Here are several excerpts from a letter someone wrote me. There was one fairly prominent Wagner family in Cumru, a Lt. John Wagner with wife Susannah. They had about 10 kids, and the third child was named Henry. Lt. John (from the Revolutionary War) had a decent-sized acreage; I have seen his will in Reading. Yes, Cumru is right across the river from Exeter, just to the southwest. you are right that there were so many obscure Wagners out of Berks, propertyless and hanging on by their teeth, and particularly in Cumru, which was poor and largely Welsh Baptist. There was not even a Reformed Church for them in Cumru that I can find (none, at least, in Glattfelter's book, 1948). OK, start spilling it, folks. This is the first I've heard of a prominent Revolutionary War era Johannes Wagner in Berks County, let alone with wife Susanna. My Henry WAgner married to Elizabeth, having children apparently in Alsace or Exeter by the 1770's begin showing up in Schwarwald's records in 1782, constantly exchanged baptismal sponsorship of children with Johannes Wagner and wife Susanna, apparently of Exeter too but it's very hard to tell. They also begin to show up in the Schwarzwald records in 1782, which does not mean they lived in Reading or took up a new place of residence in 1782. As you can see from below, Cumru was not on the other side of the county from Alsace and Exeter, where someone told me it is, it was adjacent to Exeter. Though from the description I am wondering if alot of people kind of think the place was on the other side of the galaxy from all those prosperous, wealthy, moderately religious and completely sane people we on these lists mostly think were our Berks County ancestors. Me included - I've sure never heard anyone was poor here, before, let alone Welsh Baptist - certainly never entertained the possibility! :/ Further, a Johannes Wagner married Susanna Liesz, and Johannes and Susanna's children were often sponsored by other Liesz's. Can people please tell me more about this Lt. Johannes/ John Wagner of the Revolutionary War and his wife Susan - and their ten children? Also, exactly where they lived and owned land. And where to find information on this family. Also, I had assumed that John and Henry Wagner owned land if they lived in Berks County, had alot of children and did not live in Reading. What would those two have done and where would they or anyone else have lived in Exeter, Alsace and Cumru if they did not own land? If they would have needed to have some sort of a trade in lieu of owning land, where might I find some sort of record of it? Were most people in Cumru poor? Did most people who did own land there own small amounts of it? I hear mostly about people in Berks County who owned huge quantities of land from very early points in time, had manic energy levels and drive, and became extremely prosperous. Like my Deharts, atleast one Burkhart family, the Keim's, and the Schneiders, and the Wagner family of Bern. For that matter, where do I find tax records for Berks County for 1770 through 1810? I wrote to the Berks County tax office, sent a few bucks for zeroxing, and a SASE, and never got any response - and there is zit anywhere I can find on even how to get those records. Lot of info on how to get wills, vital records - but not on how to get tax records. Also, this is the first I've heard about Welsh Baptists in Cumru. I wonder how it can be that there is so little information and apparent awareness on those of these lists that pertain to that area, that THOSE varmints were around? It's a far more glaring and important thing to miss than being unaware of poverty. Is it true that this is the only church that was there for people to attend? Where did people of German background who lived in Cumru actually attend church? My own staunchly mixed Presbyterian and Reformed ancestors who lived in southeastern Chester County also lived in a town whose only church was Welsh Baptist; they drove 12 miles to a nearby town where there was a Presbyterian church every Sunday. People should be aware of it if this church was really there and many people in that place belonged to it, if only because it is nearly impossible to find any sort of vital records on any family that was Welsh/ Primitive Baptist. Just the way people need to know that Spies Church in Alsace kept burning down and losing its records, though people told me that alot faster than they told me there were Welsh Baptists! The Welsh Baptists were so strict they didn't even accept most children of their members, I think they drove most of them away which was not easy to accomplish in the 18th century, they managed to alienate my Dehaven 4th cousin's ancestor completely from religion ca 1820 in a town where everyone was religious, and they accepted nobody before adulthood. This isn't because they were Welsh; in fact, in Pennsylvania before many years had gone by a large proportion of them weren't Welsh at all; it is because they were among the most extreme, if oldest, of the Anabaptist sects, and that accounts for why groups of these particular Welsh came to this country. To this day, these "Give me that old time religion" creators of the Old Time Bible Hour or whatever its called think Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberts, and the entire Southern Baptist movement (the mainstream Fundamentalist church of the South, and the parent church of Billy Graham) are left wing liberals in league with Satan. They are not to be confused with the Baptist movement, which evolved from the Anabaptist movement and once included the Primitive Baptists, and I think also took part in the Great Awakening, but in the North and in urban areas quickly became a liberal denomination that many of our nation's early leaders belonged to, similar to the Pennsylvania Dutch Brethren. That is why few Welsh Baptist christening records exist and why they don't name peoples' parents. It also is important to knowing the context of one's ancestry, and can be a clue to finding one's ancestors. Where was the nearest very extreme church or what was the most extreme church around - my ancestors were fairly predictably at THAT one! I am tracing a family history of manic depression that as manic depression often does branches out many ways in my lines, and nearly all people who were my ancestors were very prone to joining movements of this nature - nearly any sect that was more intense and evangelical than the Reformed and the Presbyterians, and in the case of my father's people, even the Puritans. (There were of course exceptions - my Rice, Willard and DAvis ancestors, who prospered and led communities when manic and migrated every time they got into a depressed phase, were simply sales geniuses addicted to land speculation, who though consistently religiously correct sometimes got executed as witches for land speculation and psychotic episodes, and one of my Deharts, whose mother is thought to most likely have come from an Oley New Born family, kind of cyclically went to Philadelphia, opened up a big weaving shop, and lived in the two (yup, two) mansions he bought across the street from the mayor's residence, got ruined, and crawled home.) My seeming Ritter, Schneider and Keim connections turn out to all have been Moravian! None of them were ORIGINALLY Moravian - though some had been Mennonite. Someone recently posted to one of these lists that the Moravians were Oley's version of the Great Awakening! You know, like Rev. Jonathan Edwards, who incidentally is also my ancestor - Tuttle line. Some of my people in Chester County (other children of the inlaws) became Welsh Baptists because the Dehavens were originally Anabaptist, got themselves chased around Europe in circles and burned at the stake everytime they stopped to catch their breaths, and never changed their temperament; and because the descendants of Jesse Dehaven have always been the most seriously manic depressive temperament with consistent mental health problems of the Dehavens, and the Presbyterians and Reformed weren't intensely enough Calvinistic and Evangelical for them. Now that I know where the Welsh Baptists were, it sounds possible that my Burkhart and Wagner ancestors may have been drawn to Cumru like the place had a magnet. A-a-a-rgh! Yours, Dora Smith __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com/