BAPTISM RECORDS

of the Children of John and Catharina Marshall

Researched and Written by Kelly Marshall

Website: http://www.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall/

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION: The material on this site is under copyright by Gordon Kelly Marshall. Researchers, family members, libraries, or genealogical and/or historical societies are invited to use the information freely, for non-commercial purposes only, with proper credit to me and to this site. You may not use it at all for commercial purposes. Please email me if you wish to reference it in any format: marshallfamily@zoominternet.net

The Setting

The day was 15 September 1805 and the place was Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. John and Catharina Marshall [1] brought their children to Pastor Johannes Wilhelm Weber to receive Holy Baptism, the sacrament of initiation into the Christian Church. The service was in German, and the parochial record of the event was written in German. Mr. Weber was "the first High German Pastor to live in Westmoreland County" [see Weber's biographical memo which follows], having served German-speaking Protestants there since June 1782.

Their godparents were Christophel Drubi or Drube [Christopher Truby, born 1761] and his wife Sussanna [Susanna Lauffer Truby]. He is the brother of Catharina Marshall and is the children's uncle [2]. Godmother for the ten-month-old baby, Mary Ann Marshall, is Maria Hovi [Mary Ann 'Polly' Truby Hovey], her mother's sister.

Within a few months, the Marshall family--including 13 year-old Elizabeth Rohrer and 11 year-old Frederick Rohrer, children of Catharina by her first marriage [3]--would depart Greensburg for the adventure of a lifetime. They intended to build a new home on the edge of the wilderness in New Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio. Ohio was the newest of the seventeen states, and this place was familiar to Pennsylvania German settlers. But before the summer of 1806 was two-thirds past, John and Catharina would die of a fever [4] and be buried on a hill overlooking the present town of Lancaster, Ohio.

The family recalled, in another generation, that Mary Ann Hovey took responsibility for bringing the six orphans back to Western Pennsylvania, where they would be reared by members of the Truby family [5]. This extraordinary action on her part is unusual in the annals of the American frontier; for the children to be taken in by neighbors, to help in shops or on farms, would have been the more ordinary turn of events. That outcome, of course, would have broken the young family and erased from their memory any knowledge of the Marshalls, the Trubys, and their ancestral home in the hills of western Pennsylvania. That outcome also would have altered the course of all our lives--their Marshall descendants. In my opinion, Mary Ann Truby Hovey stands as the person most significant to our early family story—the true mother of all descendants of Catharina Truby Rohrer Marshall.

The Baptismal Records

Two secondary records exist as transcriptions of the original document. The earlier set is taken from the book Births and Baptisms, 1782-1815 by the Rev. John William Weber. This book was compiled from the translated copy of the original German records by Della Reagan Fischer in 1966. The second and more accurate set of records was done by Paul Miller Ruff. In his German Church Records of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania [Vol. III, 1805-1812, 1982], one sees at work an expert in reading this early nineteenth-century Pennsylvania German script. I have listed his records first, below. The manuscript is, I believe, in the custody of the United Church of Christ, Maple Avenue, Greensburg--formerly known as the First Reformed Church. A copy of the original record may indicate that all three godparents served as baptismal sponsors for all the children.

Ruff's Transcription of the Baptismal Records

Paul Miller Ruff, German Church Records of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania [Vol. III, 1805-1812, 1982], page 135.

2529 ANDREAS 12 Mar 1800 Johannes Marschel Christophel Drubi

15 Sep 1805 Catharina Sussanna

2530 SAMUEL 13 Jun 1801 Johannes Marschel Christophel Drubi

15 Sep 1805 Catharina Sussanna

2531 JOHANNES 11 Jul 1803 [6] Johannes Marschel Christophel Drubi

15 Sep 1805 Catharina Sussanna

2532 MARIA 24 Nov 1804 Johannes Marschel Maria Hovi

15 Sep 1805 Catharina

Fischer's Record of the Marshall Baptisms

Della Reagan Fischer: Births and Baptisms, 1782-1815 of the Rev. John William Weber [1966], page 125.

Entry 2263 Andrew, born 03-12-1800

parents: John Marschand [7] and Catharine

Entry 2264 Samuel, born 09-15-1801

parents: John Marschand [7] and Catharine

Entry 2271 John, born 01-02-1803 [6]

parents: John Marschel and Catharine

Entry 2272 Marian, born 11-24-1804

parents: John Marschel and Catharine

The godparents noted in Fisher's record are Christopher and Susanna Truby only.

Extract from the Church Record of John William Weber

Entered about 1815 [8]

I, John William Weber, a member of the honorable American Synod of the Evangelical Reformed Congregation and Religion, and a member of the First Reformed Church, was the first High German Pastor to live in Westmoreland County, Pa., and came here at the beginning of June, in the year of our Lord 1782. I first served four congregations: 1 in Pittsburgh, 2 in Hempfield Township, Brush Creek and Herold's Churches, and 1 congregation in Mount Pleasant Township. Since there was no other Pastor speaking High German, I visited all the German

congregations in the Counties of Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington and Fayette. I have administered the Holy Communion to the Reformed members, confirmed the young and baptized the children; the children I have baptized are all written down in this book.

Further, I order that this book which I have bought for myself, after my death shall be transferred to the city of Greensburg, and the same should be continued, so that everyone in this book may find out about the names, parents and birthdays, when they make inquiries.

My Epitaph is the Following Closing Rhyme:

Here rest I blest in God,

No foe can vex me here;

I feel no more the world's disdain,

God will us all reward.

Now my soul extols his name--

World without end. Amen.

Endnotes

1. John Marshall [about 1761 to 1806] was born in Ireland. He seems to appear rather suddenly in about 1798 in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, and promptly marries a widowed daughter (Catharina Truby Rohrer) of the prominent Truby family. I've not been able to locate immigration or naturalization records for him.

Catharina Truby Rohrer was born about 1763, east of the mountains in Northampton County--now Carbon County--Pennsylvania, of the descendants of French Huguenots [the Trubi/Drube Family] and German emigrants [the Baumans]. Her son John Marshall recorded in his family Bible that both his father and mother "were supposed to be 45 years old" when they died in 1806; that would have given Catharina a birth year of about 1761. The gravestone of her older brother Christopher [see Note 2, below] records his birth, however, as being 1761; and a family record gives the birth of her brother Michael as 22 May 1762. She seems to have been the third child of the family, with sister Elizabeth being born around 1769. Sarah Cooper Avey reports in My Pennsylvania Ancestors (1987, page 52) a memory of the Mary Ann Marshall Bailey (1804-1895) family that John Marshall was 44 years old at the time of his death, and that Catharina was 43—giving her an approximate birth date of 1763.

Her mother, Sybilla [Isabella] Bauman [1743-1801] was schooled with the Moravians in Bethlehem before marrying the young soldier Christopher Truby [1736-1802]. They crossed the Allegheny Mountains in the early 1770s to settle near the present town of Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.

2. He is the oldest child of Christopher and Sybilla Truby and was, along with John Marshall, an executor of the elder Truby's estate. He also served for a time as guardian for the orphaned Frederick Rohrer, born 1794—a legal arrangement which came to a less than satisfactory ending; see the 1812 Petition of Frederick Rohrer for the appointment of a new guardian. He may well have played an important part in the rearing of the Marshall boys, for whom he served as godparent; however, at this time I've located no source to show this. His gravestone in the Rumbaugh Cemetery [Perry Township, Armstrong County PA] records his birth as 1761, and he lived until 1845. His wife Susanna lived from 1770-1872. By 1812, he had made his home in "a distant quarter of Armstrong County" [24 August 1812 Petition by Frederick Rohrer for the appointment of a new guardian; Westmoreland County Court, August Term 1812].

Gravestone of Christopher Truby (1761-1845)

Godfather and Uncle of Andrew Marshall, Samuel Marshall and John Marshall

Rumbaugh Cemetery, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania

3. Frederick Rohrer [about 1766-1794] was the son of the French-born Frederick Rohrer [1740-1823] and Catharine Deemer/Deemar [about 1746-1829].

4. See the website “Descendant Families of John Marshall and Catharina Truby Rohrer” for a link to a remarkable firsthand account of the fevers which decimated the newly established village of New Lancaster, Ohio, in its early years: http://www.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall

5. "Mary Ann Hovey, Catherine Marshall's sister went out into Ohio and brought the children back to her and the good Doctor's [Simeon Hovey's] home in Parker and they raised them" [Sarah Cooper Avey, My Pennsylvania Ancestors. Apollo PA: Closson Press, 1987; ISBN 0-933227-96-5; page 52]. This information was passed through the Mary Ann Marshall Bailey family and is the strongest statement I've seen which indicates both how the children made their way back to Pennsylvania and who took responsibility for them.

6. Note the confusion in both records concerning the birth date for John Marshall [1803-1889]. The primary source of his own family Bible, in his handwriting or that of a family member, states that he was born on 11 January 1803. See the website “Descendant Families of John Marshall and Catharina Truby Rohrer” for a link to these Bible records: http://www.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall

In a letter from the Rev. Paul Miller Ruff to Jane E. Cooper [undated, but 2002], he writes the following after revisiting the original documents: "There is no doubt that John Marshall and his siblings were baptized on 15 July [sic; he means September] 1805. The question is, was he born on the 11th of January or the 11th of June? I must agree after a careful study of the situation that the 11th of January is the correct date of his birth in 1803. As to what caused the original confusion on my part was the fact that the word January was partially abbreviated and written so that the a in Jan connected with the h in Johannes directly above so that it seems to form an l; hence I concluded too readily that the month was July and not January. So this is my regrettable mistake. With regard to the ii date of birth, I should be practically certain that it is Arabic for 11 and not 2. In searching through three years of the records, I found not a single use of the Roman numerals. In conclusion, I must agree that the birth date of John Marshall is 11 January 1803."

7. Note that the surname of Andrew and Samuel Marshall is spelled Marschand. This is an obvious error of translation or transliteration.

8. Births and Baptisms 1782-1815 by the Rev. John William Weber, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania [Compiled from the translated copy of the original book of German Records by Della Reagan Fischer, 1966].

KEYWORD SEARCH: Johannes Wilhelm Weber, John William Weber; Christophel Drubi, Christophel Drube, Christopher Truby, Susanna Lauffer Truby Drube, Drubi, Trubee, Trubey; Elizabeth Rohrer, Frederick Rohrer; Mary Ann Hovey, Polly Hovey, Mary Ann Truby, Polly Truby; Early Westmoreland County History.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION: The material on this site is under copyright by Gordon Kelly Marshall. Researchers, family members, libraries, or genealogical and/or historical societies are invited to use the information freely, for non-commercial purposes only, with proper credit to me and to this site. Please email me if you wish to reference it in any format: marshallfamily@zoominternet.net. You may not use it at all for commercial purposes.

Contact Information

Kelly Marshall

788 Wildwood Drive

Boardman OH 44512-3241

marshallfamily@zoominternet.net