Friday, February 7, 2014

Researching White Genealogy with a Hottel Family Book?

History of the descendants of John Hottell...

A quick review--while researching John White of Preble County, Ohio, for Henry White clues, a very tantalizing item turned up in another family's genealogy book. 

History of the descendants of John Hottell : (immigrant from Switzerland to America) and an authentic genealogical family register of ten generations from the first of the name in America, 1732, to the present time, 1929, with numerous brief biographical sketches, collected and compiled from many indisputable sources : court and church records, old and late family records and tombstones of the many states in the Union (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Pub., 1930) by W. D. Huddle, page 596 contains a short, almost throw-away, paragraph about an allied Shenandoah County family (emphasis mine):

"George Fisher, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. He m. Barbara Biedler and located on Stony Creek, about one mile above Edinburg, Va. He was a miller by vocation. He d. May 4, 1814, his wife, May 19, 1832. Children: John, Jacob, William, George, Elizabeth, wife of John Kokenour [a variant of Gochenour or vice versa]; Adam, David, Martin, Catherine, wife of Mathias Stover; Rebecca, wife of John White; Mary, wife of Henry White; Susanna, wife of John Johnson; Rachel, wife of Paul Hottel; Anna, wife of Joseph Wisman; Christena, wife of John H. Funkhouser; and Samuel Fisher."

I'm not sure where W. D. Huddle obtained his information. My guess is that it came from George Fisher's will because it only mentions George's third/final wife. George first married Catherine, who, according to a Bible owned in 1977 by a Bessie Shillingburg, died 30 September 1790. Next, he married Mary Gochenour on January 4, 1791 in Shenandoah County, VA. Mary didn't live long after this, dying sometime before George married his third wife, Barbara Biedler, on 23 March 1794. 

Mary Gochenour's father, Jacob Gochenour, in a will dated 13 October 1809, wrote:

 "...my two grand children, Rebecca Fisher and Mary Fisher (children of my daughter Mary, deceased, late wife  of George Fisher, one  share)." Therefore, Mary only had two living daughters, Rebecca and Mary Fisher. (Jacob's will also shows that both granddaughters were single in late 1809, the date the will was written.)

Is our Henry White married to this Mary Fisher? It seems very possible, given that Mary and Rebecca were living next to each other in Preble County, Ohio, in 1830. But does Mary's age actually fit the necessary time frame to be Mary Fisher? She would need to be born sometime between 1791 and March of 1794. According to her tombstone, she was born 6 December, 1791. So far, so good. But let's keep digging...



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