In the Year 1762 … a daughter was born into this world

Anno 1762 ten 12 Augusty is Mir ein docter auf Disse Welt gegoren ihr Nahme is Eva Marakreta ihr Taug Zeigen wahren Gorg Keller und seine Frau Barabara. [German]

In the year 1762 on the 12^th of August to me a daughter was born into this world. Her name is Eva Margaretha. Her baptismal sponsors were George Keller and his wife Barbara. [English Translation]

The image above is an excerpt from the ‘Baptismal Record of the Children of Johann Frederich Hengerer/Hanger of Augusta County, Virginia’.

Eva Margaretha Hanger was the daughter of German immigrant Frederick Hanger and my 4^th Great Grandmother. Frederick arrived with his parents when he was 14 years old in 1740. The family lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and then spent some time in Greenbrier and Frederick Counties in Virginia.  Before settling in Augusta County, Frederick resided in Shenandoah County.

I’m very lucky that the late Peggy S. Joyner compiled and published “Frederich & Peter Hanger of Virginia, 1740 Immigrants, Some Ancestors & Descendants” in March 1977 with a revised edition October 1986. I purchased a copy of her booklet and my introduction to the family began. While Peggy was a Frederick Hanger descendant, she was also a certified genealogist. Her research and documentation is topnotch.

Peggy found references to Frederick Hanger’s Bible but couldn’t locate it. Forty years later Peggy had in her hands a page of births that had been inserted in Frederick’s bible. She and the Bible owner arranged to have the original page deposited in the Special Collections at the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.

That’s how I came to know about my Hanger family.

Family historians believe Frederick married Eva Margreta Mayer in 1767. My Great Grandmother Eva Margaretha Hanger was born August 12, 1762—too early to be Eva Margreta Mayer’s child. Eva’s mother must have been Frederick Hanger’s former wife.

4^th Great Grandmother Eve would become the wife of Daniel Joseph and the mother of four children—Eve born in 1785, John in 1787, Margaret born about 1796 and Daniel in 1797.

After Daniel died she married Warner Peters in Rockingham County, Virginia Jan. 5, 1799.