1741, and died on November 9, 1817, at the age of 76. (This is not the Peter Waltman, 1779-1836, of Allentown, who was the son of Conrad Waltman, Jr. and the father of Joseph Waltman of Easton.) The dates of this Peter’s birth and death are known from his tombstone in the Kreidersville Cemetery, located next to the marker honoring his father, the immigrant Conrad Waltman. As the tombstone indicates, Peter was in the 3d Pennsylvania Battalion, Deter’s Company, during the Revolutionary War. LaMance said he was a sergeant, but the DAR records said he was a private. Although he was enrolled twice, on the first occasion someone served in his place, and the second time he was on “inactive duty.”[25] Thus, it is not clear that he served at all. Nevertheless, he is one of the four Waltmans included in the DAR Patriot Index. A study of soldiers buried in Northampton County[26] gave this entry for Peter:

Peter Waldman, Private
Born May 9, 1741, Died Nov 7, 1817
Second Class, Seventh Company, Third Battalion
Company Commanded by Captain John Dieter
Northampton County, Militia 1782, 1783

        Peter apparently was the fifth of the Waltman children, and his name appears frequently in church and official records, along with that of his brother Valentine. He apparently spent his life in the area near Kreidersville. Tax lists for Lehigh Township of Northampton County showed Peter paying taxes from 1763 (when he would have been 22) through 1788. He appeared in 1764 as a communicant at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Petersville, about two miles northeast of Kreidersville, along with Valentine and Catharina Waltman. In 1772, he was one of the contributors to the creation of the union church at Kreidersville. The 1776 tax list showed that he owned 30 acres cleared, 20 acres of woodland, one horse, two cattle and four sheep. From 1779 through 1788, he had 120 acres of land. He was listed in the 1790 census on property that included one male over 16 (presumably himself), one male under 16, and five females.

        Peter married Maria Elizabeth Boyer, who had been born on December 25, 1751. According to her tombstone in the Kreidersville Cemetery, she died in 1831, 14 years after Peter died. Tax records show that Peter was single in 1772. Peter and Maria Elizabeth were married in 1774, when he was 33 and she was 23, and had their first child in January 1775.[27] 
Kreidersville Tombstone for Peter John Peter Waldmann marker in Kreidersville Maria Elizabeth Boyer Waldmann
Tombstone and marker for Peter Waldmann in Kreidersville Cemetery.
 At right is the tombstone for Peter's wife, Maria Elizabeth Boyer.

        LaMance said that although Conrad himself had married a commoner, he was offended “when his son married what he considered a peasant’s daughter, a woman who worked in the field and helped to get in the hay.” She said Peter “was getting to be something of a bachelor when he fell in love with this good-looking girl that could sing and laugh, spin and sew, and was famous for her bread and pies.” But in Conrad’s view, for Peter to marry Maria Elizabeth Boyer was “quite a different thing” from his own situation. Because of the conflict between his father and his wife, LaMance said Peter could not even bring Conrad to his own home. And LaMance said that, in her pique, Maria Elizabeth prevented Peter from erecting a tombstone to Conrad after the old man died.[28] She added, however, that Peter and Maria Elizabeth made a home for Nicholas Waltman, the youngest child of Peter’s brother Frederick, after Frederick was killed in the war.

        No link has been discovered between Peter’s wife, Maria Elizabeth Boyer, and the Boyers of Orwigsburg who moved to Easton in the mid-1800s, one of whom, Lewis Elmer Boyer (1869-1948), joined a Waltman in marriage. LaMance described Maria Elizabeth’s family as “fine people, good neighbors, religious almost to fanaticism, upright, honest, capable and industrious. But as firm as the rock of Gibralter itself. They were tall and blonde, some with hair of that rarest of all color, a pure gold. . . . Southern Bavaria is near Switzerland, and these Boyers were good singers. They were adept, like the Swiss, at yodel singing. They were a merry, laughing, witty set, although their high spirits sometimes alternated with the deepest melancholy.” LaMance said she could report these things because she had personally known some of these Boyers (although 150 years later!).

        The father of Maria Elizabeth was Henry Beyer, who died in early 1775. A warrant from Thomas and Richard Penn, dated May 4, 1748, had provided Henry with 100 acres of land in Linn Township, in Lehigh County, about 20 miles northwest of Allentown. And in 1769, Henry Silvius, Sr., sold to Henry Beyer 60 acres in Towamensing Township, in Carbon County north of Moore Township. Silvius had acquired that land in 1747 under a warrant by Thomas and Richard Penn. On his death, Henry Beyer left this property to his heirs, including Peter Waltman and his wife Maria Elizabeth.[29] Court records show that on April 14, 1775, the heirs to these two sites sold their rights to a total of 161 acres for 275 pounds for one and 125 pounds for the other. Besides the Waltmans, the heirs of Henry Beyer included Frederick and John Beyer.

        Peter Waltman’s will, dated March 25, 1816, was written in German and proved on November 26, 1817, 17 days after he died. It mentioned his wife, Marie Elisabeth, and his children Anna Maria, Elisabeth, Barbara and Magdalena. Executors were two sons-in-law, Jost Straus and Peter Anewald.[30]

Children of John Peter Waltman.  LaMance said that Peter and Maria Elizabeth Waltman had only three children, but there were at least seven:

1. Elizabeth Waltman was born on January 22, 1775, and baptized on March 12 at Zion Church in Kreidersville. She married Jost Strauss. Jost was an executor of Peter’s estate in 1817. Elizabeth was one of the three daughters of Peter who were designated to take property under Peter’s will following the death of their sister Anna Maria. At the time Anna Maria died in 1852, both Elizabeth and Jost also had died. Elizabeth's share of Peter’s property then passed to her only heir, Elisabeth Keck, apparently her daughter. In fact, all recipients of this property under Peter’s will sold their rights to the property to Conrad Keck, who probably was the husband of Elizabeth.

2. Anna Barbara Waltman was born on June 21, 1777, and baptized on June 29 at Zion Church.[31] She died on August 4, 1853, at the age of 75. She married Peter Anewalt, Senior, who had been born on November 12, 1772.  He died on July 20, 1825, 28 years before Anna Barbara died. Peter Anewalt was a farmer and weaver who owned 150 acres in Allen Township and 145 acres in adjoining Lehigh Township. “Barbara” received property from the estate of her father, Peter Waltman, in 1852. Among the children of Peter and Anna Barbara Anewalt was a Peter Anewalt (1797-1841), who married Elizabeth Bliem. The tombstones of Peter and Anna Barbara Waltman Anewalt in the Kreidersville Cemetery have erroneous dates and appear to confuse Peter with his father, Valentine Anewalt (1731-1802), who emigrated to America on the Snow Squirrel in 1761.[32] Catharine Anewalt, a daughter of Anna Barbara Waltman and Peter Anewalt, was a direct ancestor of William J. Fiedler, Jr., of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, who in 2006 was doing research on the related families. See footnote 60 in Part I of this paper for more details.

3. Anna Maria Waltman was baptized at Zion Church on April 8, 1779. She died on September 12, 1852, at the age of 73. A proceeding in Northampton County Court[33] in November of that year described her as a “lutatic” (presumably it was meant to be “lunatic”). The will of her father, Peter Waltman, dated March 25, 1816, 18 months before he died, provided that 300 pounds be left and remain a charge on his lands for the use of Anna Maria, and that after she died, the property would be distributed to his other three daughters. (His two sons already had died.) In the court proceeding, the two surviving sisters (Barbara and Magdalena) and the daughter of the other sister (Elizabeth) sold their rights to the real estate to Conrad Keck and John Miller. (LaMance created confusion on this issue.  She saw the tombstone of "Maria Waltman" and erroneously believed she was the daughter of Valentine who was named "Maria Barbara.")[34]

4. Peter Waltman was born on June 10, 1781, and baptized on July 8 of that year at Zion Church. He died on January 14, 1811. The church record said he died of “magere Krampf,” which has been translated as a form of cramps. The Zion Church record said he was aged 29 years, 7 months, and 4 days. Apparently he was not married. LaMance said this Peter Waltman, born in 1781, was often confused with the Peter Waltman born in 1779.  That Peter was the son of Conrad Waltman, Junior. The two Peters were only two years apart in age, and she said that because of this, their fathers also were often confused.  That may have been true, although LaMance herself was confused, thinking that the Peter of 1779 was the son of Valentine rather than the son of Conrad Junior. 

5. Johannes Waltman was born on March 9, 1786, and was baptized on March 26 at Zion Church.[35] A record of Zion Church says he died on July 31, 1787, at the age of one year, three months, and 24 days.

6. Magdalena Waltman married Adam Lerch. She is buried in Zion Church cemetery in Kreidersville. Judging by the tombstone, she was born at the end of 1786 and died on June 7, 1869, at the age of 82.[36] The will of her father, Peter, left property to “his three daughters, Barbara, Magdalena and Elizabeth” to share after the death of their sister Anna Maria. Under the Northampton County court order mentioned above, property in this instance was distributed to “Magdalena Lerch.”

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Elizabeth Waltman Dreisbach (1742-1821)

        Conrad Waltman’s daughter Elizabeth Waltman was born on July 25, 1742, according to her tombstone. This is the same year that LaMance claimed that Elizabeth's brothers Valentine and Frederick Waltman were born, but given the tombstone record of Elizabeth's birth, the 1742 birthdates for Valentine and Frederick must be in error. Elizabeth married Johannes (John) Joseph Dreisbach, a member of the prominent Dreisbach family of the Kreidersville area. The Dreisbach family had been instrumental in the founding of Zion Stone Church in Kreidersville, and an interesting history of the church, with photographs, is provided in the Dreisbach Family Association website. The Dreisbachs were also closely involved with the Anewalt, Hower and Waltman families. John Dreisbach had been born in 1734, a son of the immigrant Simon Dreisbach, Sr. (1698-1785). They were married on November 14, 1758, at Tohickon Reformed Church in Bucks County, when Elizabeth was 16.[37]

        Tohickon is quite far from Kreidersville. One possible explanation for the wedding taking place there is that, four years after their arrival in America, Conrad Waltman and family might not yet have reached the Kreidersville area on their move north from Philadelphia. Another explanation, provided by Hannah Roach, is that numerous families from Northampton County moved south temporarily due to disputes with Indians about this time, and some attended the Tohickon Church. The Dreisbachs were also prominent in the Kreidersville area, and family members appeared in Lehigh Township tax lists.

        Both Elizabeth and John Dreisbach were buried at Kreidersville, further clarifying that she was part of the Waltman family discussed here. Up to 1940, there were 53 Dreisbachs, descendants of the immigrant Simon Dreisbach, buried in the cemetery at Zion Church, and at least eight of them served in the Revolution.[38] The Dreisbachs certainly rivaled the Waltman family in providing soldiers for the Revolutionary Army as well as in populating the area around Kreidersville. (Note: There is such a large interest in the history of the Dreisbach family that no fewer than 63 individuals have submitted their own versions of the Dreisbach family tree to Ancestry.com. See this example of the Dreisbach Family Newsletter.)

        Elizabeth died on December 14, 1821, 25 years after John, who died on September 27, 1796. The Dreisbach family website said they had eight children. Elizabeth’s sons John Adam and Simon were baptized in Tohickon in 1759 and 1760, before they moved further north. However, a son, Conrad (named for her father?), was baptized at Zion Church in Kriedersville in September 1781, and the sponsors were Peter Waltman and his wife, seeming to confirm that Elizabeth was the sister of Peter. (See the footnote regarding William Fiedler in Part I of this paper for the interconnection of the Waltman, Dreisbach, Anewalt and Hower families in the Kreidersville area.)

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Anna Barbara Waltman Kuder (b. 1745)

        Anna Barbara was born on January 13 and baptized on March 10, 1745, as revealed by records in several churches. (LaMance had claimed Anna Barbara was born in 1752.) Of significance is the fact that her parents, present at the baptism, were “Conrad Waldman & Maria Catharina.” This is the only discovered baptism record of any of the children of Conrad Senior, and the only discovered record showing the presence in church of the elder Conrad. Indeed, aside from the 1738 ship arrival record, it is the only located and proven genealogical record of the existence of Conrad. Hannah Roach found mention of this event in a record of baptisms in Dillinger’s Congregation, in Upper Milford Township. That township is a rural community, near the southern corner of Lehigh County, south of Emmaus, about ten miles from Allentown. She said it was a duplicate of a record in the Upper Milford Reformed Church, although Dillinger’s was Lutheran. The baptism was also shown in the records of the Moravian Congregation of Emmaus, Salisbury Township.[39]  

        LaMance said that Anna Barbara and her sister Maria helped care for the invalid Conrad until the War was over in 1783. She said that Andrew Waltman, who she believed was a son of Conrad, then took over the care of the immigrant Waltmans until Conrad and Katherine died. LaMance is the only one known to make that assertion. Andrew may have taken care of Conrad and Katherine, but it appears clear that Andrew was not a son of Conrad but rather a grandson.  See the account in the section on Andrew below. 

        After the War, LaMance said, Anna Barbara married Jacob Kuder, born about 1743, and they had five sons – Conrad, Elias, Jacob, Nicholas and Peter Kuder. (The family name was also spelled Kuter and Coter.) She said that at least one of them later moved to Ohio.  The information in LaMance's account, on pages 115-16, was not very clear. She claimed that Jacob Kuder was the son of an immigrant by the same name, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1751 aboard the Nancy.  However, Garry Heagy said he could find no immigration record for a Jacob Kuder and no record of him at all in Northampton County. However, the Jacob Kuder who married Anna Barbara Waltman was listed as serving in the Revolutionary War under Captain Cleders, in the 3rd Battalion, Northampton County.

        Confusing this family record is the fact that a niece of Anna Barbara, a daughter of Anna Barbara's brother Valentine, was also called Barbara or Susanna Barbara, and she married a George Kuder, who was born in 1763. The relationship between Jacob and George has not been established. Thus, there were two people of similar name -- Anna or Susanna Barbara Waltman Kuder.  And although a “Barbara” Waltman was an active member of Zion Church in Kreidersville, with her name appearing many times in church records as a communicant and baptismal sponsor, it seems likely that this was the daughter of Valentine -- either the one called Barbara or the one called Susanna Barbara -- and not the daughter of Conrad described here. It appears that some of the children of George Kuder were listed by LaMance as children of Jacob Kuder.  Given this confusion, Garry Heagy wondered whether there actually was a marriage between this Anna Barbara Waltman and Jacob Kuder.

        Bucks County tax lists for Haycock Township showed, in 1779, that “Widow Coder,” living with “Jacob Cooder,” single, apparently a son, had 75 acres and 2 cattle. It is not clear if this was Anna Barbara, or, if so, which one it was.

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Key Grandchildren

        Two grandchildren of the elder Conrad -- the younger Conrad Waltman and Andrew Waltman -- apparently were both children of Valentine Waltman.
Here are more details on these key players in the Waltman family history.


Conrad Waltman (1759-1785)

        Numerous records make clear that a younger Conrad Waltman existed, despite LaMance's refusal to accept this. He was born in 1759 and died in 1785 at the age of 26. This is the man that numerous students of the family believe was the “Conrad Waltman” who is shown in military records as a private in the Revolutionary War.

        While there is no baptismal record for the second Conrad, and no tombstone has been located, there is the burial record at Christ Church, Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, in Schoenersville, Pennsylvania.[40] This said:
Waldmann, Conrad, 3 Dec 1785 (buried). Born the 7th of Feb 1759. Married Sept 15 1778 to Catharina Bieber, had with her two sons and two daughters. Died of consumption December 1, aged 26 years, 9 months and 3 weeks.

        This is the same information given in the Beaver family history about the husband of Catherine Bieber, quoted above. Presumably Conrad was born near Allentown, but the place is unknown. Two DAR applicants said he was born at “Dryland, Northampton County.” This apparently was once a name for the Schoenersville area, which is now the site of Lehigh Valley International Airport. However, historical records indicate that "Dryland" was a very broad expanse, and in early 2007 it was most common to consider "Dryland" is to be the area along Pennsylvania Route 191 about four miles south of Nazareth, between Nazareth and Bethlehem.  Aside from the two DAR applications, the birthplace of Conrad is not recorded elsewhere. (See the note on Dryland at the end of this chapter.)

        According to records of the Bieber family, Catherine (Anna Katherina) Bieber, born on October 29, 1761, in Kreidersville, was married to “Conrad Waltman, Jr.” on September 15, 1778. Conrad was 19. Catherine was 16, the eldest of eight children of Michael Bieber and Anna Maria Barbara Fenstermacher. Following their marriage, Conrad and Catherine Bieber Waltman were mentioned frequently in the records of both Zion Church in Kreidersville and Christ Church in Schoenersville, in contrast to the total absence of mention of the immigrant Conrad.
      The Fenstermacher Family. Catherine Bieber Waltman's mother was Anna Maria Barbara Fenstermacher. Research published on the Rootsweb site said she was born May 16, 1740, and died May 10, 1801, at the age of 60. Her parents were J. Jacob Fenstermacher, born March 21, 1709, in Achtelsbach, Palatinate, Germany, and  Anna Margaretha Schweig, born September 11, 1719, in Germany. Jacob Fenstermacher's parents were J. Matthias Fenstermacher, who was born September 24, 1678, in Zweibrucken, Palatinate, Germany, and Anna Catharina Ruppenthal, born May 8, 1689, in Achtelsbach.  

        The Bieber Family. Catherine Bieber Waltman's father, Michael Bieber, had been born February 11, 1740, in Germany. He married “Mary Barbara” in 1760, and they lived in Allen Township near Kreidersville. Both were buried in the cemetery at Christ Church in Schoenersville, and Michael's name is included on the bronze memorial tablet placed there by the DAR in 1935. Michael died on October 26, 1832, aged 92 years, 8 months and 15 days. (There are multiple versions of her name. Her tombstone names her as “Bieber, Anna M., nee Fenstermacher.”) She was the mother of all eight of Michael’s children. About 1802, after she died, Michael married Magdalena Deshler, nee Mickley, widow of Peter Deshler. Michael was buried next to Magdalena at Schoenersville. In the Revolutionary War, Michael was a member of the Northampton County Militia.[41]

        A question raised by some students of the family is whether Conrad Junior was the son of the immigrant Conrad Waltman or the son of Valentine and thus a grandson of the first Conrad. Most genealogists consider the matter settled, that Conrad Junior was the son of Valentine. If he was the son of the immigrant Conrad Waltman, then he would have been the 14th among possibly 15 children of Conrad. If he was a child of Valentine, he would have been the first male and the first child in Valentine’s family. Considering that his name was Conrad, it would seem odd, if Conrad Senior named a child after himself, that he would do that with his 14th child and not one of his first. It would seem more plausible that Valentine would name his first male child Conrad after his father, just as the elder Conrad had named his first son Valentine, after his own father.  If Valentine had been born in 1742, he would have been only 17 when Conrad Junior was born. If Valentine was born about 1732, as Roach has suggested, he would have been 27 when Conrad Junior was born. At either age, Valentine could have been the father.

        Nevertheless, church records make clear that Conrad Junior was the son of Valentine. Latin words in the attendance records, translated in brackets below, indicate family affiliation:

    *         In 1770, Valentine and his wife Catherina were recorded attending Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Petersville, with “Elizabeth Waltman, filia [daughter]”.

    *          In 1773, at Zion Church , Kreidersville, Conrad Junior appeared as a communicant. The list of attendees, in order, showed Valentine Waltman, wife Catherine, Conrad Waltman, and Elizabeth Waltman. Next to Elizabeth was written “liberi sup.,” which has been interpreted to mean that both Conrad and Elizabeth were children of the couple above. Elizabeth was then 12 (if born in 1761) and Conrad 14.

    *          In 1776, when Conrad was 17, the list of church communicants on one occasion included “Valentin Waltman, Catherina Waltman, uxor [wife], Conrad Waltman, fil. sup. [son of the above couple].”

    *          In 1777, there was “Conrad Waltman, fil [son].”[42]

    *          On May 20, 1780, “Valindin Waltmann,” Catharina Waltmannin,” and “Conrath Waltmann” attended Zion Church. (The congregation that day also included “Jacob Biver,” “Michal Beaver” and “Jacob Beaver.”)

        These notations indicate that Conrad was the son of Valentine, and not the son of the first Conrad. At least, the church scribes were demonstrating their belief that Conrad was in church with his father, Valentine.

        The argument on the other side is that, at the time of the birth of Conrad Junior, in 1759, Conrad Senior apparently was 44 and thus at an age when he could have been the father. Katherine Bierly Waltman, the mother, would have been 41 (if born in 1718) or 51 if born in 1708, as written on her tombstone. Also, the Beaver account specifically said that Conrad Jr., was the son of Conrad Sr. Was Conrad Junior appearing in church with Valentine simply because Valentine was his older brother and apparently the leader of the family, or was he actually Valentine’s child, as recorded in church attendance rolls? On balance, he seems more likely to have been Valentine’s child.

The Children of Conrad Junior.  A further complication is the question of who was the father of Peter Waltman, born in 1779. LaMance believed that Peter Waltman, who was Henrietta Waltman Boyer's great-grandfather, was the son of Valentine and not of Conrad Junior. LaMance said her view was absolutely true and based on undeniable personal reminiscences of her family.  But the baptismal and other church records made it clear that Peter’s father was Conrad Junior.

        The Schoenersville Church was a popular place among Waltman family members, suggesting that both Valentine and Conrad, Junior, lived nearby. In 1783, communicants in one group included “Valentine Waltman & wife Catharina, Conrad Waldman & wife Catharina, John Sterner, single [he would later marry Anna Barbara Waltman], Andrew Waldman, single, Anna Barbara Waldman, single, Margaret Waldman, dau of Valentine, aged 17.” This same group reappeared in 1784. On May 27, 1786, six months after Conrad died, Valentine appeared in the church with “Widow Catherine Waldman.” Valentine’s own wife had died only nine days earlier.

        Of more importance in the genealogical account are the church records of the baptism of children of Conrad and Catherine Waltman. Church documents specifically use those names for parents of the baptized child in each ase. One record at Zion Church in Kreidersville focuses on Peter Waltman, born on February 8, 1779, who is listed as theson of Conrad and Catharine Waltman. There is the possibility for confusion here because Conrad Senior and Conrad Junior each had a wife named Catherine. But in 1779, when Peter was born, Katherine Bierly Waltman, the wife of Conrad Senior, would have been at least 61 years old – beyond child-bearing age. A DAR genealogist concluded that, for this reason alone, Peter’s parents must have been Conrad Junior and Catherine Bieber Waltman, and no one has claimed that Peter was the child of the immigrant Conrad. In any event, the baptismal record makes it clear that Peter’s father was not Valentine. (A note handwritten by DAR staff on the Wilkins application form in 1952 said “error in Waltman genealogy. Peter was son of Conrad Junior.”)

        Perhaps the answer to speculation about fatherhood is this theory: Conrad, Jr., died at age 26 in 1785, and Valentine (then probably 53) took over Conrad's family and became the guardian of Peter, who was then only six years old. The 1790 census showed in the household of Valentine only one male under 16, and that could have been Peter, who by then was eleven. It is possible that Valentine held Peter out as his own child, and actual parenthood has been lost in history. If Valentine raised Peter from the age of six, that certainly could have given the impression that Valentine was the father of Peter, even if the baptismal records make clear that Peter’s father was Conrad Junior.

        A Zion Church record also showed that Maria Barbara Waltman was born on February 6, 1781, the child of Conrad and Catherine Waltman. LaMance apparently had seen this church record saying that Maria Barbara was the child of Conrad and Catherine. She explained this by saying that an “absent-minded church clerk” had gotten the information wrong, that Conrad and Catherine Waltman were actually the grandparents, and the clerk had omitted the name of the father, whom she considered to be Valentine.[43] She apparently said this because otherwise she would have had to acknowledge that there was another Conrad Waltman in existence. But, especially given the order of birth of the children of Conrad Junior, it is clear that it was Conrad Junior and his wife who were the parents.

        In a different church, before the Lutheran congregation at Schoenersville, there is the record of two other births of children of Conrad Junior and Catarina Waldman. These are Johannes Waldman on January 23, 1783, and Elizabeth Catarina Waldman, on December 27, 1784. These records clearly provide more evidence of the existence and parentage of Conrad Junior.[44]

        Summarizing from these records, including the Bieber report and the burial record for Conrad, it is clear that Conrad Junior and Catherine Bieber Waltman had four children.   (See a genealogical chart on Conrad's family.)

1. Peter Waltman was born February 8, 1779, less than five months after Conrad and Catherine were married. Baptism at Zion Church in Kreidersville was on March 21, 1779. It shows that the parents were Conrad and Catherine Waldman. Sponsors were Michael and Catharina Esch. Conrad was one day past his 20th birthday, and Catherine was 18. Peter married Elizabeth Fatzinger and they had seven children. After Elizabeth died, he married Susanna Wint Reichard, and they had two children. Peter died January 5, 1836, in Allentown, at the age of 56. Peter and his descendants are discussed in the next chapter.

2. Maria Barbara Waltman was born February 6, 1781, and christened March 25, 1781, at Zion Church. Conrad was one day past his 22nd birthday, and Catherine was 20. Sponsors at the baptism were Jacob and Anna Barbara Beaver.  The genealogists Beaver and Byron Waltman wrongly said Maria Barbara died young.  LaMance thought she lived to the age of 71, but she confused the records of several different people. She agreed that Maria Barbara had been born on February 6, 1781, but thought she was the daughter of Valentine (since she did not acknowledge the existence of Valentine’s son Conrad). LaMance then said Maria Barbara had died single on September 12, 1852, at the age of 71. However, that date of death applied to Anna Maria Waltman, who was a daughter of John Peter Waltman.[45]

What actually happened is that about August 1800, in Hanover Township, Lehigh County, Maria Barbara Waltman married George Gruber (or Gruver), who had been born in Allen Township, Northampton County, on April 8, 1780. George was listed in the 1810 and 1820 censuses in Hemlock Township, Columbia County, and in 1830 in Cumru Township, Berks County. Maria Barbara died in 1827 in Cumru Township at the age of 46.  George died there in September 1837.   It appears that George and Maria Barbara Waltman Gruber had 14 children.  One of their descendants, Garry Heagy of Ontario, Canada, has developed extensive research on this line and indeed on most of the descendants of Conrad and Katherine Waltman.

3. John Waltman was born January 23, 1783, and christened (as Johannes) on April 13, 1783, before the Lutheran congregation in Schoenersville. Conrad was almost 24 and Catherine 22. It was reported that John died young, but records indicate this was an error, since he married a woman named Elizabeth, who had been born in 1786, and he lived for 80 years.  One indication of his life was his presence at the baptism of Louisa (one record spells it “Lowiesa”) Waltman at Christ Church on March 9, 1805, the daughter of “John Waldman & Elisabeth,” born January 2, 1805.  The sponsors were Peter Bieber and Magdalena.  John’s mother, Catherine Bieber Waltman, had a brother named Peter Bieber, who was married to Magdalena Frack, and they were active in Christ Church in Schoenersville.[46]  If this is correctly interpreted, Peter Bieber, sponsor at this baptism, would have been John Waltman’s uncle. John would have been almost 22 on the date of the baptism, and thus did not die young.[47]         

One family researcher, William J. Waltman, of Morgantown, West Virginia, a descendant of this John Waltman and his son Peter Waltman (Peter fell from a horse and was killed at age 36 in 1851), believed that John and Elizabeth Waltman moved to Lycoming County (Brady and Washington Townships), possibly between 1811 and 1815.  William said that family folklore and the Lycoming County history indicated that John Waltman and his wife migrated into the White Deer Valley, possibly traveling up the Lehigh River Valley with Adam Bair and Michael Baysore, who also came from the Lehigh Valley (they were possibly neighbors or friends).  The Bair and Waltman families were tightly interwoven in marriage, and Adam lived with the Waltmans in his old age. An article reported that a John Waltman began a sawmill venture in 1862 in Williamsport with Henry J. Lutcher, but a man named Moore purchased Waltman's interest in 1864 and thus began Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company.  It is not clear if this was the John Waltman who was the son of Conrad Junior, or one of John's children. 

William J. Waltman believes that census and land records suggest that other Waltman relatives from the Kreidersville area  -- Maria Barbara Waltman (sister of John) and her husband George Gruber,  Andrew Waltman (uncle of John) and William Waltman, Junior (cousin of John's father) -- were also moving northwest along the Lehigh River to Lycoming, Luzerne and Bradford Counties about the same time that John and Elizabeth moved. Andrew died in nearby Columbia County.

Records show that John and Elizabeth had at least nine children.  John died at the age of 80 in September 1863 in Williamsport, Brady Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.  Elizabeth died in 1880 at the age of 94 in Williamsport. John, Elizabeth and five of their children -- Elizabeth, Peter, Magdalena, Valentine and David Waltman -- were buried at Old Stone Church (Christ Lutheran) in Lycoming County.  The cemetery is within the grounds of Allenwood Federal Prison. 

Peter Waltman, one of the sons of John and Elizabeth, was born on March 15, 1815. His wife, Mary (Polly), was born on May 21, 1816, and they were married on April 11, 1837. As noted above, Peter died in 1851 after falling from a horse. According to Peter's family Bible, his children and their birth dates were John, July 27, 1838; Elizabeth, December 27, 1839; Susanna, October 8, 1841; Jacob, June 13, 1843; Margaret, October 27, 1844; David, September 10, 1847; Hannah, May 26, 1850; and Valentine Waltman, June 19, 1848. Hannah, who married George Harmon, included this information from the Bible in a deposition presented on December 15, 1915, in Warrensville, Lycoming County, to a special examiner of the Bureau of Pensions on behalf of a pension application for her brother David. She said that she understood that David joined the army when he was 15 and that she believed he was born in 1846 rather than 1847, as it was recorded in the Bible. According to Hannah's deposition, another brother, John Waltman, moved to the Midwest from Lycoming County, possibly around 1870, taking the family Bible with him, and Peter's family never heard from him again. However, John did leave descendants in Indiana and Missouri. One of those descendants, William B. Waltman, of Annandale, Virginia, and his wife Lysbeth discovered Hannah's deposition in David's Civil War Pension Application folder at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

4. Elizabeth Catarina Waltman was born December 29, 1784, and baptized at Christ Church in Schoenersville on January 2, 1785. Conrad was almost 26, Catherine 23. Conrad died on December 1 of the same year. Elizabeth was reported to have died young, although the records of Christ Church showed that a person named “Elizabeth Waldmann” was present at the Lord’s Supper in 1801 and 1804.
Catherine Bieber's Remarriage. The Bieber family history said that Catherine was later married to Josiah Sendel, and that they had no children. However, this appears to be in error.  Other family research indicates that she married “Georg (Johann Jurg) Sendel” about 1787, when Catherine was 26. The name is variously spelled Sendel and Sandel.  Garry Heagy's research in late 2006 supported the theory that Catherine's second husband was George (and not Josiah) Sendel.[48] Among the findings was that the family of Michael Bieber, father of Catherine, and the family of Andrew Sendel, father of George, attended the Weisenberg Church in Lehigh County.  This might explain what led Catherine and George together after the death of Conrad, Junior. Michael Bieber moved at some point to Allen Township in Northampton County, which likely is where Catherine had met Conrad years earlier.

        Records showed that, after having four children with Conrad Waltman Junior, Catherine had five children with George Sendel.  They were George Sendel, Jr. (1788-1869), who married Elizabeth Festermacher and later Anna Mosser; Michael Sendel, born in 1792; Jacob Sendel, born in 1796; Peter Sendel, born in 1801; and Catherine Sendel (1803-1873).  There was more confusing family intermarriage.  Catherine Sendel (junior) married Nicholas (or Nikalaus) Sterner, the son of Barbara Waltman and Johannes Sterner; Barbara was a daughter of Valentine and a sister of Conrad Junior.  And Catherine's brother Michael Sendel married Maria Ann "Polly" Sterner, a daughter of Johannes and Barbara Waltman Sterner.

        Catherine's husband, George Sendel, died in January 1814 in Lynn Township, Lehigh County. He was shown in the 1810 census for Lynn Township.  After his death, the 1820 census listed a "Catarina Sentel" in Upper Saucon Township, Lehigh County. The Bieber family history said that Catherine Bieber Waltman Sandel lived until October 23, 1844, just six days short of her 83rd birthday. Her funeral was held at Rittersville, later a part of Allentown. This is where her first child, Peter Waltman, resided until his death in 1836, and possibly she lived for a time with her son Peter and his second wife, Susanna, who died in 1853.  See a genealogical chart for Catherine and her two families, Waltman and Sendel.

Back to Top of Part II


Andreas (Andrew) Waltman (1765-1828)

        Andrew Waltman was reported by LaMance to be born in 1760, and she said he was the last of the many children of Conrad and Katherine Bierly Waltman. However, recent research indicates that Andrew was in fact a child of Conrad's son Valentine and was born in 1765 rather than 1760. LaMance had many aspects of her biography on Andrew correct -- his marriage, his service in the Revolutionary War, his move to central Pennsylvania -- but she seems to have gone wrong on his parentage.

        The argument is that there is evidence of only one Andrew in the Kreidersville area tax and church records of this era, and that it is more likely the Andrew who was the son of Valentine and confirmed at Zion Church in 1780 at age 15.  (There is no record of the baptism or confirmation of another Andrew Waltman.) If this is correct, Andrew was born about 1765, not 1760, as LaMance claimed.

        Relevant to this issue is the question of the age of Andrew's parents.  If Andrew was the son of the elder Conrad and Katherine Waltman and he was born in 1760, Katherine would have been 42 if she had been born in 1718, as LaMance said, or 52 if born in 1708, as written on her tombstone.  Both seem on the upper age limits for childbearing.  In contrast, Valentine and his wife Catherine Brücker Waltman were both possibly born about 1733, and in 1765, when their son Andrew was born, they would have been about 32.  Also, Andrew's many appearances in church always seemed to be in the company of Valentine and known children of Valentine. While Andrew might have been going to church with his brother Valentine and Valentine's children, it seems more likely that this was all one family, Valentine and his children, one of whom was Andrew. Most of the other facts developed about Andrew Waltman in this section apparently remain correct -- his marriage, his children, his service in the Revolution. The difference is that Andrew was not the son of the immigrant Conrad Waltman but of Conrad's son Valentine Waltman.  Andrew would therefore have been Conrad's grandson.

        LaMance's confusion about this issue is interesting, since Andrew was in her direct line of the family.  LaMance said she was descended from Andrew and claimed the information available on him, presented in her book, was the most complete of that of any of Conrad’s children. Indeed, her book on the Waltman family contained 53 fine-printed pages solely on Andrew and his descendants, with numerous hand-written corrections and changes. It must be said, in addition, that numerous individuals who have studied the family have accepted the LaMance version.  In 2007, there were 17 members of the DAR, including LaMance, who based their membership on the patriot status of an Andrew Waltman who they said was the son of the elder Conrad.  The new theory appears to be a challenge to the account of LaMance and those who have reiterated that account. 

        Andrew's History.  In his early years, Andrew lived in Allen Township, Lehigh County, and there are frequent mentions of him in the church and official archives. Andrew served in the Wyoming company from August 11 to August 30, 1784, and was recorded as a private in Capt. Jacob Clader's Co., Northampton County Militia. He is one of the four Waltmans listed in the DAR Patriot Index. LaMance said that after the Revolutionary War, Andrew took care of his parents (she meant Conrad Sr. and Katherine) until they died.

        Andrew married Anna Maria Margretta Zerfus (Zerfass), who, according to LaMance was a second cousin. She had been born in 1769, and she died in 1832, only a few years after Andrew died. LaMance said the 1789 marriage, in Whitehall Township, then Northampton County, had been arranged by their parents. Anna Maria Margretta objected, she said, but her father insisted on the wedding. Andrew was 29 (possibly 24 if he was born in 1765) and she was 20.

       "Andrew Waltman" was included in the Northampton County, Allen Township, tax lists for 1788 (he was single), 1789 (not single) and 1790-93. He appeared as a communicant in records of Christ Lutheran Church in Schoenersville in 1783, 1786 and 1788, along with  Valentine and other family members. He was there with his new wife, Margaret, on Pentecost in 1789, and the church record says they were confirmed on that occasion by Rev. Buskirk. Andrew and wife also appeared in the church with Valentine and his second wife, Magdalena, in 1793. Andrew appeared in the 1790 census, when he would have been 25 or 30, in a property with one male over 16 (himself), 2 males under 16, and 1 female. He did not appear in the 1800 census. It is believed that Andrew and Margretta moved to Laddsburg, New Albany Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and south of Elmira, New York.  Andrew died in Bradford County in 1828 or 1829, according to LaMance, or 1830 according to Garry Heagy.  William J. Waltman's research showed that Andrew and his wife, Margretta Zerfass, were buried near Huntington Mills in Columbia County.

Children of Andrew and Maria Margretta Zerfass. LaMance said Andrew and his wife had four sons and four daughters, but there is evidence of a total of nine. Those below were believed to be their children.  See a genealogical chart for Andrew's family.

1. Johannes (John) Waltman was born on August 4, 1789.  Before the Reformed congregation at Christ Church, Schoenersville, “Andreas Waldman & Margareta” appeared as parents for the baptism of their son Johannes  on August 16. Witnesses were Anna Barbara Waltman, a daughter of Valentine, and her husband, John Sterner. (LaMance's book did not mention Johannes.)

The Mississippi Waltmans. This is the John Waltman whom some researchers believe went to Mississippi and married Mary Elizabeth Hamilton.  (LaMance thought it was Valentine’s son Andrew  who "went south" to Mississippi and married Mary Elizabeth, but there is no evidence to support this.)  A survey of Mississippi marriages in 1776-1935 shows that, in Adams County,  “John Waltman” married “Elizabeth Hambleton” on April 14, 1809. This John, the son of Andrew, would have been 19.  The 1850 census for Mississippi shows that John Waltman was born in Pennsylvania. He said he was 63 at that time, and thus was born about 1787 (close to the date given at the church for this Johannes Waltman).  It appears that John and Elizabeth had sons Andrew Waltman and William Hamilton Waltman, who were born in Louisiana across the border from Mississippi before 1811.

William Hamilton Waltman was born on October 30, 1810 (the year after his parents married).  William married Stacy Anne Moody in 1842. One of their children was John W. Waltman, who was recorded in the Leon County (Texas) Historical Collection as one of the prominent men of the town of Jewett, Texas. The article, Volume I, pages 18-19, said that John W. Waltman was the son of W. H. Waltman, who had moved to Mississippi when he was young, stayed there until 1857, when he moved to Smith County, Texas, then to Nacogdoches County and in 1860 to Leon County.  The historical account said that William Waltman served under General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. In 1880, he moved to Jewett, and died there in the spring of 1881. 

If this theory is correct, the lineage of this family would be as follows:

Conrad Waltman Senior (1715?-1796?)
Valentine Waltman (1733?-1810?)
Andrew Waltman (1765?-1830?), married Maria Margretta Zerfass
John Waltman (born 1789) went to Mississippi, married Elizabeth Hamilton in 1809
William Hamilton Waltman (born Louisiana 1810, married Stacy Moody 1842, died Texas 1881)
John W. Waltman, lived in Jewett, Texas
 
2. Valentin Waltman (born October 25, 1790, died August 1873) is described by LaMance as “Valentine the Younger.” He married Achsa Wilson, who was born July 25, 1791, and died December 3, 1863. They had three boys and three girls. Of the three boys, she said two died young, and the third was paralyzed and a constant care until he died at age 54. Only the girls survived. Valentine’s daughter Kezia Waltman (1814-1895) was the mother of Lora LaMance and apparently the basic source of Lora’s stories about the immigrant Conrad Waltman and his children.  See more about Kezia, Lora and their descendants in the first section of this report.

Part of family lore is that Kezia caused a scandal by deciding to attend a previously all-male academy in Huntington, Luzerne County. Conservative neighbors petitioned the academy to dismiss her because of her gender, but the Waltman family fought to defend her right to attend, and they won.[49] After Valentine’s mother died in 1832, the family moved to Ohio. Achsa died in 1863, when Valentine was 73, and he then married Mary Lacey Brigham. When Valentine died in 1873 at the age of 83, LaMance said Mary burned all of Valentine’s papers within three days of his death, and that is the reason she did not have firm documentary evidence of the family history.

3. Katherine Waltman, born about 1792, married Julius Walcott. She moved to Michigan after their children moved there, and Katherine died in Lansing about 1860.

4. John Adam Waltman was born February 9, 1794. Before the Lutheran congregation in Christ Church, Schoenersville, Andrew and Margretta appeared at the baptism of their son John Adam on March 16, 1794. Sponsors were Adam Zerfass and Maria Elizabeth, possibly Margretta's parents. The parents were named as “Andreas and Magdalena” Waldman. John Adam married Judith (Judy) Harp (1800-1882) in 1819, and they lived in Ohio. LaMance said they were parents of 19 children! Adam died on June 6, 1849, at the age of 55.

5. Margaret Waltman, born about 1798, married a man named Hess.

6. Abraham Waltman was born on May 22, 1801, in Hemlock Township, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, and died December 31, 1863, in Laddsburg, New Albany Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania. She said he was his mother’s favorite son. When only 18, Abraham went to Bradford County to help build the turnpike in a newly developing region. He married Roxana Miller on June 6, 1824. She had been born in Laddsburg, New Albany Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, on October 14, 1803. LaMance said Abraham became run down in health and “had a mania for . . . wandering away in the woods.” Once in the winter, he was not found until he was terribly frozen and his legs had to be partly amputated. Roxana, who lived five years after Abraham died, did most of the farm work and raised their three daughters and five sons, of whom three died in the Civil War. Roxanna died on October 25, 1868. Abraham and Roxanna, and many other Waltmans, are buried in the Laddsburg Cemetery, behind the Laddsburg Church in Bradford County.

The Family Bible. The Bible descended through this branch of the family on an uneven course. Presumably, Conrad, Senior, wanted the Bible to go to his oldest son, Valentine.  He in turn would have wanted it to go to his oldest son, Conrad, Jr., born in 1759, but Conrad died at age 26, and so Valentine passed the Bible to the next oldest son, Andrew, born in 1765.  LaMance said that Margretta Zerfass Waltman, the wife of Andrew, gave her son Abraham the Frundsberg family Bible in 1822, when he was 21, even though Andrew was still alive and the Bible was supposed to go to Andrew’s son Valentine. Hannah Waltman (1826-1902), a daughter of Abraham and Roxana, married her cousin, Abram Waltman (1828-1892), the son of Andrew Waltman, Jr.  (see below). Abraham died in 1863, and when Roxana was on her death bed about 1868, she gave the prized Bible to her son-in-law, Abram. Subsequently, Abram passed it to his son Oscar Leroy Waltman (1856-1925), who lived in Spokane and later San Diego, and Lora LaMance said she obtained the Bible from Oscar in 1921. One family member contended that LaMance obtained the book from Oscar under "questionable circumstances" and that it should have gone to a closer relative of Oscar. (Oscar was born in Auburn Center, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, and died in San Diego, California.)  A descendant of Lora LaMance, Robert Leon Johnson, Jr., inherited the Bible and donated it to the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill sometime in the 1950s.

Family researcher Lee Ann Bennett, a great-granddaughter of Oscar Waltman, was told in late 2006 that the Bible was in the Rare Book Collection in the library of the University of North Carolina. The Bible did not include an accession date or the name of the donor. A research assistant in the library wrote that "the inside cover of the Bible is signed by Andrew Waltman, the former owner. There is no evidence that the binding was ever encrusted with jewels [as LaMance had described]. The first several pages are missing from the Bible and there are no genealogical records found within the Bible." The library card catalogue said that the book was in German, titled "Die Deutsche Bibel, nach dr. Martin Luthers" and was dated 1652. It contained 1,181 pages, including 35 pages of illustrations, among them engravings of 11 Dukes of Saxony. The identification in the library was Rare Book Collection BS239 1652. An earlier report that the Bible was on display in the library apparently was in error.

7. Susan Waltman, married Timothy Dugan and, after his death, Jacob Miller (or Mueller). LaMance said they moved to Ohio, then returned to Pennsylvania.

8. Mary (Polly) Waltman, married a man named Bolen. They moved to Ohio, then to Illinois, according to LaMance.

9. Andrew Waltman, Junior, was born about 1795 and died about 1855. He married Albertine Zaner (1787-about 1865), and they had at least three sons and three daughters. One researcher said that Andrew was a clergyman and moved with his brother Abraham about 1819 from Northampton County to Bradford County. Many members of the Zaner family are buried in the Laddsburg Cemetery in Bradford County. LaMance said that, “in a temporary aberration of mind,” Andrew “wandered away and perished, about 1855-56. His body was never found.” They had a son, Abram Waltman, who was born in 1826 in Huntingdon Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Abram married his cousin Hannah Waltman, as mentioned above, and through Hannah’s mother, Roxana Waltman, Abram received the family Bible. He passed it to his son Oscar Waltman (1856-1925), who passed it to Lora LaMance.

        Andreas and his family, after the death of Conrad and Katherine Waltman, moved to Huntington Township in Luzerne County, according to LaMance. That county’s record books contain numerous transactions in real estate by Waltman family members. They also contain Letters of Administration on the estate of Andrew Waltman, who died in 1828 in Huntington Township at the age of 68. Letters were granted to his sons Valentine and Adam Waltman on April 22, 1828, with a bond of $800 posted.[50]
* * * * *

    This account of the Waltman family continues in Part III of this report, with a focus on Peter Waltman (1779-1836),
of Allentown, Pennsylvania, his son Joseph Waltman (1806-1898) of Easton, Pennsylvania, and their descendants.
 
Back to Top of Part II


The Confusion Over Family Lineage

        How did the information about Conrad and his family get so confused? What was the source of the information? LaMance claimed that she learned about Conrad and his descendants from her mother, Kezia Waltman, who learned it from her grandmother, the wife of Conrad Waltman’s son Andrew. LaMance also devoted two pages of her book[51] to the Reverend Melville B. C. Schmoyer, a minister with Waltman ancestors who was interested in genealogy. It appears that, when preparing sections of her book dealing with the children of Conrad Waltman, she asked family members to supply her with information. She credited Rev. Schmoyer with supplying “the major part of the data, names and dates” in her book’s chapter on Valentine Waltman and his son Peter. However, she apparently rejected the part of Schmoyer’s submission that said Peter Waltman was the son of Conrad Waltman, Jr., and she insisted that Peter was the son of Valentine.

        On August 7, 1948, 20 years after LaMance’s book was published, Rev. Schmoyer wrote to Margaret Wilkins to explain what had happened. Wilkins had joined the DAR in 1943 and apparently was trying to clarify her lineage. In a rather confused letter, which is in the Conrad Waltman file in the DAR library, Rev. Schmoyer said that his grandmother (Maria Waltman Meyer, a daughter of Peter) had told him that her grandfather, the father of Peter, had been named Conrad Waltman (and not Valentine Waltman). He told this to LaMance, he said, and she replied that he must be wrong, that he must have been descended from Lieutenant Valentine Waltman. “Let me tell you that we used to have arguments on a number of things,” Schmoyer wrote. “The matter of my grandmother’s grandfather being Conrad, I could never convince her. In fact,” he said, “[LaMance] never . . . knew about Conrad Jr. It was later that I hunted up the grave of Conrad Waltman Jr. in the Schoenersville Cemetery.”[52]

        In his copy of the House of Waltman, Rev. Schmoyer said, everywhere the name Valentine occurred, he had written the name Conrad “at each occurrence of error.” Rev. Schmoyer said that he had ensured that the Bieber family history was correct. When the Beaver book was written in 1939, he said he was “better fortified. I supplied the correct data, I had visited the place of burial, read tombstones, consulted the church record, and the data there is in accordance with actual facts. . . . The DAR accepting data of Valentine as gospel truth shows that they make no careful and through investigations.”

        Apparently none of this was persuasive to LaMance. Her personal copy of her book was annotated with many handwritten corrections as people wrote to her after the book was published to provide her with new information. But none of these changes to the Waltman lineage was included. The pages continued to read as in the original. There was no Conrad Waltman Junior!
NOTE: Both Rev. Schmoyer and Lora LaMance appeared to rely heavily on their grandmothers’ recollections of their grandparents. This may be interesting family history, but it is not the highest quality genealogical evidence, and clearly in this case, family recollections differed.

      Two years after getting this letter from Rev. Schmoyer, on October 10, 1950, Wilkins sent a memo to the DAR detailing what she considered to be errors in the LaMance book. She said that Rev. Schmoyer had tried to give the correct information to LaMance in 1928 but it arrived too late. However, she said, Rev. Schmoyer said he had sent the correct information to Rev. Beaver before publication of his book in 1939, and that is why the Beaver book contained the correct information. In particular, Wilkins told the DAR, the LaMance line that said “the old Count not only joined the army himself . . . ” was wrong, since it was Conrad Junior who was mentioned in the Pennsylvania Archives. Junior was the one who was in the Army. Conrad Senior was 61 years old in 1776, she wrote, and Conrad Junior was 17. Wilkins’ page of corrections was pasted inside the front cover of LaMance book in the DAR library, and it was still there in 2006.

        Wilkins’ determination to set the record straight also appeared on two other pages of the DAR’s copy of LaMance’s book – small scraps of paper pasted inside by the DAR genealogy staff to say that the information on that page was wrong. On page 77, the note said LaMance was wrong in saying that Valentine married Catherine Beaver, since he actually married Catherine Brucker. “Proof is in a letter from Margaret B. Wilkins, DAR Number 338019, bound with her paper,” the note said. On page 79, next to a listing of what LaMance believed to be the seven children of Valentine Waltman and Catherine Beaver, the note said the correct information was that Peter Waltman was the child of Conrad Jr. [not Valentine] and Catherine Beaver, citing the Beaver book, page 658. Wilkins said that the Beaver-Bieber family history, written in 1939, carried the correct information supplied by the Reverend Schmoyer.

        Wilkins then wrote to the Registrar-General of the DAR on April 25, 1951, to submit a correction to her line of descendance. Her correct ancestors were Peter Waltman and his father, Conrad Waltman Junior, she said, and not Valentine Waltman. She added that it was Conrad Waltman Jr., who married Catherine Bieber, and not Valentine Waltman, whose wife was Catherine Brücker. She said that Rev. Schmoyer had been a famous genealogist for over 50 years and had explained the discrepancy in the accounts. With some dismay, she concluded that “the east coast officers of the Waltman Family reunion have been advised by me of this error, but they seem to be in possession of the [LaMance] book House of Waltman only and know nothing on Conrad Waltman, Jr.” In 2006, this letter was pasted inside the LaMance book in the DAR library, along with Rev. Schmoyer’s 1948 letter to Wilkins.

        Ten years later, on March 6, 1961, Wilkins, who was not to be deterred on this point, wrote the DAR again to say that she had engaged the services of a well-known genealogist, Hannah Benner Roach (Mrs. F. Spencer Roach), a board member of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, to search the Waltman records. She said the resulting abstracts had revealed names and dates unknown to either Mrs. LaMance or Rev. Schmoyer. Her letter was in the Conrad Waltman patriot file at the DAR and in the DAR’s copy of the LaMance book in 2006. The contribution of Mrs. Roach was not included with the Wilkins letter, but this research, about 50 pages long, was located in December 2005 in the files of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, on microfilm 855:4. These papers showed clearly that Peter was the son of Conrad Junior, and they suggested (although not conclusively) that Conrad Junior was the son of Valentine and not the son of Conrad Senior. The papers also demonstrated the absence of genealogical data concerning even the existence of Conrad Senior, in contrast to the ample records relating to Valentine and Conrad Junior.

Back to Top of Part II


A Note on “The Drylands” and Schoenersville

        Rev. Beaver’s account of the marriage of Catherine Bieber and Conrad Waltman, Jr., said that “Conrad Waltman resided in a portion of Northampton Co. designated ‘Trockenland,’ i.e., dry land, so called because in dry spells it was exceedingly felt, even causing earth to crack. The exact spot is not known to me, but was around Shoenersville or Catasaqua region.” (Presumably he was referring to Conrad Waltman Junior, but that is not clear.) LaMance’s book said on pages 75-76 that Dryland was the home of Valentine, the son of Conrad Senior. It was so called, she said, because in dry weather the earth became parched and cracked.

        The name “Dryland” appears to have been used very broadly. What was known as “the Drylands” was actually a huge expanse of land that ran between the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. It consisted of between 11,000 and 12,000 acres that were said to be without springs and brooks. The formal name, as it appeared in old documents, was “The Honorable the Proprietaries’ Manor of Fermor,” and it was also called “The Barrens.” Although it was dry and seemingly not useful, the area was bordered by land that was desirable because it was located close to the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers and the Monacacy and Bushkill Creeks. Lands along the edges were purchased and settled between 1728 and 1752, with the Penn family selling the well-watered fringe areas in 500-acre tracts to wealthy Philadelphians. But even as late as 1752 very few settlers occupied the Drylands. They apparently avoided the region for two reasons: first, it had been described as useless waste land covered with scrub oak, and second, it was a primary Indian hunting ground and therefore considered dangerous. The Indians were primarily the Delawares and the Shawnees.[53]

        A website of Pennsylvania Roots said that Hanover Township, where Schoenersville is located, was settled in 1760, and was known as the “Manor of Fermor, the Drylands and the Barrens,” it being near the western end of the Drylands not far from the Lehigh River. A report on activities at Christ Church in Schoenersville, dating from 1787, referred to them as events in the “Reformed Congregation on the Trockenem Lande in the New Church.”[54] This part of Hanover Township is now dominated by Lehigh Valley International Airport. This section of the Drylands was relatively close to Kreidersville and would have been a logical place for Valentine Waltman to live, close to others in his family.

        Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church of Schoenersville was one of the churches known as “the Dryland Church.” Church records show that Valentine Waltman was very active in that church and that both his wife Catharina and his son Conrad Junior were buried there. Wilkins and Ware both claimed that Conrad Junior died at “Dryland, Northampton County,” and it would have been logical that Conrad Junior lived in the same area as his father, Valentine.  However, "Dryland" was such a large expanse, it would be difficult to point to the specific area that they meant, and Wilkins and Ware did not identify the source of this claim.

        Schoenersville would not have been a very populous place in 1800 (most historical records spell the town name “Shoenersville” rather than the modern “Schoenersville”). On the line between Hanover Township of Lehigh County and Hanover Township of Northampton County, it was named after Adam Shoener, who settled there at least by 1794, according to a history of Lehigh County. He had a tavern called “Blue Ball,” which was taken over by his son Adam in 1837. School in 1800 was taught in a log house on Christ Church grounds, and about 1827 a brick English school was built.

        Even by 1875, long after Valentine Waltman would have been there, Schoenersville was described as containing only a tavern, Christ Church, a log school house, and five or six dwellings. By 1884, it had a church, schoolhouse, store, post office, hotel and 15 to 20 dwellings.[55] Christ Church was built in 1781. It was first called Zion’s Church, and was a small log structure. It was rebuilt in stone in 1819 and again in 1872 in brick. The tall brick structure still remained in 1937, and a picture of that church is included in a book about the church written in 1910.[56] That building was torn down when the Lehigh Valley International Airport was constructed, and a new structure for Christ Lutheran Church was erected across from the cemetery along Grove Road. A history of Christ Church reported that about 1865, members of the church “agitated” for a new cemetery. “An association was formed, called the Shoenersville Cemetery Association; two acres of land were purchased from Samuel Saylor, adjoining the cemetery of Christ Church.”

        However, it should also be noted that there was another “Dryland Church” in Northampton County. The first records of the “Dryland Lutheran and Reformed Union Church” in Hecktown begin in 1763 and indicate that the church was in existence at least since 1748. In 2006, the Lutheran part of it was known as Trinity Lutheran Church, located along Route 191 near the intersection with Hecktown Road, about two miles south of Nazareth. And nearby, at 4415 Hecktown Road, was a church still known in 2007 as Dryland United Church of Christ. This area was about ten miles east of Schoenersville.  William J. Waltman of West Virginia has put together a topographic map that shows the Drylands area between Schoenersville and Hecktown.

        William Parson, agent for the Penn family in Easton, told authorities in 1752 that he thought the Drylands should be settled by the Germans who were arriving in large numbers in Philadelphia. Many of the settlers were without resources to purchase properties but some believed they could be attracted to the area. By 1755, there were as many as 50 occupied tracts in the Drylands, and by 1763, there were enough Germans to form the congregation of the Dryland Lutheran and Reformed Church in Hecktown, south of Nazareth. This migration may have been part of the motivation for Conrad Waltman Senior to move north from Philadelphia into this area of German settlers.

        A travel diary written in August 1783 included the note that “all of this highland between Bethlehem and Nazareth, and off toward Easton, goes by the name Dry Lands. And it is indeed dry.”[57] The claim that all of this area was so dry that the earth cracked is difficult to understand in the year 2006 since the ground around both Schoenersville and Hecktown is no drier than the entirety of Northampton County, and most of that is excellent farmland. A 2006 website of the Pennsylvania State Archives said that farms covered 36 per cent of Northampton County and that the county was an excellent producer of grains and peaches. Indeed, a history of Lehigh County, written as early as 1845, noted that Hanover Township had “limestone soil, of an excellent quality, well cultivated, and very productive, repaying the labor of the farmer richly.” And a history of Christ Church said that “the church is located on one of the largest and most fertile townships in Lehigh County – Hanover.” The German immigrants apparently had done an excellent job in coping with what appeared to be infertile soil.[58]


Genealogical Charts of the Waltman Family Branches
Back to Waltman Home Page
Back to Top of Part I
Back to Top of Part II
Ahead to Top of Part III
Lora LaMance and the House of Waltman
The Battle of Fort Washington and Conrad Waltman
Neil Boyer's Home Page


FOOTNOTES TO PART II

1 One version of the descendants of Conrad Waltman Senior is provided in an extensive internet website established by the Chenoweth family. It is entitled “The House of Waltman: Conrad and Katherine, a Pennsylvania Family.” http://www.chenowethsite.com/genealogy/waltman.htm. This contains a genealogical descent table that basically follows the LaMance view that there were only 13 children of Conrad Senior; there is no Conrad Junior in the list, nor an Elizabeth, and Peter Waltman is shown as the son of Valentine, not as the son of Conrad Junior. However, there is textual reference elsewhere on this site that seems to acknowledge that a Conrad Junior may have existed. The listing contains many generations of the Waltman family. The last update seen in 2007 was dated August 31, 1997.

In the website Ancestry.com, under its “OneWorldTree” listings, individual people interested in genealogy submit information. Most of it is not verified by professional genealogists, and so it is not fully reliable. Many different versions of the family are presented. One entry in this website says that “Count Conrad Waltman” and Mary Katherine Bierly had 15 children. These were Maria (no birth date), Katherine and Margaret (1738), Eleanor (1739), John Peter (1741), Valentine (1742), Frederick (1743), William (1745), Hiram Michael (1748), Anna Barbara (1752), Ludwig (1754), Nicholas (1756), Maria (a second one! – 1757), Conrad (1759) and Andrew (1760). Barrett L. Peters, noted in the previous chapter, contended there were only 12 children. He named Katherine, Eleanor, John Peter, Valentine, Frederick, William, Hiram Michael, Anna Barbara, Ludwig, Nicholas, and Andrew, and to this list he added a Michael. He omitted Margaret, Maria and Elizabeth, and agreed with LaMance that there never was a Conrad Junior.

2 The 1790 census showed “Barnard Hamshire” living in Shrewsbury Township, York County, the household consisting of one male over 16, two males under 16, and three females.

3 Genealogist Hannah Roach found several records relating to Michael Lutz, as shown in her archive described in the preceding chapter, but she was unsure that this was the Michael Lutz who married Eleanor Waltman. For example, there are reports of two Lutz family members who wanted to travel to America from Germany. George Michael Lutz, listed on April 21, 1752, wanted to go to Pennsylvania with his wife and two children. A Michael Lutz and his wife Barbara wanted to go to New England, mentioned on April 17, 1752, “on account of overcrowded population and lack of food, in hopes to seek their fortune.” Langguth, Otto, “Pennsylvania German Pioneers from the County of Wertheim,” Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, Volume XII (1947).

4 LaMance’s handwritten notes cited information on the Lutz family in Egle, William Henry, Notes and Queries, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1896), Volume II, page 64.

5 Howard E. Snyder, of Lake Wales, Florida, who purchased LaMance’s book with her handwritten annotations, said he is descended from George and Eleanor Lutz Waltman.

6 Children of Ludwig and Anna Catharine were baptized at Blymer’s Union Church in Hopewell Township, York County. They were John Adam, born October 19, 1781; Mary Magdalena, on September 10, 1786; Margaret on March 22, 1798; and Barbara, on December 25, 1800. The report was found in Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings, Volume VIII (1898). Two other children were reported by Roach as baptized earlier: Maria Margaret (1769) and Catherine (1774) in a different Reformed Church in Lower Heidelberg Township.

7 There is also a “Nicholas Waltman” in the tax lists of Heidelberg Township, Berks County, in 1784 and 1785, and in the 1790 census in Washington County, Pennsylvania, but it is not clear if this is Frederick’s son.

 8 Anderson, Candace E., Abstracts of Deeds and Other Property Records, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Volume 2, pages 103, 215, 216, and 243, and Volume 3, page 170. DAR Library.

9 In 2006, the Emmanuel church and cemetery had an address of 3175 Valley View Drive, Bath, 18014, although this is about two miles west of Bath, not far north of where Valley View Drive intersects Route 248.

10 Griffiths, Gaylord, An Alphabetized Listing of those Subscribers to the Oath of Allegiance, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, 1777-1784, Closson Press, Apollo, Pennsylvania (1992), page 42. DAR Library. This shows that on August 5, 1777, “Waltman, Vallentin,” was No. 59 in appearing before Justice of the Peace Peter Meyer to take the oath.

11 See Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, Volume VIII, page 309. The same volume, on page 303, lists Valentine in this battalion on June 18, 1777. A certificate found in the Pennsylvania State Archives shows him in this battalion on May 21, 1777.

12 History of Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church, Shoenersville, Pennsylvania, Bethlehem Printing Co. (1910), page 2.

13 History of Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church, op. cit., page 18.

14 Anderson, Candace E., Abstracts of Orphans Court Records, cited elsewhere, Volumes A-E, 1752-2795, pages 222 and 225.

15 Hinke, William J., Church Records of Christ Lutheran, Christ Reformed Congregations, Schoenersville, Pennsylvania, copied by Hinke and typed by the Liberty Bell Chapter of the DAR, included in a book Research Work of the Liberty Bell Chapter (1928), DAR Library, Washington, pages 55-57.

16 Anderson, Candace E., Genealogical Abstracts of Orphans Court Records, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Closson Press, Apollo, Pennsylvania (1998), Volumes 6-8, pages 119 and 286 for the mentions of money owed to Valentine. DAR Library.

17 LaMance, page 77.

18 LaMance made it even more complicated, claiming that some people thought that the husband of Catherine Bieber was the Peter Waltman, born in 1781, who was the son of Conrad’s son John Peter Waltman! LaMance, page 75. She seems to have been the one who was confused.

19 The theories by different genealogists of family descendance from Conrad to Peter Waltman can be summarized as follows:

    Version A

    Version B

    Version C
(Wilkins, Beaver, Cameron)

(Byron Waltman, Roach)  

(LaMance)

Valentine (1678-1750)

Valentine (1678-1750)

Valentine (1678-1750)

Conrad Sr. (1715-1796)
m. Kath Bierly (1718-1786)

Conrad Sr. (1715-1796)
m. Kath Bierly (1718-1786)

Conrad Sr. (1715-1796)
m. Kath Bierly (1718-1786)

Valentine (1742?-1810?)
m. Cath. Brücker (1732-1786)

Valentine (1742-1790?)
m. Cath. Beaver

Conrad Jr. (1759-1785)
m. Cath Bieber (1761-1844)

Conrad Jr. (1759-1785)
m. Cath Bieber (1761-1844)

Peter (1779-1836)

Peter (1779-1836)

Peter (1779-1836)

20   Despite the church records, several on-line genealogy sites reported that the wife of Jacob Brücker was named “Madeleine.” However, both Wilkins and Roach copied the name “Magdalena” from different versions of the Christ Lutheran Church books. One cited this text from Christ Church records, page 71. Roach found it on microfilm at the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. Typewritten records for Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church, Shoenersville PA, compiled by Laura Long Shoener, Orwigsburg PA (1936), page 87, also found in the DAR Library in Washington.

On the other hand, as indicated below, one of the daughters of Jacob Brücker was recorded as “Magdalena” in one section of the Northampton County Orphans Court documents, which would make it more likely that Jacob’s wife was also Magdalena. However, there is confusion because another court record said Jacob’s wife was “Maudlin.” See the section below on Valentine’s second wife.

An interesting but false lead is a family presented in the OneWorldTree program of Ancestry.com concerning a Jacob Friedrich Bruker, born in 1713 and died in 1786, in Germany, who had a daughter “Anna Catharina Bruker,” who was born on May 29, 1742, the same year that LaMance said Valentine Waltman was born. http://trees.ancestry.com/owt/person.aspx?pid=74996546. If this Anna Catharina was proven to be in America, it might have been possible that she was the one who married Valentine, since they would have been the same age. However, if she were Valentine Waltman’s wife and they were married in 1755, they both would have been 13 when married, and that is highly unlikely. Also, the Ancestry program said that this Anna Catharina married Johann Georg Roth and that her father died in Germany. Intriguing as this may be, it would appear that this Anna Catharina Bruker is not the one who married Valentine Waltman.

21 Register of the Births, Marriages, Confirmations and Deaths in the Reformed Congregation on the Trockenem Lande in the New Church, Started in the Year 1787, Christ Lutheran and Reformed Church, Shoenersville PA, transcribed by Laura Shoener, Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania (1936). Valentine Sterner, born on July 12, 1793, was baptized on August 24, 1793, the son of Johannes and Barbara Sterner, with sponsors “Valendin Waldmann & Magdalena.”

22 An entry in Ancestry.com contended that Jacob Brücker and his spouse, “Anna Marie Godliet,” had a son Johann Adam Brücker, born in Germany in 1750. The date is certainly wrong, since Adam would have been only 12 in 1762 and would not have had the legal standing to file in Orphans Court for an inquiry into his late father’s estate. Further, Adam was likely the son of Magdalena, not Anna Maria.

23 Northampton County Administration records, Number 252, 1761, for the granting of letters of administration. Northampton County Orphans Court records, Book B, page 44, May 6, 1761, for the appointment of “Felti Waltman” as guardian. Book C, page 5, 23 June 1762, for the petition of Adam Brücker asking for an “inquisition” into the estate of his father, Jacob Brücker. Book C, page 19, 23 September 1762, for the report of the auditors on the estate of Jacob Brücker. Also, for the appointment of Felti Waltman as guardian, see Anderson, Candace E., Genealogical Abstracts of Orphans Court Records, Northampton County PA, Volumes A-E, 1752-1795, page 17.

24 Franklin-Hamsher.ged, quoted in an Ancestry.com listing for Elizabeth Catherine Waldman.

 25 Pennsylvania State Archives contain two certificates related to Peter Waltman, both from the records of the Comptroller General. One, dated May 23, 1782, showed him as a private in the 3rd battalion, Capt. Jacob Clader’s Company under Lt. Col. Nicholas Kern in the period April 14-May 23, 1782, but said “Fredc Cline served in his place.” The second, issued on March 3, 1783, showed he was on inactive duty with the 3rd battalion, 7th Company, under Captain John Deeter. There is also a general muster entry in Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, Volume VIII, page 310, showing "Peter Waldman," Drum and Fife, in the 4th Company. His brother Valentine was the Second Lieutenant and John Deeter was the First Lieutenant in the same company (page 309).

26 Burials of Revolutionary Soldiers in Northampton Co. (now Lehigh Co.) Penna, compiled by Sadie F. Horning Ziegler (1937), DAR Library, citing Series 5, Volume 8, Pages 288, 292of Pennsylvania Archives. Note that the date of death of November 7, 1817, differs from the November 9 that appears on the tombstone and marker at Kreidersville.

27 Peter and Maria Elizabeth Waltman were frequent participants in church baptismal ceremonies. They were in Zion Church in Kreidersville for the baptism of their daughter Elizabeth Waltman on March 12, 1775. Both parents were present. Sponsors were Peter and Elisabeth Meister. The same day, Peter and Maria Elisabeth Waltman were sponsors for the baptism of Maria Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter and Elisabeth Meister, born February 11, 1775. On November 5, 1780, Peter and Maria Elizabeth again were sponsors for the baptism of a son of Peter and Elisabeth Meister. The Meisters returned the favor on July 8, 1781, when Peter Waltman, son of Peter and Maria Elisabeth, was baptized. “Johann Peter Waldman” and Maria Elisabeth were also listed in the church records of Salem Lutheran and Reformed Congregation, Moore Township, Northampton County, on September 11, 1785, as sponsors for the baptism of Johann Peter Kleppinger, son of Johannes and Anna Marg Kleppinger.

 28 This could be an effort by LaMance to justify why there is no record of Conrad.

29 Northampton County Deed Book C-1, pages 207 and 209. A second related transaction appears on page 209 of the same book. Both were entered on April 14, 1775. The record of the smaller site, 140 acres plus improvements, shows the heirs were Frederick Beyer, Peter Waldman and his wife Mary Elisabeta, Henry Silvius and wife, Fred Maurer and John Beyer. Also see Anderson, Candace E., Abstracts of Deeds and Other Property Records, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Volume 2, page 35. DAR Library

30 The will can be found in the Northampton County Court House, Will Book 4, page 513, Number 3141. It is also in the Easton Public Library. Witnesses were Peter Dreisback and George Beer.

31 Sponsors were Henrich Boyer (same name but not the father of Maria Elizabeth Boyer Waltman, since he had died in 1775, two years earlier) and Anna Barbara Waltmann, sister of Peter. Her tombstone erroneously said she was born on June 5, 1778, but the date of death is the same, August 4, 1853.

32 There is confusion about the dates and names because there is also a tombstone for an “Barbara A. Anewalt” at Zion Church Cemetery that says she was “born May 14, 1742, married Peter Anewalt, and died at 28, August 4, 1828.” The dates and numbers make little sense. Despite the name on the tombstone, it appears from the records that this “Anna Barbara,” born in 1742, was not a Waltman and was not the wife of Peter Anewalt, but actually the second wife of Peter Anewalt’s father, Valentine Anewalt.

It appears that Valentine Anewalt (1731-1802) first married, in 1753, Johanna Margret Kurtz (1733-1793), and they had nine children, including Peter Anewalt (1772-1825). He then married “Anna Barbara,” last name unknown, who was born in 1742 or 1743 and died in 1828. They had no children. See Humphrey, Pennsylvania Grave Stones, Northampton County, For People Born Before 1800, Larjon & Co., Washington DC (2000), page 8 for the confusing Anewalt tombstone records. Also see an account of the Anewalt Family at http://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?495,325606,325606#msg-325606, drawn from Roberts, Stoudt, Krick and Dietrich, History of Lehigh County Pennsylvania and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of its Families, Allentown PA (1914).

33 Northampton County Courthouse, Miscellaneous Book 9, page 426, recorded on November 18, 1852.

34 LaMance, page 78.

 35 Sponsors were Johann Kleppinger and Margareth. See Humphrey, Northampton County Births, page 225.

36 Humphrey, John T., Pennsylvania Grave Stones, Northampton County, For People Born Before 1800, Larjon & Co., Washington DC (2000). Also, Burial Record of Zion’s Stone Church, Kreidersville, booklet published by the church, July 1, 1940, page 47. LaMance thought that Adam Lerch married Margaret Waltman, daughter of Valentine, but it was Magdalena Waltman, daughter of Peter, who married Adam Lerch. There is no evidence that Valentine had a daughter Margaret.

37 Tohickon Reformed Church Records, Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings, Volume XXXI (1935), discovered by Hannah Roach. John Dreisbach and Elizabeth Waldman are also shown at the same church as sponsors at baptisms for other children in 1758, including on the date of their own marriage. This information is also contained in the Dreisbach family website, although no information is given about Elizabeth’s family. The website said that they had eight children. Dates of Elizabeth’s birth and death, taken from her tombstone, are given in Humphrey, Pennsylvania Grave Stones, Northampton County, For People Born Before 1800, Larjon & Co., Washington DC (2000). Elizabeth’s sister, Barbara Waltman, served as sponsor at the baptism of a son of Paul and Catherine Flick at this same Tohickon church in November 1758, indicating a Waltman family presence in the area (possibly temporary, as when they might have moved to avoid conflict with Indians).

38 Burial Record of Zion’s Stone Church, Kreidersville, booklet published by the church, July 1, 1940.

 39 Berky, Andrew S., The Schoolhouse Near the Old Spring, 1735-1955, Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society, Volume 56 (1944, Norristown, Pennsylvania, showing “A Register of Baptisms in this Congregation,” called Dillinger’s Church. Page 96 showed the baptism of Anna Barbara, daughter of “Conrad Waldman & Maria Catharina, born January 13, baptized March 10, 1745, sponsors Joh: Ort & Anna Barbara.” Hannah Roach said the same entry was duplicated in the records of Upper Milford Reformed Church, although Dillinger’s was Lutheran. The record of the Moravian Congregation of Emmaus is found in Humphrey, John T., Pennsylvania Births: Lehigh County 1734-1800 (1992).

40 Christ Church, Schoenersville, Pennsylvania, Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, 1782 1887, Record Book l, 1784-1793, page 71, quoted by Margaret Bright Wilkins in her list of corrections to the LaMance book at the DAR Library. The same text was located by Hannah Roach in the records of the church at the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. A comparable hand-typed book at the DAR Library, compiled by Laura Long Shoener, of Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1936, page 86, gives the record entry as provided in the accompanying text.

41 Beaver, page 650-51. See more on the Beaver/Bieber family history here.

42 Latin translations of these church records were confirmed by the book The New A to Zax: A Comprehensive Genealogical Dictionary for Genealogists and Historians, by Barbara Jean Evans, privately published, 323 pages, (1990). See also the Family Search website on “Research Guidance: Latin: Genalogical Word List” at http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/RG/guide/WLLatin1.asp#a. One bit of confusion in the Zion Church records is that on one Sunday in 1775, attendance included “Valentin Waltman, Catharina ux, and Conrad, filia.” The word “filia” normally means “daughter,” and this is likely a mistake by the church clerk. There seems no other explanation.

43 LaMance, page 78.

44 See Humphrey, John T., Northampton County Births, 1733-1800, page 255, for the Kreidersville church baptisms of Peter and Maria Barbara. See Humphrey, Lehigh County Births, 1734-1800, pages 304 and 305, for the Schoenersville church records. The baptism of Johannes, son of Conrad Jr. and Catherine Waldman, January 23, 1783, appears in the records of the Lutheran Congregation at Schoenersville, Hanover Township. The baptism of Elizabeth Catherine, daughter of Conrad Jr. and Catarina Waldman, was recorded on December 29, 1784, in the same church.

Both of these were churches frequently attended by the Waltman family. The Kreidersville Church records also noted baptisms or births of grandchildren of Conrad Senior, the children of at least three of his own children. This included five children of Peter Waltman (1741-1817) and his wife, Maria Elizabeth Boyer Waltman. These were Elizabeth (January 22, 1775), Anna Barbara (June 1, 1777), Anna Maria (1779), Peter (June 10, 1781), and Johann (March 9, 1786). The death of the Peter born in 1781 was also recorded there on January 14, 1811. The same reference book contained the baptism of Susanna Barbara, daughter of Valentine and Catherine Waldman, on July 13, 1771. The Schoenersville church records contained baptisms of two children of Andreas (Andrew) and Margareta Waltman. These were Johannes (August 4, 1789) and Johann Adam (February 9, 1794).

45 LaMance, page 78.

46 Beaver, page 652.

47 There is other evidence of a “John Waltman” in Orphans Court records, but it is not clear if this is the same John. In 1801, when this John would have been 18, the settlement of the estate of Henry Weaver, in Upper Saucon Township, showed that John Waltman was among 150 who were owed money by Henry. In 1812, property of a John Waltman in Upper Saucon Township was mentioned in another deed. Anderson, Candace E., Genealogical Abstracts of Orphans Court Records, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Closson Press, Apollo, Pennsylvania (1998), Volumes 6-8, pages 91 and 323. DAR Library. The 1790 census also shows “John Waltman” in Upper Saucon Township, in a household with two males over 16, one under 16, and one female. This is probably not the John who was the child of Conrad Junior. However, Garry Heagy believes this John Waltman, born about 1850, might have been still another child of the immigrant Conrad Waltman, Senior.

48 Beaver, page 651. The Gordner family history said that Catherine married Georg (Johann Jurg) Sendel, who was born about August 1760 in Lowhill Township, Pennsylvania, son of Andreas and Anna Maria Sendel. It says that their children were George (1788-1869), Michael (1792-1861), Jacob (b. 1796), Peter (b. 1801), and Catherine (b. 1803). A baptism at Zion Church in Kreidersville on April 8, 1787, showed Georg Sendel and Margareth Frackin as the sponsors for George Michael Bieber, the son of Jacob and Elizabeth Bieber. This indicates at least that the Sendel and Bieber families knew each other. Conrad Junior had died two years earlier, in 1785. Catherine was 26 and George Sendel was 27. If the first child of Catherine Bieber Waltman and George Sendel was born in 1788, that would suggest they were married later in 1787, two years after Conrad died. Research by Garry Heagy in late 2006 supported the theory that Catherine's second husband was George (and not Josiah) Sendel.
 
49 LaMance, pages 80 and 127-130, with photographs.

50 See land transactions involving this family in Luzerne County Deed Book 20, page 390, May 12, 1824; Book 28, page 588, March 31, 1826; Book 47, page 11, April 2, 1831; Book 32, page 223, May 20, 1833; Book 32, page 224, November 29, 1833; Book 215, page 472, April 4, 1849. The letters of administration on the estate of Andrew Waltman are shown in Luzerne County Register Index 1 and 2, April 22, 1828.

 51 LaMance, pages 91 and 208.

52 It is not clear what he meant, since no one else has claimed to have seen the burial site of Conrad Junior. However, the church record of the burial, quoted above, exists in church documents, and perhaps that is what Rev. Schmoyer “hunted up.”

53 See Kachline, Susan A., Nazareth, Pennsylvania, The Penn’s Manor of Fermor, Commonly Called “The Drylands” of Northampton County, Pennsylvania, typewritten manuscript (1954); and Baker, Elsie E. D., The Barrons, Manor of Fermar, Drylands, Lower Nazareth Township, booklet published by the Lower Nazareth Township Bicentennial Committee (about 1976), both in Memorial Library, Nazareth.  See also Wright, James, "Monocacy Creek Features Many Bends and Many Names," Easton Express-Times, April 23, 2006, page BB3.

54 See the transcription of Christ Church records by Laura Shoener, noted earlier.

55 See the Lehigh County website, http://www.lehighcounty.org, and click on Site Search, Local History and Hanover.

56 The photograph of “Christ Union Church” is in the church book noted above.

57 Schoepf, Dr. John David, travel diary, quoted in Two Centuries of Nazareth, 1740-1940, published by Nazareth Bicentennial, Inc. (1940), pages 61-64.

58 Rupp, I. Daniel, History of Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Carbon and Schuylkill Counties, Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1845), page 126. The Lehigh County portion of this book can be found in https://sites.rootsweb.com/~palehigh/historyoflehigh.html. See also History of the United German Lutheran and Reformed Congregations of Christ Church, Shoenersville, Lehigh County, PA, Bethlehem Printing Company (1910), page 2.




Genealogical Charts of the Waltman Family Branches
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