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    1. Re: [DAVENPORT] Your Davenport Roots--Indiana and Brethren Clues
    2. Ginger: There was a Pamunkey Davenport line that was in Indiana and Brethren, namely the family of Noah Davenport and Catherine Stutzman, of Miami County, Ohio, and Elkhart County, Indiana. If I recall correctly, the Davenports settled around Wakarusa in Elkhart in the mid-to-late 1830s. Noah, b. 1796, Randolph County, NC, was the son of Martin Davenport, son of Augustine Davenport, Sr., of Rowan County, NC. His mother was Mary Magdalene Mast, of the renown Mennonite Mast family. Martin died May-June1798 while returning from a land scouting trip with Mast brothers-in-law and their Hoover Kin (later mine also) in the Northwest Territory. He drowned in the Ohio River near Cincinnati, with a verdict of "Death by Misadventure" by a Territorial Coroner's Jury. In the Fall of 1801, Noah's mother having given birth to a posthumous son Martin (Oct1798) and having married John Waggoner, joined the Hoovers, Masts, and Davenports in the first of many migrations of Randolph Carolinians north of the Ohio River. Noah was five-years-old when his Mother and new Stepfather took him and his brother Martin to the open, yet untamed frontier in the new State of Ohio. He grew up on the Upper Stillwater (Montgomery-Miami counties) in a community that included Brethren, Quakers, Universalists, and New Lights among others--he apparently opting for the Brethren discipline by his marriage to Catherine Stutzman of the strongly Brethren line. [There are Stutzmans among the Amish today. There are Stutzmans who are Church of the Brethren today. Then there was Jacob Stutzman, Sr., minister of the Brethren congregation in Randolph County, NC, who was excommunicated by Annual Meeting in 1799 for holding to Universalist doctrine. Rev. Jacob (a grandfather of mine) left North Carolina with the Masts, Hoovers, and Davenports in the Fall of 1801, but he and his family split off from the folk going to Ohio and settled in the Illinois Grant at the Falls of the Ohio (now Clark County, Indiana. These latter Dunkers were known as Far Western Brethren and merged into the Disciples of Christ around 1830. The Brethren Stutzman family into which Noah married was strongly Annual meeting (orthodox) and remained so for at least a hundred years. Noah Davenport and his children followed Annual Meeting precepts.] I did not trace the Elkhart Davenports much past the Civil War, but I know from reading Indiana Brethren History that there were Davenports active in the Church as late as the early 1900s. I believe some of the Elkhart Davenports later were in Hawaii, then California. I have been told that Lindsay Davenport, the current Tennis star, is a descendant of the Brethren Davenports, but I've seen no documentation to that effect. If you can connect yourself back to the Elkhart County Brethren Davenports, I can provide you with considerable family history on both the Davenports and the Stutzmans. John Scott Davenport Holmdel, NJ

    11/19/1999 07:54:31