The Shanks, Wengers, and Drivers, among others.

For Renate, once more we go leapfrogging through the family tree...

Here is our great-grandmother once again, Emma Anne Shank Fenton (1883-1967.) She was born in Missouri, one of the ten children of Lewis Henry Shank (1849-1932) and Mary Elizabeth Wenger Shank (1850-1894.)

Emma is an ancestor I want to learn more about. I've told the story of how she crossed the frozen Bighorn River with an injured child. I believe she was a quiet but tough woman. She must have had a difficult childhood--her mother was ill with tuberculosis, or consumption as they called it back then, and she passed away when Emma was just ten years old. Fortunately, Emma had a pile of older brothers and sisters, and I hope they took good care of her and her younger siblings.

Here are the Shanks, around 1890. Emma is the beautiful child right in the middle--I have always been struck by the delicacy of her face. From left to right we have Josephus, Mollie, Charles, Lewis, Sarah, Emma, Mary, Fannie, and John. Oldest son Jacob is not pictured (he had passed away in early 1890), and there was another son, Benjamin who died in 1888 as an infant. One more child, Florida Rose, was yet to be born.

As you might guess from the name Florida Rose, this last Shank child was born in Florida in 1892, where the family had moved in hopes of helping mother Mary's health. Emma told her kids about playing with baby alligators in the river, probably the Peace River in DeSoto County.

Unfortunately, the move to Florida did not help Mary Shank's health, and she passed away in 1894, when Florida Rose was not quite two. Emma spent the rest of her childhood and young adulthood in Missouri, helping to care for her three younger siblings and also her uncle Abraham Wenger's children, after their mother passed away.

Here is a closer shot of Mary Wenger Shank. I would very much like to get down to Florida and visit her grave.

Here is Lewis Henry Shank from the same picture.

And here is Emma as a young woman, on the right, with two of her sisters. I'm sure I've been told which sisters they are, but it is escaping me at the moment.

This is Lewis Henry Shank in his old age. I believe he re-married later in life, and then lived with his daughter Mollie and her husband Daniel Kauffman in Scottsdale, PA, until his death in 1932.

Emma Shank and her family were Mennonite through and through, going back many generations. Emma's brother John was a Mennonite minister and her brothers Joe and Charles were Mennonite missionaries who served in South America and India respectively.

Emma's parents were both born in Rockingham County, VA, a Mennonite enclave to this very day. Lewis Henry Shank was the son of Jacob Shank (1819-1892) and Mary Driver Shank (1824-1878.) The Shanks were either German or Swiss Mennonites, and came to America before the 1750s, and the Drivers (originally Treiber) were from Hesse-Darmstadt in Germany. (I am not sure if they were originally a Mennonite family or if that came later.) The first Driver/Treiber, Ludwig/Lewis (1730-1772), emigrated to America in 1749 on the ship Fane, settling in Pennsylvania, and his son Lewis Driver (1760-1835) (Mary Driver Shank's father) then moved to Virginia.

Jacob Shank's parents were Henry Shank, son of Bishop Henry Shank, the first Mennonite bishop in Virginia (1787-1839) and Elizabeth Heatwole Shank (1792-1836.) The Heatwole name was originally Hutwohl.

Back we go to Great-Grandma Emma! Her mother, Mary Wenger Shank, was the daughter of Abraham Wenger (1825-1870) and  Sarah Geil Wenger (1823-1892). The Wengers were originally Swiss Mennonites; the first Wenger in America was Christian Wenger (1698-1772), who emigrated in 1727 on the ship Molly with his wife Eve Grabiel/Graybill Wenger (1705-1790.) The Wenger family came from the Palatinate region of Germany, where they had moved a few generations before because of religious persecution in Switzerland. And like many Mennonite families, they settled in Pennsylvania, and then trickled down to Virginia a few decades later. Christian and Eve's descendants put up a stone in their honor--here it is, in the Groffdale Mennonite Church cemetery in Lancaster County, PA.

Abraham Wenger's father was Joseph Wenger (1794-1865), who was an indirect casualty of the Civil War. Joseph had been ill with a fever in the fall of 1864, and when Union soldiers coming through the Shenandoah Valley burned his barn along the way, he rushed out to help keep the fire from spreading to the house. It was too much for him, and he became ill again and died in early 1865.  

Abraham Wenger's mother was Barbara Beery Wenger (1795-1871.) The Beerys were another Swiss Mennonite family whose founder, Abraham Beery (1718-1799), emigrated in 1736. 

Here's a picture of Joseph and Barbara Beery Wenger's house in Rockingham County, VA.

Leapfrogging one more time, we go back to Great-Grandma Emma and move to her mother Mary, and then to Mary's mother Sarah Geil Wenger, wife of Abraham. Sarah's father was John Geil (1799-1889), who was a minister for 50 years and a bishop for 30 years. His family, the Geils, were German Mennonites. Sarah's mother's family were the Drivers, and here lies another small wrinkle in our family tree.

Sarah's mother was Mary Driver Geil (1804-1851) and she was the daughter of Lewis Driver (1760-1835). We are descended from Lewis Driver's son Daniel through our great-great-grandfather Lewis Henry Shank, and from Lewis Driver's daughter Mary through our great-great-grandmother Mary Wenger Shank. In other words, Lewis Driver is our fifth-great-grandfather twice over. In honor of that, let's look at his tombstone.

This is in a tiny cemetery called the Driver-Rife cemetery in very rural Rockingham County, VA. My dad and I were both down there several years ago and took a long and winding drive out into the country to find it. We drove up a dirt road, went too far and had to make an umpteen-point turn, pulled up in front of a house, and after asking the very nice man who lived there where in the world the cemetery was, we walked through his stubbly side yard and came upon it. Here are buried Lewis Driver and his wife Barbara Burkhart Driver (1765-1836), their son Daniel Driver, their daughter Mary Driver Geil and her husband John Geil, as well as some Reiff/Rife ancestors, from whom I am descended on my mom's side of the family. Dad's ancestors and Mom's ancestors, both in the same miniscule graveyard--that's the Mennonite way!

It is an absolutely beautiful place to be buried, on top of a gentle hill, looking out over other gentle hills, shaded by trees, almost silent. I'll always remember it.