V. Zin(c)k – Ring

We now take up the matter of the parents of Michael Zink. The Zink family histories state that Michael Zink was born in Salem, Washington County, Indiana, on December 24, 1816, and that he was brought to Hymera, Indiana, at the age of 9 years. These family histories state that Michael was the son of JACOB (JAMES?) ZINCK¹ and MARY {RING} ZINCK. Michael Zink seems to have been the member of the family who changed the usual spelling of its name from Zinck to Zink, but in the family histories, on the censuses, and in the information that has been contributed to the LDS the name is spelled both ways. Another common variant is Sink or Sinks, and individuals in this family are sometimes listed under these names.

Jacob Zinck is usually said to have been born in 1789, although as we shall learn there is reason to suspect that he could have been born a few years later. Virginia is usually given as his place of birth, and this seems probable. In 1789 his parents would not yet have moved from the Shenandoah Valley to Washington County, Virginia, where they resided through the 1790s. An 1812 tax list in Jefferson County, Kentucky, on which Jacob appears (as Jacob Zink, Jr.) seems to confirm that he had to have been born by 1792, but we do not know whether he was born as early as 1789.

According to family members, Jacob Zinck died in Hymera, Indiana. Two Zink family histories disagree on the date of his death, or perhaps are guilty of typographical errors: one history states that he died on either September 23 or 30, 1850, and the other says that the date was either September 3 or 30 of that year. Jacob's will, though, is dated September 12, 1851, and it was probated on November 3 of that year. The Sullivan County courthouse burned in February 1850, so there is no reason to suspect that its destruction played a role in the confusion over when Jacob Zinck died. Because we know that Jacob exchanged land with his son Michael on September 18, 1851, we can fix his actual date of death between September 18 and November 3 of 1851 – probably toward the end of this six-week period.² I do not know exactly where Jacob Zinck is buried, but the site is probably somewhere near Hymera, Indiana.³

Mary {Ring} Zinck was born in North Carolina on or about October 25, 1798, if her age at death as reportedly shown on her grave marker – 65 years, 9 months, and 9 days old – is accurate.⁴ Judging from the fact that she is referred to as "Polly" in deeds and in her husband's will, this may be what she was typically called. She died on August 3, 1864. We can suppose that she died and was buried in Greene County, Indiana, where she was probably living with her second husband, but we cannot be certain that this is so. Nor do we know for certain when and where Jacob and Mary were married, but since Michael (their oldest child) was born in December 1816 the marriage probably took place in 1815 or early 1816. Both the Zinck and the Ring families evidently were living in Indiana by then (in Harrison and Washington Counties), so the chances are high that Jacob and Mary were married in one of these two counties – probably in the latter, where both families lived as early as 1810.

It is possible that Jacob is found in Harrison County, Indiana, in 1809. Harrison County, then considerably larger than today's county with that name, was mostly unsettled land lying across the Ohio River from Louisville. In that year, a Jacob Zinck signed a petition to Congress asking that residents of Indiana Territory receive the vote.⁵ Even if Jacob had been born as early as 1789, he might not have qualified to sign this petition in 1809 because he was slightly under age then. If he was born in 1790 or after, it seems more likely that it was Jacob's father, also named Jacob, who signed this petition. There is no census in Indiana in 1810, unfortunately, so we cannot tell whether either Zink was still in Indiana Territory in that year – when, as we shall see later, the elder Jacob Zinck seems to be found on a census sheet in the Louisville area in Kentucky. Both Zincks are on the 1812 tax list in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The 1813 tax list there that includes Jacob Jr. but not his father does not clarify things much but may suggest that the older Jacob Zinck has gone elsewhere by then, and neither man is listed on any tax list in that Kentucky county afterwards.

We move ahead to 1820. That year's census for Indiana shows no Jacob Zinck (or Sink) in Sullivan County, Indiana, which is as it should be if the young Michael Zink was in fact brought to that county about 1825 as the Zink family histories say he was. Guided by these family histories we turn our attention to Washington County, Indiana, where the Zincks are said to have lived before they migrated to Sullivan County.⁶ The Washington County census for 1820 lists no one named Jacob Zinck, but it does show a Jacob Sink and what one index⁷ terms a Iacob Sink. (The actual census entry for the latter land reveals that "Jacob" was written in a flowing hand and the indexer misread it.) Each of these Sink males, who live somewhat apart in Washington County, is 26 to 45 years old. This would date the younger Jacob Zinck's birth before 1794.

Michael's father, the Jacob Zinck we are discussing here, could be from 28 to 31 years of age in 1820. The man identified as Jacob Sink has a male under 10 years old in his household; the one called Iacob has two males in this age column. On this basis either one could be the father of Michael Zink, who was 3 or 4 years old at the time of the 1820 census. Based on the ages of the females in the two households, though, Iacob Sink is apparently the older of the two men. From this evidence we might conclude that these men are father and son, except for the fact that at 26-45 years old Iacob does not seem to be old enough. (Young Jacob's father, Jacob, is in fact 64 years old in 1820.) This may be nothing more than an error in recording his actual age on the census, but there are other possible explanations.

Given the discrepancies in their ages, these two men could be altogether different ones from the ones we are seeking – or two unrelated men with the same name. That both Jacob Zincks are shown as engaged in agriculture (when the elder Jacob was a minister) does not settle the issue, for a minister at that time typically supported his family by farming or some other line of work. As we will see when we study the older Jacob Zinck, he moved around a great deal during his ministry and so might be enumerated in 1820 (if at all) not as a separate head of household but as part of the household of one of the several other Zinck males who have by that year moved to Indiana. For that matter, we cannot rule out the possibility that Michael's father is also living with a relative in Indiana in 1820.⁸ It could be, too, that one of these two Jacob Zincks is the man of that name who is shown patenting land in Edgar County, Illinois, on September 15, 1826.⁹ Perhaps the older Jacob Zinck is living in another state – Kentucky or Tennessee, where he had lived earlier, or even in the Louisiana Territory where he is said to have served as a missionary. If so, he was not enumerated on the census in any of those places in 1820.

Although this census evidence is somewhat inconclusive, there is one especially strong argument for thinking that the man listed as Jacob Sink in Washington County in 1820 is Michael's father: the census shows that Mary Ring's father, Michael Ring, lives very near to him, and deed information suggests that they were in fact neighbors in 1820. In my opinion, the man called Iacob Sink in the same age category is the one – relationship to the two Zinks we are studying unknown – who married two women in Washington County: Sally Seals in 1817 and Polly Miller in 1829, and who remained in this county in 1830 after we know the two Jacob Zinks we are studying had relocated to Sullivan County, Indiana. Thus it would appear that the elder Jacob Zink (the man born in 1756) was not enumerated at all in Indiana in 1820, probably because he (and presumably his family as well) lived elsewhere at that particular time.

Records in Washington County, Indiana, indicate that Jacob and Mary {Ring} Zink – referred to as Polly in the deeds – sold property there in February 1822 and again in November 1826, the latter perhaps in preparation for their imminent move west to Sullivan County. The Jacob Zink we are discussing here is probably not the Washington County man of that name who in 1825 served as the guardian of the children of Daniel Zink (this man's brother) and then in 1826 as the administrator of Daniel's estate for the following reason: although both Jacob Zinks descended from Gottlieb Zinck had brothers named Daniel, both of these Daniels were still alive in 1826. The best guess, therefore, is that the Jacob Zink who served as guardian and administrator in 1826 was the one identified as Iacob, who remained in Washington County, Indiana, into the 1830's.¹⁰

Later censuses for Jacob and Mary Zinck have their own complications. On the 1830 census, the only Jacob Zinck in Sullivan County, Indiana, is 30 to 40 years old, has a wife in the same age category, and has a son in the age column for 10 to 15 years old. This information is correct for Mary (32 years old in 1830) and Michael (who turned 14 years old that year).¹¹ We cannot be sure about its accuracy for Jacob himself: he might be 40 or 41 years old in 1830 if he was born in 1789, though he would definitely be in his thirties if born a year or so later than that. Jacob's precise age would seem to be the only point at issue in 1830, though, because land records indicate that he and his family were in Sullivan County by then: Jacob and Mary purchased 40 acres of public land there on October 31, 1832.¹² Moreover, Michael Ring lives near this Jacob Zinck in 1830, as he did ten years before.

In 1840, the census lists just one Jacob Zinck in Sullivan County. He is shown as 50 to 60 years of age, so we have a different complication than the one ten years earlier. Being born in 1789 would make Jacob 50 or 51 that year, but a birth year a bit later should mean that he would be listed in the category for 40 to 50 years old. Mary is said to be 40 to 50 years of age, and if she was born in 1798 she would be 42 years old in 1840. Jacob is described as engaged in agriculture. Either Jacob or Mary can read and write, we learn, and the odds are that it is Jacob who can do so. Michael Zink has left their household by now. Michael Ring is also living in Sullivan county in 1840, when he is correctly shown as 70 to 80 years of age, but that is the last census on which he appears and so he apparently died between that year and 1850.

The situation is further confused in 1850, with a twist. Because Jacob was not listed in the index for the 1850 Indiana census, at first I was unsuccessful in locating him in the township and county (Jackson Township of Sullivan County, Indiana) where he was supposed to be residing just before his death that year. (As we have seen, he actually died in 1851.) Reading through every single census entry for Sullivan County for 1850, though, did bring to my attention a Jackson Township couple misidentified in the census index as Jacob and Mary Zwick. A careful inspection of the actual handwriting on the census form reveals that the name of this couple was in fact Zinck; moreover, the handwriting of the surname is identical to that of the couple's son, Michael, who was recorded by the same census enumerator. So far so good.¹³

This Jacob Zinck in 1850 is described as being 55 years of age and born in Tennessee. Mary is shown as 48 years old, although the numerals recording her age have been written over; she too is described as having been born in Tennessee. This data would seem to be correct. But this Jacob and Mary have two teenaged children living at home, and their names, John and Jane, are identical to two of the six children of the Jacob and Mary Zinck whose eldest son was Michael Zink.¹⁴ Could there be another couple in Sullivan County with the same given names, living in the same township, and with children whose names match – all this in the only year in which we cannot find Jacob and Mary Zinck as we should, which is also the only year between 1820 and 1860 in which this "Zwick" couple appears on the census there? I doubt it. Despite the discrepancies, this couple must be the Zincks we are looking for in 1850.

Before we leave them, we should take note that Mary {Ring} Zinck remarried on April 6, 1858. On the 1860 census she is listed with her second husband, Samuel Simons, an impressively well-to-do farmer residing near Oak Station in Washington Township of Greene County, Indiana. Her age is shown as 61 years old, and her place of birth is described as North Carolina.¹⁵ This bit of information is actually a very important clue, for it helps us to pin down the particular Ring family to which Mary {Ring} Zinck belonged.¹⁶

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Mary and Jacob Zinck named their first son Michael when he was born in 1816. In accordance with the prevailing naming conventions of the time, their first boy would typically have been named after his maternal grandfather, so we are justified in hypothesizing that Mary's father bore the name Michael. Of all the Ring males listed in census indices for 1800 there is only one Michael Ring, who resides in Rowan County, North Carolina. He is 26 to 45 years of age (born between 1755 and 1774, therefore) and has three females under the age of 5 in his household. One of them is very probably Mary, who was just over a year old in 1800.

There is more evidence to support this hypothesis. Not only is Michael Ring listed on the 1820 and 1830 censuses quite close to Jacob and Mary in Washington County, Indiana, but Michael's ages in both years (45 years old or older in 1820 and 60 to 70 years old in 1830) are consistent with how old the Michael Ring we saw earlier in North Carolina would be in 1820 and 1830. To cap things off, Jacob Zinck's will mentions land "from" Michael Ring (possibly part of Mary's dowry). We are undoubtedly safe in thinking that MICHAEL RING was the father of Mary {Ring} Zinck.

Let us see if we can piece together enough information to follow Michael Ring's trail from North Carolina to Indiana and estimate when he arrived there. My hunch is that Michael Ring moved to Indiana at about the same time as the Zink family went there. This argues for his being in Washington County, Indiana, for at least a few years prior to 1815 – the year Jacob and Mary probably were married, and an old history of that county says that both families arrived in Washington County in 1810. Can we be more specific?

One Ring researcher states that about 1809 Michael Ring and his father moved from North Carolina to Grayson County, Virginia, which is just north of the North Carolina border. In fact, records in Grayson County show that Martin and Michael had arrived there at least as early as March 1802, when Michael purchased 100 acres on the west fork of Turkey Creek. His father, Martin, purchased 100 acres on the north side of Elk Creek in August of that year and then two more pieces of property in October 1802: 150 acres and another 51 acres, both on the south side of Elk Creek. Assuming that father and son secured land near one another, we can place them where the two creeks come together in Grayson County, seven or eight miles north of the town of Independence.¹⁷ The county tax lists for 1802 through 1805 show them at these locations. In the latter year, Michael owned 100 acres and three horses, and his father owned a total of 301 acres and two horses. Michael Ring is shown as a road overseer in October 1806 and posted bail for someone in May 1807.

The next few years brought changes. In March 1807, Martin and his wife Caty sold their property on the north side of Elk Creek, and in September of the following year, 1808, Michael and his wife Susanna sold their property on the west fork of Turkey Creek nearby. Grayson County court records show that the latter sale was not completed until January 1811, though, and so we cannot determine from this transaction alone whether Michael and Susanna Ring remained in Grayson County during the interval between 1808 and 1811 or left the area for Kentucky. Because the 1810 tax list for that county does not include Michael, he and Susanna might have departed Grayson County toward the beginning of that three-year interval, but we shall see presently that there is reason for doubting this.

By 1810, Martin Ring had become exempt from county taxes, and he wrote his will on May 25, 1811. He left personal property and one third of his plantation to Caty (the will does not mention the remaining portion) and money to daughters Molly and Elizabeth. Any remainder of Martin's estate was to be divided equally among his children, number and names not specified in the will. This will was recorded in Grayson County on June 25, 1811, so we know that Martin died during the month between his writing it and the date of recording. George Ring, most likely Michael's younger brother, was the administrator.

The appraisal of Martin Ring's property shows that he had operated a modest-sized farm. At the sale of his property, in August 1811, Caty purchased one cow and calf for her own use.¹⁸ The administrator's report, completed in October 1817, shows that "Cattern" (apparently his widow) had received some money and that four children – Elizabeth, Molly, Caty, and Michael – all also received money, though not the equal portions that Martin's will had specified. Indeed, Michael received significantly less than his sisters, perhaps because he had already left Grayson County for Kentucky sometime between 1811 and 1817.

The circumstances suggest that Martin Ring may have had significant debts at the time of his death, which might explain why the proceeds from his estate were limited. Not only were his 251 remaining acres on Elk Creek sold by the sheriff in 1815, but a transaction in May 1814 (but not recorded until three years later) in which Martin's heirs paid for a sale of 150 acres of this land from daughter Elizabeth and her husband to a third party may indicate that Martin's property had been mortgaged or otherwise encumbered – the details are unclear. Also puzzling is the note in the Grayson County court minutes regarding a deed (not found in the deed books) from Michael Ring and others, identified as the distributors of the late Martin Ring, to Caty's husband.

In sum, we can speculate that Michael Ring could have left Grayson County, Virginia, as early as 1808, when he and Susanna sold their property, but the records of that sale and the ones pertaining to his father's death in mid-1811 suggest that he did not leave Virginia for good until his father died. If so, Michael might have been renting in the meantime; more likely, he was farming Martin's property for him. The fact that a Solomon Ring, almost certainly Michael's son, was born in Kentucky in 1812 hints that Michael went to Indiana by way of Kentucky, but the 1810 Kentucky census index does not show him living there that soon.

Fortunately, land records shed some light on this situation. They show that on October 28, 1809, Michael Ring of Jefferson County, Kentucky, made a first payment on 320 acres in what would in 1813 become Washington County, Indiana. After another payment the next month, there is a gap until March 1811, when (as a resident of Clark County, Indiana), Michael made a third payment. Three more payments followed (August 1813, February 1814, and March 1815), all made while Ring was listed as a resident of Harrison County, Indiana. The six payments were made toward the purchase of the northwest and the southeast quarters of the same section of the northern part of Washington County.

Thus it would appear that Michael left North Carolina for northern Kentucky in 1809, perhaps to scout property in Indiana – which he then decided to purchase on credit, making his first payments that fall. He may well have returned to North Carolina until early 1811, when the land transaction cited identifies him as a resident of Clark County, Indiana. We cannot dismiss the possibility that he remained in Kentucky between 1809 and 1811, but the evidence we have seen argues against this. It is clear, in any case, that Michael did not remain long in Kentucky. A petition to Congress in 1813 confirms that he is in Indiana by then: a man listed as Michel Ring of Harrison County, Indiana, is among the residents of the Driftwood area who signed a petition to Congress asking for designation of certain public land for a mill. The location they cited is now in Driftwood Township of Jackson County, Indiana, just over its border with Washington County. Since a Jacob Zinck (perhaps the one born in 1789, perhaps his father) is also found in Harrison County at about this time, we may have identified when and where the Zinck and Ring families met – unless they had previously met in Kentucky and moved to Indiana together.

Based on deeds in Washington County, Indiana, we can be fairly sure that Michael Ring remained there as late as 1824, but we cannot say how soon thereafter he decided to move west to Sullivan County.¹⁹ The high school history of Jackson Township, Sullivan County, Indiana, states that Michael Ring entered public land in the southwestern part of the township in 1829, and this is correct: he applied for his patent on March 27, 1829 (and received one for 80 acres on December 2, 1830), but this land is actually in Cass Township. It is possible that Michael lived in Jackson Township before he filed for his patent in Cass Township, or else the history may have misinterpreted where Ring's land was located.²⁰ A published history of Sullivan County also states that Michael Ring was one of the earliest residents of Jackson Township and adds the interesting information that he was known for his hunting prowess – especially with large game.

Mary Ring's mother probably was a woman named Anna Catharina. What suggests this is the baptism in North Carolina in 1795 of a daughter, Susanna, to Michael and Anna Catharina Ring. We have no solid evidence at all about the family name of this woman, although a good place to begin a search would be with the German families living near the Rings in North Carolina – Knoy, Lopp, Crum, and Clodfelter, for instance, and also a Zink (or Zinc) family that is different from the one into which Mary Ring later married. The timing is right for Susanna to be a sister to Mary (born in 1798), and the German sound to Anna Catharina's name is consistent with the fact that Michael Ring himself was the product of a German family.

As we have seen, though, when Michael Ring sold his 100 acres on the west fork of Turkey Creek in Grayson County, Virginia, in September 1808 his wife was identified as Susanna and not Anna Catharina. The conclusion we probably should draw from this is that Susanna was a second wife of Michael, unless the 1808 deed is mistaken about the name of his wife. The only clue we have about the family name of Michael Ring's second wife is that the 1810-12 will of a Godfrey Crum, a Pennsylvania German who later lived near the Rings in North Carolina, identifies his daughter as Susanna Ring. (Could Anna Catharina have been Susanna Crum's sister?)

It is also possible that Michael Ring married for a third time, probably in Indiana. Although the 1820 census shows that both he and his wife were at least 45 years of age, the census in 1830 describes him as being ten years older than his wife: he is 60 to 70 years old and she is only 40 to 50 years old. On the other hand, in 1840 the census correctly shows Michael as 70 to 80 years old and his wife is now 60 to 70 years of age, so it may well be that her age shown on the 1830 census is in error.

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We turn now to Michael Ring's parents. The only Ring male in Rowan County, North Carolina, who is the right age in 1800 (45 years old or older) to be Michael's father is identified as Marten Ring. John Ring and Thomas Ring of nearby Stokes County, North Carolina, are the only other Ring males in the state who are old enough to be Michael's father. The fact that the name Martin is used in the Ring family that lived in Sullivan County, Indiana, hints that Martin (probably the correct spelling) Ring of Rowan County was indeed Michael's father. Other evidence confirming their relationship comes not only from church and land records in North Carolina that link the two men in ways that suggest father and son but also from Martin Ring's will and related records in Grayson County, Virginia. We also see a Michael living near Martin in Rowan County, North Carolina, at the time of the 1790 census, both Michael and another son, George, are shown living near Martin Ring on the 1798 tax list.

Martin Ring is mentioned in Rowan County tax documents as early as 1778 (in Captain Smith's district), and in the fall of that year he is also named as one of the guards assigned to the Salisbury District's jail. Here he may have been guarding British prisoners (Hessians, in fact) or Tories, since the Salisbury jail was sometimes used for that purpose, and one can imagine he would have been given this duty at least in part because he was fluent in German himself. A 1778 deed in Rowan County, though, refers to some property as "formerly Ring's," and so it seems evident that Martin Ring had arrived in this area sometime earlier in the 1770s; why there are no deeds for him in Rowan County prior to 1786 is not known. We next see Martin Ring on tax lists in Rowan County in 1784, as a county road overseer in 1785, on the census in Rowan in 1790, and on tax lists there again in 1798, when he is shown owning 1,270 acres.

From the numerous land transactions we find in Rowan County deed books from 1786 through 1802, it is obvious that Martin Ring owned a good deal of property – as much as 1,970 acres, in fact – in an area east of Lexington. The descriptions of the properties show that they were clustered around waterways called, variously, Hamby's Creek, Abbott's Creek, Jimmy's (or James) Creek, Bauder's or Baughler's Branch, the Uwharrie River, Rich Fork, and Hunt's Fork; twenty years later these properties were still being described as part of "Ring's old tract." Many of these deeds have signatures in the old German script, a clear indication of this Martin Ring's ancestry. Martin Ring evidently was also a miller, since he owned a mill pond.²¹

Between early 1800 and mid-1802, Martin Ring sold off significant portions of his nearly 2,000 acres of land – 200 acres of the total to his son George (but none to Michael). Martin Ring is still described as a resident of Rowan County, North Carolina, in 1802, but another sale in February 1806 – the last one for him found in that county's deed books – identifies him as a resident of Grayson County, Virginia. As we have seen, this information dovetails nicely with that in the Virginia county to which the Rings had moved as early as 1802.

An additional tie between Michael Ring and Martin Ring comes from the fact that in 1790 the latter man is listed among the members of Pilgrim Lutheran Church northeast of Lexington, North Carolina. The church is not only near Hamby's Creek but is the one where Michael Ring's daughter Susanna was baptized in 1795.²² Indeed, one land document refers to a meetinghouse that adjoins Martin Ring's property, and the meetinghouse in question may be Pilgrim Lutheran Church.

We do not know where Martin Ring was born, but all the evidence considered in this section suggests that his birth occurred sometime during the 1730s or 1740s. His exemption from land taxes in 1810 also indicates that he had reached the age of 60 years then.

Why did Martin and Michael Ring, seemingly so well established in North Carolina, move to Virginia about 1802 – when Martin would be fairly well along in years? We cannot answer that question either, but it is possible he (and his sons?) decided to open a mill in Grayson County, Virginia, and that Martin died before he or they could make it a profitable business. We know that Martin Ring died between May 25 and June 25, 1811, and that his wife was then a woman named Caty – presumably the Anna Catharina who was Martin's wife in 1795 but possibly a later wife because we do not know the family name of this woman. As we shall see a little later in this narrative, information about Michael's birth – in 1768 – confirms that MARTIN RING was his father and that a woman named Catharina was his mother, so the chances seem good that all these references are to the same woman.

And what of Martin Ring and his ancestry? What we know about the Ring family suggests that this family was among the many thousands of German and Swiss emigrants who came to America during the 18th and early 19th centuries. They included principally Lutherans and Reformed Germans from the Palatine (along the upper Rhine River) and Württemberg, but also Quakers from the lower Rhine Valley, Calvinists from Alsace, Amish from around Bern, and Mennonites from the Zürich and Basel regions. In general, these people were seeking to escape Europe's wars, military drafts, taxes, political repression, and religious persecution. It was not unusual for entire families, neighborhoods, and congregations from the same villages to pack up and leave for America.

We will soon encounter several other families who were part of this extraordinary, multifaceted migration, which will be described in more detail when we discuss a family we are certain came as part of this movement of peoples. Here we focus on the Rings, who we can only presume were among them. Many of these Palatine Germans, as they were usually called, came to America during the 1730s through the 1750s, generally arriving in Philadelphia. Some of them remain in the eastern sectors of that colony, where we first encounter the Rings. Many others moved south into – and through – the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and some of these settled in North Carolina. The Germans who settled the region of North Carolina where the Rings would live from at least the 1770s until after 1800 (and who established the Pilgrim Lutheran Church there) had arrived as early as the 1740s, but came in larger numbers after about 1752.

Our information about the Palatine immigrants does not turn up any Martin Ring. This might mean that the Martin we are researching used his second (or "calling") name in preference to his formal first name, as many Germans did, so the records might identify him as Johannes or by some other first name. But the absence of Martin might also mean that he arrived here as a child (the immigration records identified children only sporadically) or was born in America to an immigrant whose name we do not know. In addition, we need to keep in mind that not all of those who came to America came through Philadelphia, and that the extant records for that port and otherwise do not cover the entire time period when the Rings might have come here.

Given all these limitations, we still can try to identify several plausible candidates for Martin's father, who most likely would have been born between the 1720s and the 1740s if he himself had a son old enough to have fathered Michael in 1768. Unless Martin's father was also born in America or also was a child when his family came here (which could push the date of the Rings' arrival back into the early 1700s), we probably should be looking for a Ring male who left Europe during the 1730s or early 1740s. This would seem to filter out a Philip Henry Ring who arrived in 1754 and a Johannes Ring who arrived in 1764, though we cannot be positive of this.²³

During earlier decades, there is another Johannes Ring, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1727 and would have been old enough (but perhaps too old?) to have fathered Martin Ring during the 1730s or 1740s. We have no evidence to link him to Martin, and one Ring researcher believes that this Johannes lived in New York, where another colony Palatine Germans resided.²⁴ There is also a Conrad Ring who arrived even earlier (before 1724), which argues against his being Martin's father. Besides, he is probably the man who had a son born in 1748 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he was baptized at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in New Holland; this is some distance from where we will discover Martin Ring's family is living, northeastern Pennsylvania. A Christopher Rink arrived in 1731, and a John Rinck arrived sometime during this period but does not appear on a ship register. The latter attracts our attention because he did live in northeastern Pennsylvania: he was among a group of Germans from Bucks County who asked to become naturalized citizens in 1734. In addition, John Rinck lived in Milford Township, which was composed almost entirely of German families.

Ring is not the only name we should be looking for, though. As we shall learn, evidence about the Martin Ring's family suggests that the original spelling of the name may have been Ringel or Ringle. Even here we turn up only a few candidates to be Martin's father. One is a bricklayer named H. Ringel who migrated from Weiler am Steinberg (in Neckar) in 1727, but he too is perhaps a bit too old. Another is Johannes Michael Ringel, who arrived in Boston on the Priscilla on November 9, 1751. This Ringel evidently did not remain in western Massachusetts as many of his shipmates did, but we have no reason to place him in northeastern Pennsylvania. Yet another family worth considering consists of four males and two females who are mostly recorded as Rigel(l) or Rigal on the ship register for the Pennsylvania Merchant in 1733, although one male's last name seems to be Ringel. We can only guess at the family relationships here, but Martin Ring (born during the 1740s) could have been the child of a husband-wife combination of some of the younger members of this family group; on the other hand, none of the given names other than Johannes (evidently father and son here) – Gertrude, Abraham, Daniel, and Sarah – show up in Martin Ring's line, so we are probably looking here at a Rigel or Rigal family. Since the male whose name is spelled Ringel is the younger Johannes, it seems most likely his last name was recorded incorrectly on the register.

A look at the indexes of Palatine immigrants shows that there are numerous other plausible spelling variations of Ring or Ringel to consider, however. If we expand our search to include men bearing (or assigned) such names, we turn up additional candidates of men who might have fathered Martin. These would include Hans Jacob Rinker and Hans Ulrich Ringer (on the same ship in 1743), Johan Jacob Ringer (also 1743), Jacob Rinker (1750), Jacob Rincker (1752), Johannes Ringeler (1752), Johann Bastian Rind (1752), Fred. Ringer (1764), and Laurence Rinkle (1765). We know little about any of these men, other than the ages of three of them, or where they went once they stepped on shore in Philadelphia, and so there is no particular reason to link any of them to Martin Ring.

An exception is Andreas Ringer, 17 years of age, who arrived in Philadelphia aboard the Nancy from Dover and Rotterdam on September 20, 1738. It seems likely that he is the Andreas Ringle who received a 50-acre land grant in Saucon Township (now in either Lehigh or Northampton County) in 1746 and also the man who, with a wife named Anna Elizabeth, had a daughter baptized in a Lutheran church in Philadelphia in 1747. We know from Ringle researchers that Anna Elizabeth died on October 26, 1747, and that Andreas did not remarry until about 1752 (after which he fathered several more children before his death on March 11, 1769). Thus we can hypothesize that Martin – who had to have been born by the mid-1740s, since his son was baptized in 1768 – might have been another child of Andreas's first marriage, but there is no definitive list of this man's children with either of his wives to verify our guesswork.

A close analysis of birth and other records for this same area of Pennsylvania reveals, however, that the movements of at least three other Ring or Ringle males who seem to be in Martin's generation are very similar, and two of these young men – Matthias and Jürg (Georg?) – are known to have been sons of Andreas Ringle. It seems possible, therefore, that the other two Ring or Ringle males, a Michael and the Martin we are seeking to identify, were their brothers. That is as far as we can go with the information presently in our hands.

Do naming patterns help us any? To be sure, none of the immigrants mentioned earlier bears the name Martin (though it might have been a calling name, not shown, for one of them). Nor did Martin Ring use any of these immigrants' names – from Andreas to Ulrich to Matthias – for the two sons we know about, who were named Johan Michael and Johan Georg. Our information about Michael Ring's sons is also incomplete, but we think that he used both Philip and Henry for two of them. (Should this make us look harder at Johannes Michael Ringel and Philip Henry Ring, who arrived in America during the early 1750s?) Assuming naming patterns remained important to this family, these leads may help us narrow the field and eventually identify Martin Ring's parents, if they are not Andreas and Anna Elisabeth {Ahlgeyer} Ringel. For now, I believe they should be considered the leading candidates.

I have seen one report that Martin Ring was a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War who managed to stay in America at war's end, but this is a common legend about German immigrants. Martin's presence in North Carolina by 1778 – as a jailer, yet – would seem to debunk the idea in his case. There is also some speculation among Ring researchers that Martin was the product of a Ring family from eastern Virginia. This family, which had an English heritage, appears to have had a Martin Ring born during the 1740s who later moved to North Carolina (but not to Rowan County): he evidently was the brother of the John and Thomas Ring we see in Stokes County in 1800. I have seen no evidence that ties this Martin Ring born in Virginia to the German-speaking family we are focusing on here, and we must guard against confusing the two Ring families in North Carolina.

The key to making a positive identification of Martin Ring is the evidence that a Catharina Flores married a Martin Ring (here, significantly, Ringel) in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It seems a safe presumption that this is the same Martin Ringel who is shown as a laborer in Northampton County (bordering Bucks County on the north) in 1772 – and one of those Ringel brothers we encountered earlier. This in turn identifies CATHARINA {FLORES} RING as the wife of Martin Ring and mother of Michael Ring – and the Caty who is found in the records of Grayson County, Virginia. If she was named in keeping with German practice, as was likely, her full name may have been Anna Catharina or Maria Catharina. She was born on February 3, 1746. As we have seen, she was still alive in 1817, and the evidence suggests that she lived into the 1820s. (She is probably the older woman in the household of George Ring in Grayson County, Virginia, in 1820 but not thereafter.)

Best of all, church records in Bucks County show a Martin and Catharina Ring had a son, Johann Michael, born on September 30, 1768 – right in the time frame that matches the ages shown on later censuses for the Michael Ring we are researching here. Catharina was the daughter of MICHAEL FLORES, whose 1773 will mentions her as the wife of Martin Ringel.²⁵ The Flores and Ring families were affiliated with the same church, and Martin and Catharina are also said to have moved to North Carolina, joining many other German Lutherans from Pennsylvania who trekked south to North Carolina during the 1760s or 1770s. (As we have seen, there is evidence suggesting that Martin Ring arrived in Rowan County, North Carolina, at least by the early 1770s.) Thus we can make a strong case that the German-speaking Martin Ring of North Carolina was the German Martin Ring of Pennsylvania.²⁶

The church the Flores and Ring families attended (and where young Michael, presumably named for his Flores grandfather, was baptized) was Zion Lutheran Church in Old Zionsville, Upper Milford Township, in Bucks County. The Flores family lived in Dillingerville in that township.²⁷ Zion Lutheran Church had been formed about 1756 when a number of the members of the Lutheran congregation that had been meeting in a log schoolhouse in Dillingerville since at least 1744 became dissatisfied with both their cramped quarters there and the pastor who served them every two weeks. Thus they withdrew and formed a new church, Zion Lutheran Church, two miles to the northwest of Dillingerville. Catharina, born during the 1740s, would have been baptized in the earlier, unnamed church. The congregation did not begin to keep records until late 1749.

Michael Flores, age 25 years, and what would seem to be his brother and father arrived in Philadelphia aboard the Friendship on September 3, 1739.²⁸ Michael and his father both settled in Bucks County, where Michael was a farmer and blacksmith. He married a woman named MARIA ELIZABETH (family name unknown) about 1745. In 1752 he obtained a warrant for 137 acres near Dillingerville in Upper Milford Township, completing his purchase by 1763. Michael was naturalized in Northampton County on April 8, 1755. He is listed on the 1772 tax list there but died sometime after February 13, 1773, when he wrote his will: it was probated on March 11 of that year and his possessions were sold later that month. (Perhaps his death occasioned the departure for North Carolina for Martin and his wife.) Maria Elizabeth evidently survived Michael Flores, and she may have died in 1785, the year when her son became the owner of Michael Flores's "plantation," as it was called. Presumably both Michael and Maria Elizabeth are buried at Zion Lutheran Church in Old Zionsville, but the cemetery records of that church do not include their names.

Michael's father, judging from the Palatine arrivals in 1739, was a man named CONRAD FLORES, born in 1690. His full name may have been Johann Conrad Flores, as that name appears in some documentation. Conrad is listed as one of the petitioners for Springfield Township of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1743. Here he had obtained a warrant for 100 acres of September 9, 1741, but Conrad evidently died (in Richland Township of Bucks County) without having secured a patent; it was left to Michael to patent this land (now listed as a little over 155 acres), which he did on May 16, 1764. Conrad's wife seems to have been named MARIA BARBARA, whose surname remains unknown.

The origins of the Flores family, with its apparent Spanish surname, are a mystery. To be part of this Palatine migration at this time they undoubtedly began their journey in Germany, or perhaps in the Netherlands. If the latter, one wonders if we are seeing evidence of a Spanish soldier or administrator in Spain's Dutch provinces (what would later be the Netherlands) who remained behind after the occupation had ended. Some Flores researchers think the family came from Wittenberg or Silesia in Eastern Germany, where a Michael Flores was born in 1626 in Aschitzau near Bunzlau, but it seems more likely that it came from Württemberg, much farther to the southwest. (As it happens, there is a smaller town called Wittenberg here, too.) Württemberg was a Protestant area that turned inhospitable during the 1730s, and many of its residents joined the exodus from the nearby Palatinate.

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We return now to the Zink/Zinck line. With one or two small leaps of faith we have established that Michael Zink's father was Jacob (James?) Zinck, who was born either in 1789 or perhaps during the early 1790s and who died in 1851. Taking the Zinck line back another generation requires us to make another, even larger, leap of faith. Many Zink researchers believe that Jacob (James?) Zinck was the son of the earlier Jacob Zinck, the man we have already encountered as we have focused our attention on Michael's father, and that the earlier Jacob Zinck was the son of the first member of the Zinck family to come to America: Gottlieb Zinck. Both of these links are a bit tenuous, owing to that Sullivan County, Indiana, courthouse fire on the night of February 7, 1850, as well as to the all-too-common paucity of satisfactory evidence. After considering what we do know, I have concluded that the linkage outlined above probably does exist. Certain problems remain, as we shall see, but the hypothesis described here seems plausible to me.

In accepting this hypothesis, we designate JACOB ZINCK as the father of Jacob (James?) Zinck, and the grandfather of Michael Zink. A Lutheran minister, Jacob was said to be 72 years, 8 months, and 3 days old when he died in Harristown, Washington County, Indiana, on February 13, 1829. This would make him born on June 10, 1756, the date that is usually cited as his day of birth.²⁹ One contemporary report indicates that by 1828 Jacob had been stricken with what was termed "palsy" – possibly a stroke. According to the inscription on his wife's grave marker, Jacob Zinck was buried in a Lutheran cemetery near Harristown, and a stone in this small cemetery verifies this information.³⁰

We know Jacob Zinck's wife only as MARY M.. Even on her grave marker she is listed as Mary M. Zink, leaving us to wonder if it was her middle name or her family name that began with M. This is a matter of interest because some researchers believe her family name was Miller, while others contend that it was Wertmiller; still other researchers state that Mary's middle name was Margaret. There is no convincing evidence for any of these contentions. Mary's grave marker and the Zink family histories agree that she was born on March 23, 1776; she was 60 years, 3 months, and 10 days old when she died on July 2, 1836. Here we confront a major problem: being born in 1776 would make Mary suspiciously young – only 13 years old – to have borne a son in 1789, when Jacob (James?) Zinck is usually said to have been born. It is interesting that the same researchers who describe Mary's family name as Miller date the Zinck-Miller marriage as 1795, which would make her 19 years old when Jacob was born and strengthen our doubts about his birth in Virginia in 1789. As we have seen, though, a birth year of 1795 for the younger Jacob is not sustained by the bulk of the evidence we have considered.

Where does all this leave us? With more questions, to be sure. Was Mary's birth date recorded incorrectly (even on her grave marker)? Was the younger Jacob Zinck in fact born a little later than 1789, as his younger-than-expected ages on the 1830 and 1850 censuses hint? Were Jacob's parents someone other than Mary and the older Jacob Zinck? I am inclined to accept the explanation that the younger Jacob was born sometime during the early 1790s rather than in 1789, but until we learn more we must continue to regard all of these as open questions.

Mary's husband, the older Jacob Zinck, would have been 33 years old when their son, Jacob (James?) Zinck, was born in 1789 and 39 years old by 1795. Such a wide discrepancy in their ages (20 years) is not unheard of, but it does give rise to the suspicion that Jacob was married to another woman before Mary M.³¹ If that is the case, a good argument can be made that Jacob (James?) Zinck, if he was born in 1789, was actually the child of that first wife and not of Mary. At this point we can only throw up our hands and move ahead, hoping that more information will turn up in the future and in the meantime keeping our minds open about whether the mother of Jacob (James?) Zinck was a Miller or a Wertmiller. But it is worth observing before we explore these two possibilities that the August 1829 marriage of Iacob Sink and Polly Miller in Washington County (mentioned earlier in the discussion of the 1820 census) may well have led some Zink researchers to believe that the wife of Jacob Zink the minister was a woman named Miller.

Tax records show two Millers living near the Zincks in Shenandoah County, Virginia, during the 1780s. Both George Miller and John Miller (a saddler), are on the same 1785 enumeration of heads of family as are Jacob Zinck and his presumed father, Gottlieb. This list covered the Stony Creek area near Hudson's Cross Roads, Jerome, and Cabin Hill (now Conicville), Virginia. In addition, a Jacob Miller came to the Stony Creek area from York County, Pennsylvania, sometime during the 1770s and died there in 1781. His son Adam, like Jacob Zinck, became a Lutheran minister and migrated to southwestern Virginia during the 1780s. It does not appear that Jacob's wife Mary was Adam's sister (whose sister Mary Ann can be accounted for), but she may have been related to George or John Miller – assuming she was a Miller at all. Might she have been a Wertmiller instead?³²

Some researchers state that Mary M. was the daughter of a John and Elizabeth {Ziegler} Wertmiller of Shenandoah County, Virginia. Such a family lived on Narrow Passage Creek in that county, John Wertmiller having purchased 390 acres there in 1773 – nine years after he and Elizabeth were married.³³ Four years later, the Wertmillers sold this land and evidently moved to Hampshire County, Virginia – over the mountains in what would later become West Virginia – and no longer show up in Shenandoah County records. During the 1780s the Wertmillers (and what would seem to be John's brother, Jacob, and his family) are found living on the South Branch of the Potomac River south of Moorefield. John and Elizabeth are alive as late as 1811, when they sell property. These researchers cite a marriage between Jacob Zinck and Mary M. Wertmiller in Pendleton County, Virginia (to the south of Hampshire County) in 1790, but I have seen no documentary evidence to substantiate this marriage.

Because the Wertmillers were active in Shenandoah County's Zion Lutheran Church, which was located quite near Gottlieb Zinck's property on Stony Creek, we can safely assume that the Zincks and the Wertmillers knew one another at the time Jacob Zinck was growing up in his father's household. Around 1780, Jacob Zinck taught school and also began his ministerial career at Zion Church, and so he surely would have known the Wertmiller family then as well if they were still living in Shenandoah County.³⁴ Thus we can be fairly confident that Jacob would have been acquainted with Mary Wertmiller before her family moved west over the mountains. In addition, we can imagine that as Jacob was expanding his ministerial career during the early 1780s he might well have traveled over those mountains to the South Branch area: after all, he ranged far and wide during his later years, and we know that Lutheran pastors active in Shenandoah County did visit the South Branch area.

Could Jacob Zinck have served as young Mary's teacher or pastor there during the 1780s? And did John and Elizabeth Wertmiller come to see their daughter as a good bride for Jacob Zinck, by 1790s in his mid-thirties? The working list of the children born to John and Elizabeth Wertmiller shows the first child being born in 1768, which raises another interesting possibility: was Mary M. Wertmiller actually their first child, born in 1766, despite what her grave marker says? As we have seen, there are other reasons for suspecting that she was born earlier than 1776. If this is the case, her older age during the 1780s would put Jacob Zinck's possible move to the South Branch in an entirely different light, for there might have been attractions there beyond his religious calling.

These and other questions have no ready answers and there are still more to consider. Soma researchers have concluded that Mary M. Wertmiller actually married the Jacob Sinks who, according to tax records and other lists, lived in Hampshire County during the 1780s. But the given names of the other Sinks men of Hampshire County bear little resemblance to those of the Zincks of Shenandoah County, which suggests to us that this is a totally different family. This Jacob Sinks did, however, have the proximity to the Wertmillers that might have brought him and young Mary together as man and wife. We will reexamine this matter when we take a closer look to what else we know about Jacob Zinck from Shenandoah County.

One final mystery about Mary M. Zinck presents itself before we leave her: where does she live after Jacob's death in 1829? The 1830 census should help to answer this question, but she is not listed by name in Sullivan County, Indiana, where she and her husband Jacob had been living. Nor does she seem to be residing in the Indiana household of their son, the younger Jacob Zinck, born about 1789. The fact that Mary {Ring} Zinck was buried in the Pennsylvania Run Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in 1836 suggests that after her husband died she went to live with a child in this part of Kentucky – where she and Jacob had lived two decades earlier – and that she was buried near one of those children. This theory is substantiated by records for Christ Lutheran Church in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, which list several of Jacob and Mary Zinck's children as receiving communion or being confirmed between 1829 and 1835. (Mary's husband had once served as the pastor of this church.) Mary Zinck may be living with one of these children, therefore, although I could not find her in the households of any of her offspring, either there or in Indiana. There are other children I could not locate on the 1830 census, however, and perhaps she is living with one of them.³⁵

It is also possible that she is living with one of Jacob Zinck's relatives. This may be Jacob's older brother Peter, who resides in Washington County, Indiana. Peter has two adult women in his household in 1830, one 30 to 40 years old and one 50 to 60 years old. We know that Peter was married twice, the second time in 1822. If his second wife was fairly young – perhaps born during the 1790s – she would be the younger of the two women in Peter's household in 1830, and Mary (54 years of age in 1830, if she was born in 1776) could be the older one. If Mary was born in 1766, however, barring an error on the census she is probably not the older woman and must be living with a child somewhere. Here again we are reduced to guessing.

Let us now return to the elder Jacob Zinck. We believe that he was born in what was then Frederick County, Virginia, in the part that later became Shenandoah County. We first encounter him when he was confirmed in Woodstock, Virginia, in June 1772. Jacob was just turning 16 years old that month, but the record gives his age as 17 years of age.³⁶ One informed account tells us that Jacob taught school in the Stony Creek area (doubtless, like many teachers at that time, he was a recent student himself). Then, during the late 1770s, he gradually assumed, with the blessing of the congregation, the functions of pastor at Zion Church, despite his lack of formal training. By 1782 Jacob Zinck was described as the pastor of both Zion Church and Rader's Church in Timberville, Virginia (south of the Stony Creek area in Rockingham County), but we cannot tell whether he moved from the first to the second or (more likely) was handling both assignments at the same time.³⁷ In any case, he had now begun in the Shenandoah Valley what would be a long and distinguished career as a Lutheran minister in areas to the south and west of his birthplace.

Although published tax lists for Shenandoah County for 1782 through 1785 show two men named Jacob Zinck (here, Sink) in 1783 and one in 1785, the records themselves (including both property taxes and personal property taxes) for 1782 through 1790 show just one Jacob Zinck – and he is not the one born in 1756 we are now focusing on. He is instead an older man, undoubtedly the Jacob Zinck who in 1773 successfully petitioned the county to be exempted from certain of its levies (work on the roads, for example). His reasons are not spelled out, but such petitions were commonly made by men of 60 or older. The personal property rolls clearly identify this man as being free from levies from 1788 (the delay possibly a result of the Revolutionary War) until he is no longer listed, after 1794 – long after we know that Gottlieb's son Jacob is residing elsewhere. As he is evidently a generation older than the Jacob Zinck born in 1756 and lives near Jacob's father, Gottlieb, the chances are good that the older Jacob is Gottlieb's brother. Some of the published records even refer to him as Jacob, Sr.

Where is the Jacob who was born in 1756 living through the 1780s? He is not listed as a tithable male in any year, either with his father or with anyone else in the county (a relative or someone who was employing him). Nor is he living by himself. It is possible that Jacob is residing in another Shenandoah Valley county (Rader's Church is in Rockingham County). As we have already seen, though, there is a better chance that during the early 1780s Jacob Zinck headed west over the mountains to Hampshire County. Evidence that Jacob was moving away from Shenandoah County comes from a curious legal document that he and his father signed on May 19,1783. In return for a cash payment, Gottlieb agreed to provide Jacob (described here as Jacob Sink, Jr.) with seven cows, four yearling calves, six spring calves, one old roan horse branded "G" and "Z," one wagon, one large iron pot, one small bed, and a featherbed. Gottlieb reserved the right to repay this sum with interest within one year.³⁸ From this agreement, it would appear that Gottlieb was furnishing his son with a share of his estate – and the wherewithal Jacob would need to establish his own household, as well as with the means to get these items to his new home. Perhaps the agreement was phrased as it was in order to preserve a sense of fair treatment among Gottlieb's children, who would later receive their own share of their father's estate.

Jacob Zinck's move to Hampshire County about then would explain not only why he disappears from Shenandoah County but why we have no evidence of the Jacob Sinks in Hampshire County either before 1782 or after 1788 – about when Jacob Zinck departed for Washington County, Virginia. (He appears on the tax lists in Washington County for the first time in 1788, but there is no list for the prior year). Thus the two halves of this particular puzzle may fit together smoothly enough to solve both mysteries.³⁹ As we have seen such a move to Hampshire County would place Jacob Zinck near to the Wertmiller family at a time when young Mary was nearing (or already at, if she was born in 1766) the age to marry. Perhaps Jacob Zinck did marry Mary Wertmiller in what is now West Virginia during the late 1780s, therefore, after which the couple headed further south up the Shenandoah Valley to the Holston River Valley – maybe to land that Jacob had already begun farming. This fertile area, which stretches from above Abingdon in Washington County, Virginia, to Elizabethton in what is now Sullivan County, Tennessee, was being rapidly settled now that its political future was resolved.⁴⁰ (The population jumped from 5,000 in 1791 to 60,000 in 1795.) Here Jacob may have seen brighter pastoral opportunities than the ones in northern Virginia.

There is one other complication in establishing the identity of Jacob Zinck that we must pause to consider. In 1814, the minutes of the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium in Philadelphia mention that the Ministerium had recently received a letter from a certain Zinck. In his letter, this Zinck inquired about being admitted to the Ministerium, which served as a kind of governing body for the denomination. The Ministerium told him that he should contact the Lutheran synod in North Carolina. The original letter is not among the Ministerium's records, unfortunately, and the handwritten minutes do not otherwise identify this man named Zinck. These minutes, which are in German, appear to have used Hrn. as a title for Zinck, and from this some well-known scholars have concluded that the writer was a Heinrich Zinck. Not only that, they have confused him with the Jacob Zinck born in 1756 and depicted the fictitious Heinrich Zinck as a minister in Tennessee and Virginia during the years when Jacob Zinck was active there.

One of these scholars states that Heinrich and Jacob are "easily confused," but they are not if we interpret the reference in the minutes in 1814 as a reference to the Jacob Zinck we already know about: there is no other evidence – in land, census, and family records, for instance – of a Heinrich or Henry Zinck in these states in these years. It seems quite unlikely anyway that two men with the same family name would have such similar histories and experiences – in the same locale during the same time period, no less. In any case, I am persuaded that the references to Henry and Heinrich Zinck are actually to Jacob and will treat them as such.

Jacob Zinck's physical movements following his arrival in the Holston River Valley are also difficult to plot. As we have seen, by the late 1780s if not sooner Jacob had gone there. By then, this area was already sprinkled with numerous small congregations of German-speaking Lutherans, and it was in this valley where Jacob Zinck would spend a major portion of his ministerial career. On April 11, 1791, Jacob purchased what was described as 190 acres on the headwaters of Beaver Creek (then also known as Cedar Creek), one of the several branches of the Holston River. The area where this property was located was (and remains) known as Rust Hollow, just west of Abingdon, Virginia. Here Jacob and his family seem to have lived for more than a decade, perhaps until 1805. Rust Hollow was, in fact, well-chosen as a base for the kind of ministry that Jacob would undertake throughout the Holston Valley. Jacob Zinck was tithed in Washington County, Virginia, almost every year between 1788 and 1805, 1795 and 1804 being the only exceptions.⁴¹ As we shall presently see, his father Gottlieb would later join him there.

During the 1790s, however, Jacob's focus began to shift more and more to the congregations lying to the west but also below the Virginia-Tennessee border.⁴² In November 1803, which was not long after Jacob's father died, he may have moved his principal residence to Sullivan County, Tennessee. Here Jacob bought 100 acres on Reedy Creek and Grassy Spring – just below the Virginia border. The Zincks sold their Washington County, Virginia, property (now described as 200 acres in all) in June 1804 and March 1805, excepting a small portion set aside for the local German community for a burial ground. They sold their Tennessee property as well in March of 1805, reportedly to move back to Virginia. Jacob Zinck was subject to tax in Washington County, Virginia, in 1804 and 1805, though not the next year, and I suspect that they lived in Virginia through 1805, except perhaps for 1802 and 1803 when they could have resided in Tennessee.⁴³

Although Jacob Zinck likely launched his ministry in the Holston Valley during the late 1780s, our first tangible evidence he had done so comes in February 1790, when he officiated at a marriage in Washington County, Virginia. By early 1791, Jacob seems fully engaged in the religious life of the area: that same year, he is said to have been serving as the pastor of Union or Immanuel Church in Sullivan County, Tennessee. The next few years would see Jacob in a bewildering web of affiliations all over this area, sometimes several at once. ⁴⁴

Doubtless many of the fledgling churches Jacob Zinck served were small. Perhaps he rode a kind of circuit between and among them, returning to his family in Rust Hollow when he could. Whatever the precise circumstances, it is clear that Jacob must have been in constant motion throughout this mountainous area, preaching at this church or another and attending to the needs of the settlers who were Lutherans whether or not they had been able to construct church buildings. This style of ministry, compounding the customary scarcity of good records during the early years of settlement, means it is difficult for us to determine Jacob's specific movements and pastoral affiliations. Unfortunately, there are no census records that will help us pin down Jacob's physical movements during these three decades from about 1790 to about 1820. Fortunately, there is enough information from other sources to enable us to piece together a general picture of Jacob Zinck's ministerial career in Virginia and Tennessee during the last decade of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century.

Sometime during the 1790s Jacob reportedly helped to organize and was the pastor of Sugar Grove Church, first known as Rich Valley Church, located one mile east of Benhams on Abram's Creek in Washington County, Virginia. Since this location is just a short distance north of Rust Hollow, perhaps it was the church Zinck originally came to this area to serve.⁴⁵ Within a few years, by 1796, Jacob was serving at Solomon's Church on Cove Creek in Greene County, Tennessee – many miles to the south of Rust Hollow and somewhat outside the Holston Valley itself. For the most part, however, Jacob Zinck was now focusing his ministry in Sullivan County, Tennessee. Here he is known to have served Zion Church (sometimes called "Shaver's" Church), just east of Immanuel or Union Church, as well as some congregations that evidently convened in residences since they were called "Hackman's" and "Jacob Jöst's." We know, too, that Jacob Zinck ministered to Buehler's Church near Bristol and at "the old Dutch Meeting House" or South Fork Church. The latter was a place of worship south of Blountsville that the German Lutherans shared with a group of Dutch Reformed settlers.⁴⁶ All of these congregations were clustered in the far northeast corner of Tennessee, most of them in the general vicinity of Rust Hollow in Washington County, Virginia.

By mid-1805, it is clear that Jacob Zinck – wherever he and his family had actually been residing – has left the Holston Valley area behind, and the challenge of tracking his movements grows. In August of that year, a minister visiting one of Jacob's churches remarked that Pastor Zinck had recently departed for "Ohio" – possibly intending to indicate that Jacob had moved to the rapidly expanding area of settlement on the Ohio River surrounding Louisville, Kentucky, which Zinck may have visited as early as 1802. Possibly, however, this description points us in a slightly different direction, for a 1795 tax roll in the new Campbell County, Kentucky, shows a Jacob Sinkes. This county is located on the Ohio River across from Cincinnati, and it may be that Jacob Zinck had already staked out a base in northern Kentucky to which he would relocate after leaving the Holston Valley. Perhaps his absence from the Washington County, Virginia, tax roll in 1795 is explained by his appearance on that of Campbell County that same year.

Soon, though (on May 5, 1806), we find Jacob was licensed to perform marriages in Jefferson County,Kentucky, where Louisville is located. In addition, we find Jacob Zinck paying taxes as a property-owner on Beargrass Creek in 1808 and 1809, and in 1810 he is listed on the census in Jefferson County, though there are no deeds to identify any property that he possessed in that county during those years.⁴⁷ Jacob may have been using Louisville as a base for forays into the Indiana Territory: as we have seen, it could be either the elder Jacob Zinck or his son Jacob who signed the Indiana Territory petition to Congress in 1809. If the family had actually moved to Indiana, perhaps the Indian troubles so prevalent in that territory at that time drove the family back to safety in the Louisville area across the river, where the census found them in 1810. Consistent with such a move is the fact that Jacob Zinck owned an interest in Bice's Lick, a salt lick then in Harrison County, Indiana, but cashed out his share (and sold his six horses, livestock, salt-making equipment, and household furniture) in July 1810; whether he intended to return during the five-year mortgage he negotiated for this property and his rights to the lick's income cannot be determined.⁴⁸

According to the 1810 census, Jacob Sink is living in Jefferson County. As we have seen, his wife, Mary, was buried in that county a quarter of a century later, which hints at a long-standing family connection to that county – including children who were born and married there. Moreover, the composition of the household fits our understanding of Jacob and his family. There is one male 45 years old and older (the older Jacob is 54 years old) and another male who is 16 to 26 years old. Jacob's son also named Jacob is 21 years of age in 1810 if born in 1789 but no more than 15 years old if born in 1795 or later. There are two males 10 to 16 years old, though, where this younger Jacob could be listed in 1810. The presence of a Daniel Sink, also 45 years old or older, on the next line of the census sheet after Jacob Zinck also strengthens our case, for Jacob had a brother that old.

On January 9, 1812, Jacob and his son Jacob are said to have purchased 153 acres between Floyd's Fork and Chenoweth Run in Jefferson County, Kentucky; tax lists there show Jacob Zinck, Sr., and Jacob Zinck, Jr., in 1812 and Jacob Zinck, Jr., in 1813. No deeds verify this purchase, and the reason becomes clear when we read the record of a suit the two Zincks filed against John Chenoweth in the Jefferson County Chancery Court on February 3, 1812. In their "demand for title" suit, the Zincks described the agreement they had made on January 9th with Chenoweth, one in which they would pay him $800 ($200 in specie but the remainder in the form of 600 gallons of "good whiskey" in "good tight barrels") by June 1, 1814, for title to the property. They also described Chenoweth's agreement to defend their claim against that of William Pope. What happened to disrupt these two agreements is not clear (perhaps Chenoweth lost his own battle with Pope), but the court dismissed the Zincks' suit on April 21, 1812. No doubt this left a bad taste in the mouths of both Zinck men, and so it is hardly surprising that they made the decision to leave Kentucky as soon as circumstances permitted.⁴⁹

Wherever in Kentucky Jacob and his family were residing at any particular time, therefore, we can be fairly certain that they were in that state for a number of years between about 1805 and about 1812. During these years he served as pastor of two Kentucky churches. One was St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Bardstown, Nelson County, which was organized as Harrison's Church during the 1790s and was disbanded in 1934. Jacob Zinck is said to have been the first pastor of this church. The other was Christ Lutheran Church in Jeffersontown, Jefferson County. There is little further information about Jacob's connection to the former church, whose specific location is unknown, but we know that he left it around 1810 or 1811. A historical sketch of the latter church dates Jacob Zinck's years in Jeffersontown as 1800 to 1810, and a contact at the church identified for me the church's locations during the years when he was associated with it.⁵⁰ The church's records show that he retained ties with Christ Lutheran Church even after that. He preached there as late as June of 1823, after which he is said to have gone to Indiana.

Soon after 1810, however (and despite his interest in Indiana), Jacob transferred his ecclesiastical attention from Kentucky back to northeastern Tennessee. He became pastor again of Union or Immanuel Church (1812-1814), Buehler's Church (1813), and Solomon's Church (1820); at this same time, he seems to have served Roller's Church, later known as New Haven Church and still later as New Hope Church.⁵¹ Where Mary and the children were residing from about 1812 until 1820 is not known. They might have remained in Kentucky, or Jacob might have established them in Indiana – where, we recall, a history of Washington County places them as early as 1810. One wonders whether the couple might have separated, but I believe that Jacob Zinck simply left his family further north – perhaps in the Louisville area – while he made extended visits to these churches in Tennessee. There he may have rented property or lived with members of his various congregations, returning to Kentucky (or Indiana) occasionally to be with his family.

There is little doubt Jacob was residing in Tennessee in 1814, when the minister named Zinck wrote to the Ministerium in Philadelphia and when four Tennessee Lutheran congregations wrote to the North Carolina Synod on his behalf. In a letter reflecting what Jacob himself was saying about his credentials, as we shall see, these congregations said that the Ministerium had once licensed Jacob, explained that he had been unable to attend its meetings, and asked that he be licensed by the North Carolina Synod – as he soon was. A year later, though, Jacob Zinck was represented by a proxy when that same synod considered his candidacy for ordination, and the wording of his own communication to the synod suggests that he was back in Indiana. In fact, a congregation in Washington County, Indiana, asked the North Carolina Synod to ordain Jacob and assign him as their pastor. All this is rather curious.

More curious is a letter that Jacob Zinck wrote to the Synod the following year, on October 10, 1816.⁵² In it, he states that he has arrived "from the Indianna" and is attending to the four congregations "in the forck." From his reference to Hackman's and Buehler's by name, we can tell that he is referring to the fork of the Holston River. In words that seem rather poignant, Jacob Zinck also expresses a wish to "remain here my life time." But where is "here"? For most curious of all is the heading on this letter, which reads "Washington County." Is this Washington County, Virginia, where Jacob ministered and owned property during the 1790s? Is it Washington County, Tennessee, located between Sullivan and Greene Counties? Or is it Washington County, Indiana, where Jacob had been residing until very recently, and where his family may well be living still? In my estimation, it is most likely Washington County, Tennessee.

In any case Jacob was not to get his wish. He seems to have continued to live and work in Tennessee for a few more years, probably through 1820 at least. He may have been enumerated on the census in Tennessee that year, but if so he cannot be found on it. Not long after 1820, though, Jacob Zinck did definitely return to Indiana; most sources date his move there as 1823, and we have seen there is good reason to suspect that he was present in Washington County, Indiana, at least some of the time during the 1820s. Despite occasional trips back to Tennessee for synod meetings and perhaps other business, he evidently made that Indiana county his home from about 1820 until his death in 1829. What accounts for this final move, back to Indiana?

It may be that Jacob returned to Indiana at the request of his synod. We know that his first work there (sometime between 1805 and about 1812) was something of an extended missionary visit. It is clear, too, that his Lutheran colleagues in Tennessee had a high opinion of him as a missionary. When in 1820 a German Lutheran community in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, asked the synod for a minister, the synod selected Jacob to fulfill this extended two-year mission. In a letter Zinck wrote two years later, he referred to a recent mission (perhaps the same one) and reported that he had baptized 28 adults and 69 children in Louisiana and even more in Indiana. It is likely that Jacob did go on this mission to Cape Girardeau (then in Louisiana Territory but now in Missouri) but unlikely that he spent the entire two years there, and in fact we cannot say how long he might have been there.⁵³ As late as 1826 the synod asked Jacob Zinck to undertake a mission trip to Highland County, Ohio. We do not know whether he actually accepted and went on this trip.

The synod certainly had reasons to send Jacob back to Indiana, for it was seeking to cultivate support there for its particular teachings. The German-speaking Lutherans in Tennessee had found themselves having doctrinal and other differences with the existing synod, that in North Carolina. Eventually seven of the dissenting pastors, including Jacob Zinck, came together at Solomon's Church on July 17, 1820, and created a new synod: the Tennessee Synod. The members of the new synod said they wanted to retain both the "true" Lutheran teachings, as expressed in the Augsburg Confession, and their German language.

Throughout the next decade those loyal to one synod or the other battled for the allegiance of the Lutheran congregations found in the region Jacob had once served, and beyond. Jacob seems to have been in the thick of the battle, and this intradenominational struggle may have influenced why Jacob did what he did. Is this why he returned to Tennessee after 1812? And did he later go back to Indiana not only to minister to his fellow Lutherans but to persuade them that the viewpoint of the Tennessee Synod was the correct one?

It is also possible that sometime after 1820 Jacob – 64 years old that year – was bringing his active ministry to a close, perhaps because his health was failing. The 1816 Washington County letter cited above refers to a health problem, though it may have been merely a passing one. More importantly, in 1828 the synod's minutes note that Jacob had suffered an attack of palsy (a stroke, it is likely), and a year later he was dead. Did poor health compel him to go where he could finally settle into a life of retirement near some close relatives (children and a brother) – Washington County, Indiana?

The weight of the evidence is against this explanation. Jacob went on a missionary trip to Louisiana (probably Missouri) in 1820 and 1822, and as we have seen his colleagues considered him fit to undertake another, to Ohio, in 1826. We also know that during the previous year, 1825, he made an extended preaching visit to places in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia – back home, in other words. These included Winchester, Newtown (now Stephens City), and Staufferstown (now Strasburg – very near to the family of Zinck's mother, who was a Funkhouser). The next year, Jacob Zinck attended a Tennessee Synod meeting. Furthermore, Jacob had finally been ordained on July 19, 1820, hardly a step one would take just before retiring from the ministry.⁵⁴ He had been preaching since he was 25 years old, in 1781, but he was not actually ordained until now, though he had been licensed, by the Synod of North Carolina, on October 18, 1814.⁵⁵

Although frontier conditions made some denominations less than punctilious about the formalities of ordination, these Lutherans were actually quite particular about who had the proper credentials to preach and perform religious rites. The doctrinal disagreements between the two synods may have delayed Jacob's ordination, therefore. Unless Jacob Zinck viewed ordination as a kind of vindication for a long career he was about to close, I think it is likely that he returned to Indiana after 1820 bent on continuing his ministry – and on promoting the Tennessee Synod's point of view.

There is more to the story of Jacob Zinck's being licensed as a minister, though, and the additional details will recall for us what we learned earlier about the non-existent "Heinrich" Zinck. A Lutheran minister who was visiting Buehler's Church and other congregations in eastern Tennessee in 1813 wrote to a correspondent about an interesting conversation with Jacob Zinck. Jacob had told him that he had been licensed by the Ministerium in Pennsylvania, before which he had appeared in person. The license had long since expired, Jacob acknowledged, but he had persuaded his fellow Lutherans in Tennessee that it remained valid and that he had a right to continue to minister to them. The chronic shortage of qualified and willing ministers on the Virginia and Tennessee frontier made it possible for the unordained (and even a few outright impostors) to convince congregations – and perhaps themselves – that they were able to do the Lord's work, and so Zinck apparently had never been challenged.

The records of the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium in Philadelphia confirm that two men described only as Zinck and Henkel, with no first names recorded in the minutes, were present personally before the Pennsylvania Synod meeting there on May 31, 1790.⁵⁶ The two men sought licenses to preach. The Ministerium requested – "as briefly as possible," it specified – that Zinck and Henkel put down in writing accounts of their lives and the substance of their preaching. Having examined these descriptions, on the following morning the Ministerium decided that Zinck and Henkel lacked the necessary qualifications and declined to admit them, at least "for the present." There can be little doubt that the applicant named Zinck was Jacob Zinck, especially since the Henkel in question was a member of a well-known Lutheran family from the Shenandoah Valley with whom Jacob Zinck was closely associated.

There is no evidence that Jacob repeated this examination in another year, or that he was licensed by any other Lutheran group until 1814. Did he decide that as long as he acquired the experience the Ministerium was looking for he was qualified to be a member of that body? Having grown up in the Shenandoah Valley at a time when it was underserved by qualified ministers but had a number of visiting preachers who were failures elsewhere or outright frauds, Jacob may have considered experience the best teacher. (Somehow he was able to persuade at least four states that he was qualified as a minister, for he performed numerous marriages in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana.) It seems more than coincidental that soon after the Ministerium refused to accept him Jacob Zinck left the Shenandoah Valley and took his ministry to southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, where he actively ministered for a number of years. Then came Jacob Zinck's conversation with the visiting minister in 1813, which may help to explain why he felt the need to "renew" his license soon afterwards.⁵⁷

As we have seen, at its 1814 meeting the Ministerium in Philadelphia considered a letter from a man named Zinck, who evidently had inquired about being licensed by the Ministerium there instead of by its counterpart in North Carolina. The Ministerium in Pennsylvania told him that he should contact the one in North Carolina. It may be no coincidence, either, that Jacob Zinck was soon thereafter identified in the North Carolina synod's minutes as a candidate and in October of 1814 was licensed by that synod. Yet some questions about his qualifications must have lingered, for as late as 1825 his old friend Paul Henkel – possibly his companion on that 1790 trip to the Ministerium meeting in Philadelphia – wrote to a son that Jacob was going to have catechetical instruction before the coming Tennessee Synod meeting in North Carolina.

All that we have seen here reinforces our image of a man who from the 1790s at least until the mid-1820s was in constant motion throughout Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana as he pursued his ministerial and missionary calling. Histories of the Lutheran Church describe his "boundless zeal" and deep conviction, along with his constant travel "with the seasons." Whether, and how often, his family might have accompanied him on his journeys or moved with him is not known, but to me it seems most likely that he stationed them in Virginia from 1791 through 1805, in Kentucky from 1805 until 1812 or so, and then in Indiana after that. We can only wonder if Jacob and the others ever called anyplace "home."⁵⁸

Jacob Zinck played a key role in helping to establish the Lutheran Church in Tennessee and Indiana. He and others not only served as pastors but made numerous long and arduous trips on horseback and by buggy, staying where they could find shelter (or even out of doors) and depending upon those they met for their sustenance. Zinck was especially instrumental in planting Lutheranism in Indiana, which not long after his death organized its own synod – one sympathetic to the views of the Tennessee Synod, it should be said. He had a reputation as a man of superior intellect and ministerial ability, whatever his formal credentials were.

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rev. 7/23/10

Notes

¹Some Zinck researchers give James as the middle name of this man, the son of another Jacob Zinck we will encounter presently, but I have seen no documentary evidence that his middle name was James. Return to text

²In his will, Jacob left his real estate to his wife, with the property to be divided among their six children at her death. One of the children mentioned is Michael Zink, who was also the executor of the will.

³A Zink relative in Hymera wrote to me in 1999 that there is a neglected Zink family cemetery near Hymera, and this may be where Jacob Zinck is buried. This cemetery does not appear on the USGS map for Hymera/Indiana or on the list of cemeteries provided by the county historical society. A cholera pandemic swept through Sullivan County in 1851, and it is possible that this disease caused the death of Jacob Zinck. Return to text

⁴I have not seen this grave marker and do not know in which cemetery she is buried, although she is possibly interred with her second husband (mentioned below). One Zink researcher states that Mary was born in 1799, but I think this is incorrect. Return to text

⁵One of the other signers, interestingly, was the governor of the Indiana Territory, future U.S. president William Henry Harrison. Evidently the residents were trying to document the number of males at least 21 years old (and thus eligible to vote) who supported creation of a locally elected legislature, the second stage leading to statehood for the Territory of Indiana. (The rest of the Northwest Territory was required to have 5,000 eligible males before it could have a legislature, but Indiana needed only a majority vote.) Return to text

⁶In addition, there is a Jacob Zink in Monroe County, but he is only 16 to 26 years old.

⁷In fact, the Sinks are not in one of the printed indices; only by checking a second index, published by another company, did I find them listed in that year. Return to text

⁸Barring any unusual circumstances, we can be sure that Jacob and Mary {Ring} Zink arrived in Indiana before 1820 because their son Michael was born in that state in 1816.

⁹Almost 79 acres (in the west half of the northwest quarter) in Section 19, Township 13 North, Range 12 West, which is shown on the USGS map for Grandview/Illinois. Return to text

¹⁰Jacob (and, the deed says, Polly) Zink's property in Washington County, sold on November 12, 1826, was part of the southeast quarter of Section 7, Township 3 North, Range 4 East (73 acres). Sale of the remainder will be discussed later. Return to text

¹¹The Jacob Zinck who remains in Washington County in 1830 is listed in the correct age column, but he has no sons in the column where Michael should be listed. That year there is a Jacob Zink in Edgar County, Illinois; he is 30 to 40 years old but also has no sons Michael's age. (He is probably the man who patented land in that county in 1826, as noted earlier.) The Jacob Zinck in Sullivan County is undoubtedly the man we are looking for.

¹²Jacob's patent (received on October 1, 1835) was for the southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 34, Township 9 North, Range 8 West. See slide 11994 (2006) for a view of this property. On February 13, 1837, and on January 17, 1838, Jacob purchased two more 40-acre properties: the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 34 and the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 28. He received patents for these purchases on August 1, 1839. For the locations of these purchases (which were adjacent to the property owned by Jacob and Mary's son, Michael Zink), see the USGS map for Hymera/Indiana. For a view of the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 34 in 2006, see slide 11981. Each of these three properties cost Jacob $50, for a total of $150. See Appendix II for a description of how public lands were surveyed and sold by the United States government. As we have seen in our discussion of Michael Zink, he and his father exchanged properties on September 18, 1851, a few days after Jacob wrote his will. This exchange transferred 80 acres in Sections 34 and 35 (the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter and the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter) to Jacob in return for 40 acres (the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter) in Section 28. One cannot tell whether or not this transaction was in anticipation of Jacob's imminent death. See slide 11992 for a view of the property in Section 28 in 2006. Jacob Zink's will disburses or mentions 320 acres. He left all of his property to his widow, but upon her death (he does not mention her possible remarriage) 160 acres would go to their son John (80 acres in Section 34 of Township 9 North, Range 8 West and another 40 acres adjoining it on the south, from the will's wording probably in Section 3 of Township 8 North, Range 8 West). Forty more acres would go to their daughter Eliza; daughter Rebecca had already received her own 40 acres. Eighty additional acres that Jacob and Mary {Ring} Zink had inherited from her father, Michael Ring, were to be sold and the proceeds divided among the children. Since we know from the patents referred to above that Jacob owned 120 acres and that he would receive another 40 acres from Jacob and Mary's son Michael a few days after the father wrote his will, we are left not knowing the source of 80 acres. Jacob evidently purchased these 80 acres in a deed that was lost in the 1850 courthouse fire because he is not shown with additional purchases in this area in the database of the Bureau of Land Management and a query to the Bureau regarding purchases before 1820 similarly uncovered no purchases by him. Return to text

¹³Oddly, in 1850 there is a Mary Ring, age 52 years old (thus born in 1798) living in Jackson Township of Sullivan County, Indiana – where Jacob and Mary lived. This Mary Ring is living with a John Pattin, his wife Margaret, and a daughter named Mary Ann (whose names are actually reversed on the census sheet, as it happens). At first I thought this might be the recently widowed Mary {Ring} Zinck, until I established that this woman is almost certainly the widow of a man named Ring instead of Jacob's widow Mary – and then subsequently found Jacob and Mary themselves on the 1850 census. Return to text

¹⁴The census taker's habit of "trailing" the dot above the i may have been what fooled the indexer. Unfortunately, we do not know the ages of Michael's siblings. A John and a Jane are listed as the second and third children of Jacob and Mary Zinck in the most complete book on the Zink family, but this book has only their names and so we cannot compare their ages to those of the children of Jacob and Mary "Zwick." Additional research focusing on the two children listed in 1850, John and Jane, strengthens the case that the couple named "Zwick" are in fact Jacob and Mary Zinck. An Eliza Jane Sinks was married in Vermillion County, Indiana, in 1836 – a date that would make her a plausible sibling of Michael Zink, born in 1816; if this Eliza Jane Sinks were the daughter of Jacob and Mary Zinck named Eliza Jane (which was her full name), the presence of a Jane in the "Zwick" household in 1850 would cause us to doubt that the two adults named "Zwick" are in fact the two Zincks. But the parents of Eliza Jane Sinks are known: her father, Andrew Jackson Sinks, was born in Tennessee in 1789 and moved through Kentucky and Ohio to Indiana about the same time Jacob Zinck did, so he might be Jacob's brother). Thus the "Jane Zwick" on the 1850 census could very well be the Jane Zinck who was the daughter of Jacob and Mary Zinck. I found John Zinck on the 1870 census, when he is 37 years old – a good match with the boy in the "Zwick" household in 1850. It is interesting that he spells his name Zinck, as Jacob did, which suggests that he is indeed Jacob's son. It is also worth observing that a Michael Ring, age 28 years old, lives next to the "Zwick" family – quite possibly with his sister and her family, although that is only a guess. All this is further circumstantial evidence that the couple on the 1850 census is actually the Jacob and Mary Zinck we are studying in this section. Return to text

¹⁵The 1860 census states that Mary cannot read or write. It is not clear where Samuel Simons and Mary lived during their years together, but he owned considerable property in Greene County. I could find wills for neither of them, nor any cemetery records, so where Mary is buried is a mystery.

¹⁶Mary {Ring} Zinck is not found in any of the information that has been contributed to the LDS. Return to text

¹⁷See slides 11089-91 for views of this area in 2005. Another source identifies the Ring properties as 16 miles northwest of the county seat, which was then slightly west of Galax, Virginia. Independence did not become the county seat until later. Return to text

¹⁸Martin Ring's estate included five cows and calves, five steers, four yearlings, six sheep, three horses, seventeen hogs, and miscellaneous farm and home property. The property sale was dated August 20, 1812, but since it was recorded at the August 1811 court the year 1812 must be an error. Return to text

¹⁹The 320 acres of public land that Michael Ring purchased between 1809 and 1815, discussed earlier, was in Section 8, Township 3 North, Range 4 East. What became of that property is not clear, for the property that Michael and Susanna Ring sold in several stages from May 1821 through October 1824 was in the adjoining Section 7: 165 acres, all in the southeast quarter of Section 7. One of the sales (June 2, 1821) was to Jacob and Polly Zinck, who in turn sold five acres of it the next year (February 22, 1822) and the remainder, as we have seen, in 1826. An early patent not found in the database of the Bureau of Land Management shows that Michael Ring acquired from another man his rights to the southeast quarter of Section 7 and patented that quarter on January 12, 1820. It is possible that Michael Ring had been unable to complete payment for the 320 acres in Section 8 and either lost his investment or sold his rights to someone during the hard times after 1815 but then was able, after 1820, to secure the part of Section 7 that he sold as detailed above.

²⁰Michael Ring (spelled Wring on the patent document) received a patent for the west half of the northwest quarter of Section 9, Township 8 North, Range 8 West, for which he paid $100. See slide 11995 for a 2006 view of this property. It appears that his land was later sold for coal mining, as was that of Daniel Ring, evidently his son or brother. The first strip mining in Sullivan County began in this area in 1913; within a few years, it had transformed much of the county for the worse. On the other hand, Sullivan County was the scene of the first efforts in the United States to reclaim land used for strip mining (in 1918), and much of the area despoiled by this destructive technique has been turned into parkland and national forests. See the USGS map for Hymera/Indiana for Michael Ring's property. Return to text

²¹See the USGS map for Lexington East/North Carolina for Hamby's Creek and some but not all of the other waterways mentioned in the text. Since 1822 this area has been in Davidson County. Clito Mill, located in this area, was operated for many years by Martin Ring's descendants and may be the mill located on this millpond. See digital images 00828-834, taken in 2010, for various locations on or near these waterways. Return to text

²²The original structure of this church was shared by Lutheran and Reformed congregations. About 1900, the Lutherans moved a mile north and the Reformed congregation took ownership of the original site (which has had several later buildings on it). See digital image 00827 for the site (now that of the Pilgrim Reformed Church) where the original structure, shared by it and the Pilgrim Lutheran Church the Rings attended, once stood. See the USGS map for Lexington East/North Carolina for Hamby Creek and the original location of Pilgrim Reformed Church. The portion of Hamby Creek that was called Baughler's Branch is unknown, but it was most likely the (western) portion closest to the church. Some of the sites mentioned here are presently in Davidson County. Return to text

²³The "Daniel Ring" who also arrived that year was actually a man named Daniel Reig who has no connection to the Ring family we are studying. Return to text

²⁴This Johannes Ring arrived aboard the Mary (Captain John Hodgeson) from Rotterdam and Deal on September 30, 1727. Return to text

²⁵ There is a discrepancy here: some sources report that Martin Ring married a daughter of Michael Flores whose name in baptismal records is shown as Maria Sophia, not Catharina. In truth there seems to be some confusion about the names of many of the Flores daughters and their spouses, but I have opted for the information in Michael's will. It is possible that Martin Ring married both women, Maria (the oldest) first and then Catharina when Maria died. It is also possible that the baptismal record is in error and that Maria Catharina's name was mistakenly recorded as Maria Sophia – perhaps because of confusion with the name of her sponsor, as one researcher suggests.

²⁶Another explanation for the origins of Martin Ring should be considered. It is that he was from an English Ring family that came to Massachusetts on the Speedwell after a sojourn in Leyden in the Netherlands. A Martin Ring from this family was born in Yarmouth, Cumberland County, Maine (then Massachusetts) on November 7, 1744. The youngest child, this Martin Ring disappears from New England and could have migrated southward into northeastern Pennsylvania, where he might have married Catharina Flores during the 1760s. Although he was not German himself, he might have adopted her church and culture such that he was considered German by those who knew the family there and later in North Carolina and Virginia. There is no documentary evidence to prove or disprove this hypothesis, but it is intriguing. Return to text

²⁷See the USGS map for Milford Square/Pennsylvania for the locations of this church and the town of Dillingerville, and see slide 010070 for a 2002 view of the Zion Lutheran Church building that stands on this site. These places are now in Lehigh County. The later Johannes Ring may well have been a relative who named his own son for the older Martin Ring. Return to text

²⁸Under the command of William Vettery, the Friendship had sailed from Rotterdam and Deal. Almost exactly a year later, this ship would bring the Henry Rickabaugh family to America. Return to text

²⁹Some of the information contributed to the LDS states that Jacob Zinck was born on June 10, 1757, instead. One Zink researcher gives his date of birth as July 11, 1758, but I have seen no evidence to support this.

³⁰There is a difference of opinion among Zink researchers about the location of his burial, but the Lutheran cemetery mentioned in the text (sometimes called the "Fulmer" Cemetery because of the family also buried there) does contain a stone that agrees with what we know about Jacob Zinck – spelled Zink on the stone. Although the upper left corner is now missing, the remainder clearly shows the letters ink. The years of the deceased are also missing, but the months and days of the age of the deceased are in accord with the age of Jacob Zinck. The stone also states that he was (unreadable) from his 25th year until his death, which matches Jacob Zinck's ministerial career (from 1781 until his death). A book on the Zink family states that in 1933 the inscription on this stone read "Jacob Zink died 13 February A.D., 1829, aged 72 yr., 8 mo., 3 da. A minister of the gospel from his 25th year till his death." This cemetery is not shown on the USGS map for the area. See slides 12085 through 12087 for views of the stone and the cemetery in 2006. Return to text

³¹No Zinck family histories suggest such an earlier marriage, it should be said. Return to text

³²A contemporary stated that one of the elders of Zion's Church in Tennessee, where Jacob was minister, was a relative of Jacob. Adam Miller was one of those elders, but the reference is ambiguous enough that we cannot be sure he is the person being referred to – or how he was related to Jacob, for that matter. Return to text

³³The name Wertmiller can be found spelled in a multitude of ways and was probably Würtmüller originally. Elizabeth's father, John Ziegler, was probably related in some way to a George Sigler [Ziegler] who sacrificed himself in 1765 or 1766 (sources differ) in saving a group of twenty or so women and children from Indians. These people, residents of the Narrow Passage Creek region, were fleeing to Woodstock, Virginia, in an effort to escape a band of marauding Indians. When they were attacked, Sigler, an elderly man who had joined the group, fought off the Indians using his musket as a club. He was slain, but his actions enabled the others to make it safely to Woodstock. Return to text

³⁴See Slides 10280 through 10283 for views of Zion Lutheran Church in 2002. Return to text

³⁵It is interesting to note that Christ Lutheran Church voted to give $4.75, plus fifty cents for wine, to Mary Zinck's family a few days after she died in 1836, another sign that the family may have been living nearby. The stated purpose was "for relief," perhaps for her funeral, a grave marker, or both. See slides 12929-33 (taken in 2008) for Pennsylvania Run Presbyterian Church and Mary Zinck's grave marker. Return to text

³⁶The confirmation was performed by a circuit-riding minister from Frederick County, Maryland, where the record was filed on June 22, 1772 – probably a week or so after the event. The site of the church is not known. It might have been the Lutheran church at the corner of Court and Main Streets in Woodstock (mentioned later in the section devoted to Peter Muhlenberg), or it might have been one of two other Lutheran churches in the Woodstock area: Zion Church (formally known as Zion-Pine Church) or Trinity Lutheran Church, both of which the Zinck family seems to have attended. There was a heavy Lutheran concentration throughout the Shenandoah Valley at this time since so many early settlers were Germans. Lutheran churches were located at or near Winchester, Stephens City, Strasburg, Woodstock, Timberville, Stony Creek, Shenandoah, Massanutten, and Friedens. Jacob Zinck may have received religious instruction from several Lutheran pastors. One was Henry Wortmann, who served the Stony Creek area between 1754 and 1760. Another was Johann Schwarbach of Culpeper County, Virginia, who made annual visits to groups of Lutherans in the Shenandoah Valley from 1765 to 1771. His work was continued by Johann Andreas Krug of Frederick, Maryland, who confirmed Jacob Zinck in 1772. These men may have inspired Jacob to become a minister.

³⁷Jacob Zinck also attended Rader's Church but may have preached first at a schoolhouse where Zion Church was later built. See slide 09970 for a 2001 view of the site of the original Rader's Church. Return to text

³⁸As we have already seen, "Sr." and "Jr." were often used only to differentiate between two men having the same name, whether or not they were parent and child. They might be related otherwise, for example as uncle and nephew (probably the relationship in this instance), or not at all. Return to text

³⁹On the other hand, tax records in Hampshire County do not begin until 1782, so we should not dismiss the possibility that the Jacob Sinks listed in them through 1788 was a different man with that name – not our Jacob Zinck, that is – who died about 1788. In 1787, a Jacob Sinks also signed a petition to adjust a Hampshire County boundary.

⁴⁰Early settlers in this region formed first the Watauga Association and then the independent state of Franklin, both separatist in nature, and North Carolina still claimed the area. By 1790 it was clear that the area would form a new state, Tennessee. There is no record of a marriage for Jacob Zinck in Washington County, Virginia, where he lived after moving south from Shenandoah County. Return to text

⁴¹There is more than one Beaver Creek in this Tennessee-Virginia area, but the descriptions of the property make it clear that the watercourse on which Jacob Zinck purchased was the Beaver Creek that runs southwest from near Abingdon through the city of Bristol. Fortunately, a modern researcher has calculated the approximate location of Jacob Zinck's 190 acres, which lies north of Countiss Ridge and straddles Route 633 between Black Hollow Road and Harley Spring. See the USGS maps for Warren/Virginia and Wyndale/Virginia for the location of this property. See slides 11094-11103, taken in 2005, for views of the general area where Jacob's property probably was located; these slides were taken before the exact location of Jacob Zinck's Washington County, Virginia, property was determined. In some but not all years, the tax rolls show Jacob Zinck with varying number of horses and mules. He does not have a tithable in his household until 1794, which would seem to be too early if he was married during the 1780s and so may be a hired hand. Return to text

⁴²Marriage records for Washington County, Virginia, reflect this shifting focus. The forty-three marriages Jacob Zinck performed there from 1790 through 1802 were distributed as follows: one in 1790, seventeen during the next two years, just one in 1793 (September), about two dozen spread over 1794-97, three in early 1798, and only two more through 1802 – although there was one at least as late as mid-1813, too. This suggests that Zinck was absent from Washington County (and perhaps the Holston Valley) during 1793, perhaps in Kentucky, and that he was drawn more and more to Tennessee as time went on. In addition, the marriage in 1802 might have coincided with the final illness and/or death of Jacob's father, who died between late 1801 and late 1802.

⁴³The Reedy Creek of Sullivan County, Tennessee, does not intersect with a Grassy Spring today. There are several tributaries with similar names in Greene County, to the west, but there is no Reedy Creek in that county. The most likely location of the Zinck property is in what is now Sullivan County, Tennessee. There is only fragmentary tax information for Tennessee counties during this time. Unfortunately for us, the Zincks do not appear in that information for Sullivan County in 1796 (when they were probably still in Virginia) or in Greene County in 1805. The cemetery mentioned in Jacob Zinck's deed of sale in 1805 may be the unnamed cemetery immediately to the west of the Hortenstine Cemetery shown on the USGS map for Wyndale/Virginia. Jacob Zinck's land purchases in Tennessee may well have been for the purpose of speculation, not habitation. Return to text

⁴⁴A book published in 1930 helps us locate most of the churches Jacob Zinck served. Some of them had moved during the previous century and more. Union or Immanuel Church was on Reedy Creek, five miles north of Blountsville, Tennessee; the original location was 300 yards from the later one. (For the location of this church, see the USGS map for Blountville/Tennessee.) See slides 11069-71, taken in 2005. Return to text

⁴⁵This church was originally located five miles east of its later (as of 1930) location, but I do not know that original site. The current location is shown on the USGS map for Wallace/Virginia; the Rich Valley extends beyond this map onto that for Wyndale/Virginia.

⁴⁶Solomon's Church was ten miles south of Greeneville on the banks of Cove Creek. This is probably the Cove Creek Church found on the USGS map for Davy Crockett Lake/Tennessee-North Carolina. See slides 11074-75 for views of this church in 2005. Shaver's or Zion Church was near the headwaters of Reedy Creek, eight miles west of Bristol; its site, found in the community of Leonardsville, is now owned by Rock Hill Baptist Church. See the USGS map for Blountville/Tennessee and slides 11066-68, taken in 2005. The location of the two residences is not known. Buehler's Church was near the headwaters of Cedar Creek, six miles south of Bristol. The name of this church evolved into Beeler. See the USGS map for Bristol/Tennessee-Virginia and slides 11081-82, taken in 2005. The "old Dutch meeting house" was on the banks of the South Fork of the Holston River (between it and the Watauga River), eight miles south of Blountsville; it was across the river from Holston Grove Church. Its location is presumably under water resulting from dam construction during the 1930s, but its approximate location can be guessed at from the location of the Holston Grove Church on the USGS map for Bluff City/Tennessee. See slides 11076-77, taken in 2005. Return to text

⁴⁷ The assumption that the visiting minister meant that Jacob Zinck had left Tennessee for Louisville is strengthened by the fact that another visiting minister, in 1811, recorded that Jacob had left the area for Kentucky. There is evidence to suggest, even more than the tax roll in Campbell County does, that Jacob Zinck established a residence in Kentucky even earlier than about 1805. During 1791-93, at least, a Jacob Zink is listed in tax records in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and on August 21, 1800, a Jacob Sinks paid taxes in Pendleton County, Kentucky, just north of Bourbon County. All this seems too early for the Jacob Zinck we are studying to have arrived in Kentucky, and so these references are more likely to another man of the same name, but we cannot be sure about where this roaming minister might have had residences – and where he left his family while he himself was traveling. See the USGS maps for Louisville East/Kentucky and Jeffersonville/Indiana for the major portions of Beargrass Creek. The records of one of the churches Jacob served in the Louisville area, Christ Lutheran Church, state that he was its pastor from 1800 to 1810. The source and accuracy of this statement are not known, and it seems doubtful that Jacob was in the Louisville area before about 1805.

⁴⁸The location of the salt lick is not clear, but it may have been in what is now Jackson County, Indiana, or in Monroe Township of Washington County, Indiana. In either case it was very close to the Driftwood area where Michael Ring lived at about this same time. One source states that a Jacob Sinks entered public land in Wayne County, Indiana (the northeast quarter of Section 19, Township 16 North, Range 14 East), at the Cincinnati land office on October 25, 1811. It is conceivable that the Jacob Zink we are studying here entered land in this area – which is quite far from where we would expect to find him in Indiana – as speculation, but I am inclined to think this is a different man. This entry is not found in the Bureau of Land Management's database, but if it were bought on credit before 1820 it would not appear there. It seems a bit odd that Jacob Zinck is not shown performing any marriages in Harrison County, Indiana, between 1809 and 1817. The records undoubtedly are incomplete, but he may also have been preoccupied with his salt-making venture or away from the area much of the time. Return to text

⁴⁹See the USGS maps for Jeffersontown/Kentucky and Crestwood/Kentucky for most of the area between Floyd's Fork and Chenoweth Run and slides 12926-28 and 12942-43 for some representative portions of the area. A waterway within this area called "Shink's Branch" (see slide 12925) may indicate more precisely where the property in question was located. It is worth noting that this area is not far from where Mary M. Zink would be buried in 1836. These slides were taken in 2008. Return to text

⁵⁰For St. Paul's or Harrison's Church, see the USGS map for Cravens/Kentucky and slides 12898-99, taken in 2008. Prior to 1819, Christ Lutheran Church was on what is now Taylorsville Road and Merioneth Drive, reportedly in a barn belonging to Jacob Hoke. See slides 12936-37, also taken in 2008. From 1819 to 1833 Christ Lutheran Church was on the southeast side of what is now Main Street where the First Baptist Church stands. See slide 12938, also taken 2008. These are the locations that Jacob Zinck would have known. See the USGS map for Jeffersontown/Kentucky and the detailed information in my files for these two locations in Jeffersontown. Return to text

⁵¹Roller's Church (later called New Haven and New Hope Church) was on Fall Creek, eight miles west of Blountsville; the original location was half a mile from the later one. See the USGS map for Indian Springs/Tennessee-Virginia and slides 11078-80, taken in 2005. Return to text

⁵²See the copy of this letter, evidently in Jacob Zinck's own hand, in my files. Return to text

⁵³The German community in Cape Girardeau was strung along the Whitewater River. The Swiss-German settlers there had arrived about 1800 from North Carolina and apparently did not have a church. Return to text

⁵⁴Jacob Zinck was ordained at Solomon's Church in Greene County, Tennessee.

⁵⁵Jacob Zinck was licensed at Old Organ Church in Rowan County, North Carolina (probably because it hosted the synod meeting that year); see the USGS map for Rockwell/North Carolina for the location of this church and digital images 00835-41 (taken in 2010) for views of this beautiful structure. Return to text

⁵⁶This meeting was held at Old Zion German Lutheran Church on the east side of Fourth Street just south of Cherry Street in Philadelphia. This was the largest church structure in the United States at the time and was in 1799 the scene of the official memorial service for George Washington. The United States Mint now stands across Fourth Street from the site of the church. For a view of the site of Old Zion Church in 2002, see slides 10029-10031. Since Jacob was in Washington County, Virginia, at the end of February 1790, he may have traveled from there to Philadelphia, unless he returned to Hampshire County to marry Mary Wertmiller during 1790. The trip from the latter location to Philadelphia would not have been a difficult one. Return to text

⁵⁷ In addition, the "senior" pastor serving these German congregations died at this time, and Jacob Zinck may have felt that in order to step forward as this man's successor he needed to be licensed. Return to text

⁵⁸If Jacob's son named Jacob was born in 1789 he was probably born in Virginia. If he was born during the 1790s, it is more likely that Tennessee was his birthplace. Return to text

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