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http://www.bellingertown.com/roots/rrbn01.htm#92
Was a burger and a einwohner of Steinau on the Strassen in 1664.
info from "The Palatine Families of New York"by Mr. Hank Jones, p.o.box 8341,
Universal City, Ca 91608
Hans Bellinger (1615-1678) was a "burger und einwohner" of Steinau an der Strassen who married Anna (b. about 1622; d. 3 July 1698). 5 known children
From http://www.szt-genealogy.org/Bellinger.htm:
Bellinger - SZT Connections
By Raymond Kuehne
The SZT web site focuses on the ancestors and descendants of the Snell and Timmerman families that came from the Palatine region of Germany to the Mohawk Valley. However, the database has over 300 persons with the Bellinger surname, indicating frequent intermarriages between these families. Because of these extensive family ties, and because my wife is a descendant of more than one Bellinger, I have tried to sort out the confusing and contradictory information about this family. This article will review two major sources of data about the Bellinger family, with emphasis on the time before and just after their arrival in New York.
I do not claim infallibility. Please send me comments, criticism, and differences of opinion. However, I hope that any discussion resulting from this article will be conducted on the basis of data, as opposed to tradition. If someone has data that supports a different conclusion, or that supports my analysis, I hope you will share it with me.
The Bellinger lineage as it currently exists within the SZT file has some serious limitations. On the one hand, we now have very good information about this family in their Palatine homeland. However, the ancestral lineage of most of the Bellingers in our file does not extend back to the Palatine immigrants. In part, this gap results from the fact that our database was not intended to provide a comprehensive Bellinger pedigree. But a larger problem is the paucity of sources for the years immediately following their arrival in New York. Thus, while we have good reason to believe that all of the 18th century Bellingers in the Mohawk valley were related, and were the direct descendants of the Bellingers found in the Palatine area, it has been difficult to assign many of the New York Bellingers to specific families. Fortunately, the latest data from Germany has made this task somewhat easier.
I will begin with information from two researchers:
(1) Lyle Frederick Bellinger, researched the Bellingers in the Mohawk Valley and wrote articles for the St. Johnsville Enterprise and News in 1941-42. His work was posthumously compiled and published in 1976 as the Genealogy of the Mohawk Valley Bellingers and Allied Families, by the Herkimer County Historical Society.
(2) The research of Henry Z. Jones, Jr., and his German assistants resulted in the two volume work, "The Palatine Families of New York, 1710" (published privately in 1985). It is the definitive source for German church and civil records concerning Palatines who went to New York. Jones was aware of Bellinger’s earlier work and said the German research reveals some errors in LFB’s family allignment. However, Jones did not try to explicitly point out those errors, leaving it to his readers to come to their own conclusions.
I will begin with Lyle F. Bellinger’s family structure and then compare it with Jones’ findings.
The Bellingers, per Lyle F. Bellinger
Since the German records had not yet been found when LFB was doing his research, his book begins with the earliest known Bellingers in New York. He made extensive use of all available information, including embarkation and subsistence lists, the Simmendinger Census in New York (about 1716), deeds, wills, etc. But he had to make many assumptions in the absence of church records for the earliest years. He also made a case against a previous tradition (common in many family histories) that began with the phrase "three or four brothers came to this country." While brothers often did emigrate together, LFB showed that the supposed Bellinger "brothers" also had an immigrant father. (He cited a New York payroll receipt for carpenter work, signed by Frederick Bellinger "for himself and for his father Johannes") Based on this and other information, he came to the conclusion that Frederick’s father, Johannes Bellinger, was the "ancestor of all of the Bellinger names in the valley." That conclusion, however, was not totally correct.
These are the children of Johannes1 and Anna Margaretha Bellinger, as arranged by LFB:
Frederick2, born about 1680. 5 children.
Marcus2, born about 1682. 9 children.
Elisabeth2, born about 1684. (No further information)
Nicolas2, born about 1685. (No further information)
Maria Barbara2, born 1686 and died August 1753, age 67. 8 children.
Henry2, born about 1688. 3 or more children.
Philip2, born about 1695. 9 or more children.
Adam2, born about 1698. 11 or more children.
The Bellingers in Germany, per Henry Z. Jones, Jr.
Jones was able to locate older records of the Bellingers in the Hessen area of Germany, a few miles east of Frankfurt. He showed that the four Bellinger families documented in the Hunter Subsistence Lists in New York between 1710-13 were related but not in the way assumed by LFB and other earlier researchers.
The earliest Bellinger found by Jones was Hans, who was described in a 1664 Rodenbach marriage record of his son, as being a resident of Steinau an der Strasse. (Steinau is located on the Kinzig River, about 40 km northeast of Rodenbach. Nearby are Langenselbold and Hüttengesäss, other towns associated with the Bellinger family.) Hans probably died between 1664 and 1679.
According to the German records, Hans1 and his wife Anna had the following known descendants:
+Dieterich2, born about 1644. Married Barbara Geysen, 1664. Both died in Germany.
Anna Maria2, born about 1648.
Margreth2, born about 1649
Johannes2, born about 1651. Married Elisabeth Seelig in 1679.
+Nicholaus2, born about 1660. Married Anna Kuhn in 1685. Immigrant. (Hunter #36)
Dieterich2 had these known descendants:
Johannes3, bpt. 1664. Married Anna Margretha Kuhn in 1690. Immigrant. (Hunter #37)
Johann Friederich4, bpt. 1691. Immigrant.
Philipp4, bpt. 1694.
Johann Peter4, bpt. 1697. Immigrant.
Johann Adam4, bpt. 1699. Immigrant.
Johann Wilhelm3, bpt. 1666.
Elisabetha3, bpt. 1667.
Johann Theobald3, bpt. 1670.
Anna Margaretha3, bpt. and died 1680.
Friederich3, married Elisabetha 1695.
Nicholaus2 had these known children:
Marcus3, born before 1685. Immigrant. (Hunter #38)
Henrich3, (twin) bpt. 1687. Immigrant. (Hunter #39)
Anna Barbara3, (twin) bpt. 1687, died 1691.
Johannes3, bpt. 1688.
Dieterich3, (twin) bpt. 1694.
Barbara Elisabetha3, (twin) bpt. 1694
Margaretha Elisabetha, bpt. 1698.
Please note Johann Adam4 (Johannes3, Dieterich2, Hans1). I believe that he is an important link between the Hank Jones and the Lyle Bellinger data. I show him as # 7006 in the web site’s SZT database, and will return to him later in this article.
Reconciliation of Jones and Bellinger Data
Now let us attempt a reconciliation of the above data. I am assuming that Hank Jones’ Johannes3 is the same person as LFB’s Johannes1, in part because some of the sons of Johannes3 match the sons of Johannes1. But LFB’s other assumptions do not hold up against the German church records. Some of the Bellingers that LFB shows as children of Johannes, actually are Johannes’ uncle and cousins, as shown by the following side-by-side comparison of male Bellingers. I have changed the order of LFB’s list of children in order to better compare them with Jones’ data from the German records.
Hank Jones Lyle Bellinger
Dieterich2 abt 1644 Died in Germany
Johannes3 1664 Johannes1 abt 1660
Johann Friedrich4 1691 (Frederick) abt 1680 A possible match
Phillip4 1694 Philip abt 1695 A good match
Johann Peter4 1697
Johann Adam4 1699 Adam abt 1698 A good match
Friederich3 abt 1675 (Frederick) abt 1680 Another possible match?
Nicholaus2 abt 1660 Nicolas abt 1685 Bad guess of age by LFB
Marcus3 bef 1685 Marcus abt 1682 A match but wrong family
Henrich3 1687 Henry 1688 A match but wrong family
In the above comparison, I listed LFB's Frederick twice because he could be either the son of Jones' Johannes, born 1691 or the younger brother of Johannes, born about 1675. However, by calling Johann Friederich an immigrant, Jones implies that he is the proper match to the New York Frederick. I, therefore, asked Hank Jones about this match, and received the following answer in August, 2000: "Those missing churchbooks of Rev. Johann Friederich Hager would have answered so many questions about the family. I don't believe, however, that Friederich Bellinger, brother of the emigrant Johannes Bellinger, ever emigrated. We have no documentation for this at all. Thus, all of the earliest references to Friederich are to Johann Friederich born in 1691, son of Johannes." While Jones urges caution in the absence of documentation, I have followed his thinking in arranging these early Bellingers in the SZT database. In attempting to identify and place Nicholaus, the strongest evidence is that Jones found only one Nicholaus Bellinger in the German records, and he was clearly the uncle, not the son of Johannes the immigrant. In addition, LFB’s own evidence actually is a better support for Jones’ placement than for his own conclusion. LFB states that the family of Nicholaus consisted of six or four adults, depending on the date of the various lists in the 1710-11 period. While a family of that size might be possible if Nicholaus were born about 1685, it would better match the family of an older man, namely one born about 1660, as Jones has estimated. In addition, LFB shows that in the Simmendinger Census (about 1716) in New Annesberg, a Nicalus Bellinger is in the same suburb with Marx and Heinrich Bellinger, and that Nicholas disappears thereafter. Again, this would match an older Nicholaus who was living in close proximity to his known sons, Marcus and Heinrich.
Earlier, I had emphasized the importance of Johann Adam4 (Johannes3, Dieterich2, Hans1). The oldest Bellinger in any of the SZT books is found in David K. Martin’s 18th Century Snell Family. On page 34, Martin states that #12 George Snell married Anna Eva Bellinger, daughter of Adam and Anna Appolonia Bellinger. This is the same Adam Bellinger whose entire family is described on page 10 of the LFB book, and who is listed as a son of Johannes Bellinger, the immigrant.
The only possible match for LFB’s Adam Bellinger is Jones’ Johann Adam4. (The common naming pattern in those days was to place the father’s name in front of the child’s first given name, ie., he would be called Adam, son of Johann.) And LFB’s estimated birth date of about 1698 also matches Johann Adam’s actual baptism date of December 15, 1699. By linking Martin’s Adam Bellinger and LFB’s Adam Bellinger to Jones’ Johann Adam Bellinger, we now are able to add all of the German Bellingers to their correct position in the SZT database. Adam is SZT # 7006.
Of course, there is still the challenge of creating appropriate links between these Palatine Bellinger immigrants and the other 300 plus Bellinger names in the SZT file. However, that task should be made easier by using Lyle F. Bellinger’s book. Extracting portions of that book to establish those links remains a useful future task for a Bellinger-Snell or Bellinger-Timmerman descendant.
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