The Rorabaugh family line has been traced
by many researchers and published by at least two
authors. The most exhaustive of these is by Lewis Bunker
Rohrbach in his Volume III, The Rohrbach Genealogy, 1982
Edition. The purpose of this document is to set forth
notes which I took from Mr. Rohrbach's writings in order
to trace the lineage from our earliest known family
member down to my own generation. Much of what follows
can then be considered a condensation of Mr. Rohrbach's
writings...much of it in his own words. I have used my
own words when necessary to fill in the storyline. These
are the generations discussed in this article:
According to Lewis Bunker Rohrbach, the earliest member
of our branch of the Rohrbach family for whom records
have been found thus far is:
CLAUS ROHRBACH.
Claus was born about 1565 in the vicinity of Frankfurt am
Main, Germany. He died in 1617 in the village of Seckbach
and was buried Oct. 2, 1617 in the village of Bergen,
Germany..both villages slightly northeast of Frankfurt am
Main. Claus Rohrbach had at least five children by his
first wife, Gertraud, maiden name unknown, whom he
married at some date prior to 1600.
JOHANN ROHRBACH, Claus Rohrbach's third son, was born about 1610
in or near Frankfurt am Main. He was only seven years old
when his father died in 1617, and was only 14 years old
when his step-father, Johann Conrad Plaum, died in Bergen
in 1624. At that time in Europe occupations were neither
lightly nor easily acquired, and we can presume that
Johann was a baker because his step-father had been one.
The record of Johann Rohrbach's death in Bergen in 1690
calls him both baker and "Gastgeber" ie.
innkeeper. He spent all his life in Bergen, living
through the pestilence which swept Bergen in 1612 and
through the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Only one child
given below has been found for him and even this one
child must have been a great surprise to the parents, as
the mother, Catharina, was then roughly 43 years old.
Johann's first wife was Maria Runen whom he married in
May 16 1635. Maria was buried Feb. 12, 1647. After
Maria's death, Johann married June 15, 1647 in Bergen to Catharina, maiden name unknown. This child of Johann and
Catharina Rohrbach,
JOHANN REINHARD
ROHRBACH, was baptized Oct. 8, 1648 in Bergen, Germany.
Johann Reinhard spent his entire life in the village of
Bergen as did his father before him. Evidently he served
as a baptism sponsor in the Reformed Church at the
unusually young age of 9. Also, he was a minor court
official as the record of his death on Jan. 4, 1716
indicates. Johann Reinhard married Magdalena Fischer,
Feb. 12, 1667. This couple had five children, the first
two being twin boys:
JOHANN HEINRICH
ROHRBACH and Johann Conrad Rohrbach, baptized Nov. 3,
1668 in Bergen, Germany. Johann Heinrich was confirmed at
the age of 14. On Nov. 26, 1691 he married Margaretha
Elisabetha Wentzel. The couple bore six children.
JOHANN REINHART
ROHRBACH, born March 17, 1699 was the 3rd child of Johann
Heinrich and Margaretha Elisabetha Rohrbach. Baptized
Mar. 23, 1699, the child's grandfather Johann Reinhard
Rohrbach was godfather.
John
Reinhart Rohrbach, the immigrant ancestor of most of the
Rohrbach's (of various spellings) of West Virginia and
ancestor of many of those in the western United States,
was on of the oldest Rohrbach immigrants to America. He
was fifty years old at the time of his immigration from
Germany in 1749, had been married twice, and had fathered
several children by his first wife.
John Reinhart
was born in the village of Bergen, in the Hesse Hanan
area of southern Germany. His great, great grandfather,
Claus, had moved to Bergen in about 1614, perhaps from
the nearby Frankfurt am Main where a prominent Rohrbach
family had settled in the fourteenth century. Yet, at the
time of his marriage in Bergen to Anna Margaretha Koch,
June 10, 1727, Johann Reinhart moved to his wife's home
village of Hochstadt. The Koch family had been living in
Hochstadt for several generations at least.
Early in
the spring of 1749, soon after he turned age 50, and only
slightly more than a year after his remarriage, Johann
Reinhart decided to immigrate to America. Certainly
economic considerations were among his most important
considerations. He died late in 1765 in Cumru Township,
Berks County, PA, just south of the town of Reading, PA.
JOHN RORABAUGH was
born in July 1740 in the village of Hochstadt, Germany.
He was baptized, Johann Conrad Rohrbach, in the Reformed
Church in Hochstadt on July 31, 1740. He was a mere boy
of 9 when he immigrated with his father and step-mother
to America and thus he did not sign the Oath of
Abjuration in 1749 was required of all males aged 16 and
upwards. Even though John Rorabaugh's full name appears
to have been Johann Conrad Rohrbach, all American records
yet found for him consistently call him John Rorabaugh or
some spelling variant of that.
John Rorabaugh
married about 1760 either in Berks county, PA or in the
part of Augusta Co., W. Va. which is now Hardy Co., W.
Va. to Barbara Rueger. She was born about 1740 in
Tulpehocken Twp, Berks Co., PA (at the time Philadelphia
Co., PA) and died after February 14, 1795 on the same
farm with her husband, where she is said to be buried
beside him. Barbara Rueger was the daughter of Antoni
Rueger and his wife Catharina (Schoch) Rueger, who had
immigrated from Switzerland in 1737. John Rorabaugh died
Oct. 30, 1821 on his farm along the South Fork of the
South Branch of the Potamac River in what is now Hardy
Co., West Virginia.
We know with
very comfortable certainty that John Rorabaugh is
identical with the Johann Conrad Rohrbach baptized in
1740 in Hochstadt, Germany from family tradition, from
the mass of circumstantial evidence, and perhaps most
importantly from the name John Rorabaugh chose for his
first son: Anthony Reinhart Rorabaugh, thus names for
both of his grandfathers: his mother's father, Antoni
Rueger from Switzerland, and his father's father Johann
Reinhart Rohrbach from Germany.
It is not known
exactly when John Rorabaugh married Barbara Rueger, nor
whether the marriage took place in Berks County, PA or in
Virginia. While most of the Rueger family had left Berks
County during the 1740's, Barbara Rueger's aunt had
stayed behind. The aunt was born in Switzerland and came
to America with the family in 1737 and settled with them
in Tulpehocken. She was then a girl of 18, and fairly
soon she married Frederich Gerhardt in Berks County, and
the couple stayed in Berks County when the rest of the
Ruegers moved to Virginia. Quite possibly Barbara Rueger,
born about 1740 in Tulpehocken, who would have been less
than eight years old when the family moved to Virginia,
remained behind in Berks County as well. Certainly this
would account for John Rorabaugh meeting and marrying her
in about 1760, and it also would explain why, by 1761,
John Rorabaugh had moved from his father's farm in Berks
County to settle in the South Branch Valley in what was
then Augusta County, Virginia, close by his new bride's
family.
On May 29,
1761 John Rorabaugh bought 400 acres of land by the South
Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River in Augusta
Co., VA. It was here that John spent the remaining sixty
years of his life, living through the last of the Indian
Wars, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812.
Lewis Bunker
Rohrbach lists quite a number of isolated events in the
life of John Rorabaugh in his genealogy; but, for this
summary I will mention only the following:
By 1782, after the
Revolutionary War, the many state and county legislatures
had turned to settling accounts of all types. Thus it
was, that in a bound manuscript volume for Hampshire
County, page 4, we find:
"At a Court
held and continued for Hampshire county 15th May, 1782,
the County proceeded to receive and certify public Claims
for impressments etc. agreeable to a late Act of
Assembly, as follows, vis:
John Rorebaugh
pasturage and corn for the Militia marching to Carolina L
O: 10: 6."
This
reimbursement for supplies provided by John Rorabaugh to
the Militia during the Revolution forms the basis for
membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution
and other such organizations by his numerous descendants.
John Rorabaugh made
his will on August 12, 1818. He was then 78 years old and
had raised a family of nine children, three sons and six
daughters, on what was then still a fairly dangerous
frontier. He had participated in two great migrations,
first from the settled and perhaps staid village of
Hochstadt near Frankfurt am Main, Germany to the raw
settlements of Berks County, Pennsylvania, and then as a
young man migrating south on to what was then very much
the frontier area of Virginia. John's farm still exists,
owned today by a direct descendant William Hayes Judy,
Jr., but the original log cabin and sprint house are now
gone. Their site, just north of Rohrbaugh Run, is still
visible.
Thus, John
Rorabaugh's life came to an end, having lived through 81
years of the most exciting times in America's history.
His descendants have spread all across America's 50
states and into many foreign countries, continuing the
wanderlust so common to Americans.
JOHN RORABAUGH, JR., born August 1, 1768, was raised there on the
Rorabaugh homestead in the South Branch Valley of the
Potomac River, Hardy County, near the present town of
Peru, W. Virginia. Little is known about his young life,
but he seemed to have moved from Hardy County in about
1796, probably at about the time of his marriage. Land
records suggest that he moved westward and initially
settled in Randolph County.
At that time the
Virginia government granted 400 acres of land to anyone
who would go up over the mountains to unsettled land and
build a cabin there and raise a crop of grain, no matter
how small. In addition a preemption right to one thousand
more acres adjoining the 400 acres existed and could be
secured by a warrant from the land office. Census records
for this area of Virginia over the next 40 years
indicated that John moved into Lewis county and then back
to Randolph County where he died in June or July, 1842.
Of John
Rorabaugh, Jr.'s children, up to as many as 12 children
living at home at one time, only three sons are
known...John, Nathan, and Anthony.
NATHAN RORABAUGH
was born June 30, 1811 in Randolph County, W. Virginia.
After his marriage in 1834 to Margaret Mitchell, he
farmed in that part of Randolph County which in 1843
became part of the newly formed Barbour County.
Scan of photo courtesy of Larry Hartsog, Coulterville,
California (another Rorabaugh descendant).
In 1857, the
family joined America's great move westward. Initially
they settled in Garden Plain, Whiteside Co., Illinois,
where they remained until 1860, then moving that year to
Union Twp, Scotland Co., Missouri where they spent the
remainder of their lives.
Nathan's
descendants spell the name Rorabaugh, Rorabough, & Rorabaw. The second son, John Mitchell, born March 16,
1837 in Randolph County was found in the 1885 census in
Appanoose Co, Iowa as John M. Rorabaw and some sources
say he is buried under that spelling.
JOHN MITCHELL
RORABAW was newly married
to Mary Ellen Clark, and she not yet 15, when the move
onward to Missouri from Garden Plains, Illinois took
place. After living in Missouri for twelve years, John
Mitchell and his family moved again, to Appanoose Co.,
Iowa. He is said to have made and sold a salve used for
rheumatism and similar aches and pains. John died Nov.
19, 1912, Diamond, Missouri, and was buried there.
Scan of drawing
courtesy of Larry Hartsog, Coulterville, California. The
man in the middle, applying the salve is thought to be
John Mitchell Rarabaw. The man seated is thought to be
his father, Nathan Rorabaugh.
John Rorabaw and Mary's oldest
daughter, Nancy Josephine, was born December 17, 1863,
Scotland Co, Missouri. Other children followed. The
youngest daughter of John and Mary Ellen, Eliza Jane, was
born in Appanoose Co, Iowa on Jan. 9, 1886. It appears
that John and Mary Ellen were divorced after this time.
Mary Ellen remarried a man by the name of John Hubbardt.
Mary Ellen and John Hubbardt moved
with most of the family members to Oklahoma Territory
where they homesteaded near Perry, Oklahoma sometime
between 1896 & 1898. Nancy Josephine had married
Henry Hamilton Carroll, September 13, 1888 in Scotland
Co., Missouri. Henry and Nancy, after having been married
about 8 years, and with four children, also came to
Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, two more daughters were born: Mary
Ellen and Lucinda Pearl. Then, after falling near the end
of her eighth pregnancy, Nancy's injury brought on an
untimely death.
Little is known of the details of
the time, but Henry was faced with the responsibility of
raising six children. However, in July of 1904, Henry,
now 36, married:
ELIZA JANE RORABAUGH. She was about twenty years old at the time and
a mere three years older than Henry's oldest son, Nate.
The baby of the family was Lucinda, about three years
old. It was about this time that Henry moved his family
to Indian Territory near Drumright and to the section of
land of which a portion remains today in family hands.
During the
years from 1905 to 1917, seven children were born to
Henry and Eliza Jane. Though most of the children were
born at Drumright, the fifth and sixth children were born
at Perry, Oklahoma. This indicates that Eliza possibly
spent the latter part of each of these pregnancies with
her mother, Mary Ellen, in Perry. Mary Ellen died on
October 23, 1916 at Perry and was buried in Fairview
Cemetery south of Perry.
Tragedy came again
to the Carroll household in December of 1920 when three
year old infant, "Little Rose", died of sudden
illness. Thirteen years later, 1933, twenty-five year
old, Alta Susan, succumbed to appendicitis. The remaining
children, however, were living at the time of Henry's
death at 84 years of age in 1953. Eliza Jane died at
Drumright, Oklahoma on May 3, 1966 and was buried beside
Henry and Nancy at Quay Cemetery, also known as Lawson
Cemetery near Yale, Oklahoma.
Obituary of Eliza Jane
Rorabaugh
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