I'm not going to get any homework done tonight, so I might as well write the third of the messages I've been thinking about for so long. Jacob Howry, the ancestor of the Virginia branch, is generally thought to have been a close relative of Hans and Ulrich. I wonder if that is quite so certain as we believe. As far as I know, the first record of Jacob (whichever of the many generations of Jacobs he was) is the 1739 baptism of his daughter Maria Elisabetha in York Co, Pennsylvania *Lutheran* records. He lived at Paradise Township, founded principally by Lutheran and Calvinist families from the Palatinate. We can probably accept that he is the same Jacob Howry who, with his wife Ursula, were witnesses to a Lutheran baptism in the same place in 1745. They were granted Letters of Administration for his father Jacob in 1755. It's curious that neither Jacob appears until 1739, about a generation after Hans and Ulrich were granted land in 1717 and 1718. We know that Jacob cannot have been Ulrich's son. Apparently, he also cannot have been Hans' son (because Hans had a son Jacob who is otherwise accounted for). The elder Jacob (who died before 1755) might have been a brother of Hans and Ulrich, which would explain why Ulrich's will implies that he had more than one brother. I'm still troubled by this solution, though. Hans and Ulrich were Mennonites. Jacob was a Lutheran. In the social context of the time, I think that this is very significant. One of the noticeable things about our immigrant ancestors is how tenacious they were of their religion and their ethnic group until several generations in America - often not intermarrying with other religious and ethnic groups until after the Revolution. To me, it just "feels wrong" that Jacob would have become a Lutheran if he really came from a Mennonite family. It also seems unlikely that he would have been a Lutheran if he came from Switzerland. As a social background to my concerns, after the Thirty Years War (1640), the people of Europe were required to conform to the religion of their rulers, which was the established church in their area. They were not allowed to dissent. This is old hat, but I'm not sure that its connection to the Howrys has been considered. In Switzerland, the Protestant Cantons embraced Calvinism. Everyone living in those areas was required to be a Calvinist or be punished. Hans the Woolweaver was allowed to leave Switzerland in 1711 because as a Mennonite he was a truly bad person in the eyes of the government and because the government finally just couldn't cope with the obstinacy of the Mennonites. Very few places in Europe would accept Mennonites, because they were neither Calvinist nor Lutheran (the only legal varieties of Protestant). I guess I have a hard time believing that Jacob Howry, a Lutheran, came from a Mennonite family and just shrugged off his religion just when he got to Pennsylvania and could be a Mennonite in peace. Also, if Jacob came directly from Switzerland, he would have been a Calvinist, not a Lutheran. The Calvinists who left Switzerland for a generation or two in other parts of Germany frequently became Lutherans (if you're the kind of belong to the established church, there's not much difference between being a Lutheran and being a Calvinist as long as you're still Protestant - not enough difference to fight about anyway). So, I suspect that Jacob was the conforming type (and probably his immediate ancestors were also conformists). At some undetermined date they left Calvinist Switzerland, settled in a Lutheran area of Germany - perhaps the Palatinate - and then moved on to America as Lutherans . . . and stayed Lutherans for another 100 years. They were still Lutherans in Virginia and the early generations there married other German Lutherans (not Mennonites). They didn't stop being Lutherans until the whole area, irrespective of ethnic background, abandoned their traditional faiths to become Baptists. I wonder if the elder Jacob was the Jacob (or a descendant of the Jacob) who left Hirschthal (a village in Shoeftland parish) in 1696/7. Or perhaps a member of the family at Baden. Or perhaps a member of the family Reinach (near Schoeftland). Or perhaps . . . I'd love to hear contrary views. Justin C.S. Howery Denver, Colorado jhowery@tde.com http://www.members.tde.com/jhowery