Monday, November 20, 2017

Potterf, Batdorf



https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93217452/James-Knox-Potterf


I'm a Potter, too.
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or a Batdorf


Johannes Jacob Peter Batdorf was born ca. 1671 in Darmstadt, in the current state of Hessen, Germany, and died in London, England in 1709.

He married Anna Maria Catharina Anspach. After his death, she married Johannes Zellar in 1712 in New York. She died in 1747/8 at Millbach, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. She was buried in the old Rieth's Church cemetery next to her second husband.

Johannes and Anna lived for several years in Palatine, Germany, where their five children were born.
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ohannes Batdorf, was a professor, like his father, and in 1647, was listed as "expounding the religious controversies, and was teaching others the methods of expounding the Gospel Gottesgel Aineheit."

In 1654, he was listed as a professor of the Old Testament.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33588329/Johannes-Batdorf

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"Johannes Batdorf was born in Westphalia, Germany, in 1564.

He attended Gymnasium (a classical high school where Latin was stressed) at Hamm and Dortmund. After his father's death around 1584, he studied at Marburg, and later at Herborn, where he received a good foundation in the languages and soon excelled his teachers."

In 1588, he finally settled in Basel, Switzerland, where he spent the remainder of his life studying and teaching.

In 1614, he was listed as Professor Johannes Batdorf, a teacher of the Hebrew language.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33588283/Johannes-Jacob-Batdorf
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Johannes Jacob Batdorf is believed to have been born ca. 1554 and died ca. 1584. He was a minister in Westphalia, Germany in 1564.
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"The history of Clothilde Zeller, born in De Reni of a cadet branch of the Valois family, a subject of France, but through the persuasion of the Governor Keith and the astute Secretary Logan of Philadelphia a citizen of Pennsylvania in pioneer days, is a typical one of a European immigrant to these shores.

Born during the liberalism of the Edict of Nantes when it was the fashion for ladies of high rank to be educated, Margaret de Valois, Countess d'Augergne, in her chatelaineship at LeMont Dore left a reputation for letters, while the Countess Clothilde de Valois de Reni, her many-times-removed cousin, fell in love with a scholar. In her teens, she married Jacques de Sellaire, or, if one knew as the family across the border, Von Zeller of Castle Zellerstein, Zurich, and fled from France with him and their children after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to Holland.

Shortly after their son's marriage in Holland the Zeller's journeyed to England and the Lady Clothilde, as she was recorded there, place herself, her children, and husband under the protection of Queen Anne, who made them welcome not only in England but, should they choose, in her colonies across the sea. With many of their race and a considerable number of their own class and position, they gladly accepted the chance to begin again in a new world. Clothilde at this time was the sole head of her family, her husband having died, either in London or before their ship arrived at New York in June 1710.

These French immigrants, together with many of the Palatinate Germans who were coming to the Americas for the same reason - freedom to worship God according to their own conscience, had a bitter experience of scant welcome and indifferent choice of lands along the Hudson River. The Zeller's and the French group - which had placed themselves with the Lady Clothilde for protection and advice found even their second venture father north, in the Dutch-English province at Schoharie, little to their comfort though they named their settlement L'Esperance! It was at this juncture that Governor Keith of Pennsylvania paid them a visit and, impressed with their character and worth, invited them over to Pennsylvania by a well known and already much used route down the Susquehanna River. Being French and already twice warned, the Lady Clothilde was wary of promises. So Jean Henri, her eldest son, with an Indian guide was sent ahead to prospect. Perhaps it was she who stipulated rich lands as well as clear titles, or perhaps Jean Henri, now in his thirties, was already aware of the soil from a farmer's standpoint. At all events he journeyed down the Susquehanna below where the great river branches at what is now Sunbury, paddled up a creek of some dimensions still known as the Swatara, and so across what is now the Lebanon Valley to a fertile region watered by the Tulpehocken, in which black walnut trees of great age and fine verdure flourished. In the country of Jean Henri Zeller's mother's people, the French tradition was that black walnuts meant fertility and a deep soil. So armed with this assuring promise, young Zeller journeyed by foot and canoe back to the Schoharie in northern New York and made his report to his mother and her party.

They accepted the good sign at once. Rafts were built, provisions were packed, utensils, canoes and baggage were assembled and the contingent set forth, arriving at the Mill creek region not far from the present Newmanstown and the larger settlement of Womelsdorf in 1723.

Here the Zellers built a fort to protect themselves and their neighbors and procured deeds for land from three Penns - John, Thomas and Richard. Somewhat later they helped to start the first church of that vicinity. Under pressure of Indian raids, in 1745 they rebuilt their log fort with stone outside and plaster over wattles inside, placing over the door the carved emblem of their faith and the family crest as knights of the Holy Roman Empire. About this time the Zeller name was Germanized - Heinrich Zeller - for the America all about them was German in speech and behavior.

Clothilde de Valois, who saw all this and much else come to pass, lived to be past eighty and to remain a personage long remembered in her family, a tradition of dignity, of authority, land of exalted if shadowy backgrounds, remaining extant generation after generation."

SOURCE: a chapter in the book entitled Notable Women of Pennsylvania, edited by Gertrude Biddle and Sarah Lowrie (Philadelphia, 1942)


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