John Holder (abt. 1694 - 1784)

Born about 20 Mar 1694 in London, England [uncertain]

Ancestors

Husband of Maria Barbara (Volck) Holder — married Mar 1722 in Newburgh, Dutchess, New York

Descendants

Died 2 Mar 1784 at about age 89 in Gnadenhütten, E Penn Tp, Schuylkill [now Carbon] Co, PA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Butch Smith [send private message]

Biography

Holder, Sr., John, (B. in London, 1694. Immigrated in 1710 to New York and md. Barbara Volck in 1722.)^[1]

Please see http://www.fmoran.com/holder.html for more information, including a link to a transcription of his obituary, and notes on his descendants.

Notes

• John HOLDER Sr. was reportedly baptized in March 1694^[2] in the Church of England at the parish of St. Mary le Bow in London, near Tower Hill (not at Marylebone, as often reported). However, this christening does not appear in an image of the original parish register at familysearch.org.^[3] The parish seems to be small enough that it is hard to imagine a christening being missed. Perhaps he was born there but not christened, or it was at a non-Anglican church and the person who contributed the obituary was mistaken.

A genealogy of this family circulating in the 1990s stated that John Sr. was born in Beaumont Palace, Oxford (a royal palace), but this is contradicted by his obituary and is very doubtful. That could be another John HOLDER, since HOLDER is also an English name.

• John HOLDER apparently used the name John & signed his name with English script, which indicates he was English, but he spoke German in daily life after his marriage.
• If the baptism at St. Mary le Bow is correct, mother Sybilla was in England a decade before the great inrush of German-speaking emigrants to England in 1705/6/8 after they had heard that Queen Anne would provide them a place to settle, but they ended up homeless on the streets of London. Finally Queen Anne provided funds for several thousand to go to America, the plan being to settle them among the Indians up along the Hudson River.

This was the famous group that came to NY under the religious leader Joshua HARSCH, who called himself ‘Kocherthal’. John HOLDER later married a young woman from this group of immigrants, and earlier family researchers liked to think he and his mother had arrived with them. However, no one named HOLDER appears in the many lists of these immigrants.

• Mar 1722: In Newburgh NY, John married Barbara VOLCK, dau of a Palatine who had come to NY in Dec 1708 with the ‘Kocherthal’ party. According to his obituary in the Moravian records, John was a sailor for 10 years before his marriage, on both a merchant vessel and a man-of-war — that would have been between 1710 and 1722. The obit also says he came with his mother to New York in 1707. His mother Sybilla, if she was a GRAEFF, might have been a daughter of a Dutch merchant.
• 8 Aug 2021 the following church registers were searched at the Denver library for any mention of Sybilla Graeff or John/Johann Holder with no result (transcriptions by Arthur C.M. Kelly):

1. Marriage record of the Lutheran congregations of Athens and West Camp, New York, 1705-1899 G929.374737 K295mar
2. Marriage record of Kinderhook Reformed Church, Kinderhook, New York G929.374739 K295mar
3. Marriage record of Linlithgo Reformed Church, Livingston, New York, 1723-1899 G929.374739 K295marL
4. Marriage record of Schenectady Reformed Church, 1694-1852, Schenectady, New York G929.374744 K243mar
5. Pastors and people : German Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Pennsylvania field, 1717-1793 G974.8 G465pas
6. Baptism record, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, West Camp, N.Y., 1708-1899, and Luther's Chapel, Saugerties, 1844-1851, Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Messiah, Troy, 1869 G929.374734 S132bap
7. Records of Lutheran churches of Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, NY area : members, confirmands, & family lists, 1734-1889 G929.374733 K295re 2000

• 1723 John was living in Unity Tp Phila Co (now Montgomery) PA when first child, daughter Mary, was born. They had 6 sons and 6 daughters, according to his obituary. Birth dates for 6 sons and 5 daughters are given in church records for Barbara Volck Holder. The missing daughter is assumed to be a child who died young, probably unbaptized.

• 1731 John HOLDER moved to Oley Hills near Colebrookdale (Berks County), To Lynn Tp (now in Lehigh County) with family — on record in Lynn Tp 1734. • Map on p.29 in Wm. Brobst's "Brobst Chronicles" (1998) shows John HOLDER's land on the N side of Kistler's Creek just E of the county line, across the creek from Andreas Folk/VOLCK and E of Philip Jacob PROBST. Just a bit upstream on the S bank, the land was held by Capt. Charles FOLK, later by Matthias PROBST. (Map taken from Winter 1988-89 issue of Jnl of the Berks Co Gen Socy, p.34.)

• John HOLDER’s sons were all bilingual German & English -- on a petition to Harrisburg government asking for protection against Indians, all signatures are in German script except John & Thomas EVERETT and John & Joseph HOLDER, per Transactions of the Moravian History Society v.II, pp.402-405 (1886).

• In America John HOLDER was not a member of a church until he was converted by the Moravians, joining their congregation in Bethlehem PA Feb. 1748, according to his obituary in their records. His wife joined in 1749 in Macungie, Lehigh Co. Translation of Moravian documents done by Raymond Hollenbach 1973 (quoted by Carter in Carmichael) about records at Allemängel and Gnadenhütten, says John HOLDER heard Brother C_____ SCHNEIDER in 1746 and 1747 but was at first adverse to his teachings. However, after attending a meeting and learning what was really going on, he changed his attitude and in February 1748 was admitted as a member of the congregation at Bethlehem.

• 1758 Nov 13 John HOLDER is collector of Lynn Twp.

• 1761 Sept 1 taxes in Lynn Twp show just one John HOLDER paid 14 shillings. This is presumably John Sr.

• January 1762 John HOLDER Sr. and his son in law John EVERETT and Henry ROMICH witness the will of George FOULK of Lynn Tp. HOLDER and EVERETT become executors for the estate of George Foulk / VOLCK of Lynn Tp, EVERETT’s wife's brother.

• A petition in 1753 was signed by most of our early settlers, including John HOLDER Sr. & Jr.: per "Fragments of Early History", by Charles R. Roberts, read before the Lehigh County Historical Society, May 10, 1924, which opens with: "In 1753, Jacob BARE, living in Allemengel, Northampton County, petitioned the court, praying liberty from the court to crave the relief of charitable people, as on March 5, 1753, his house with all it contained was burnt to ashes, leaving him and his wife and small children destitute. The petition was signed by John HOLDER, John HOLDER, the younger, Joseph HOLDER, Carl VOLCK, Erhart FOSSELMAN, Samuel FRISS, George KISTLER, Adam EDELMAN, John EVERETT, Nicolaus SMITH, Lenhart BAUMAN, Paul PETERS, George WEISS and Philip ENNIS, and was allowed by the court."

• A letter written 30 Nov 1756 by Timothy Horsfield to Gov. Wm. DENNY reports that John HOLDER had come to Bethlehem that evening and reported an Indian attack in “Allemangle” the preceding Sunday, 28 Nov. It occurred at the home of a man named SCHLOSSER; a man named STONEBROOK was killed; the Indians grabbed two girls, but one escaped, the other was taken.

• A John HOLDER was a neighbor to Philip Jacob PROBST & Caspar FOLLWEILER & George & Henry RITTER in the mid 1700s -- this man or his son of same name. Both of them moved 1769 over the Blue Mt. to the Moravian settlement called Gnadenhuetten, 20 mi NNW of Allentown, which was evidently the site of the abandoned Ft. Allen Barracks, joining son in law John EVERETT, who had joined the Moravians in 1760 and in 1769 moved there with family (north of the Blue Mt on Mahoning Creek in Mahoning Tp, at that time in Northampton Co, now Carbon Co, and now called South Lehighton; it's on the Mahoning R. 20 mi. NNW of Allentown, and on a typical map looks like it's on the Lehigh R., just S of Jim Thorpe).

Death & Estate

• Both John Sr. & Jr. were reportedly buried in the Moravian God's Acre at Gnadenhutten, at what is now Lehighton PA, on the west bank of the Lehigh River north of the Blue Mountain, though Elizabeth Harris (fine Moravian researcher from NC) says no death date is known for the younger John HOLDER.. One of them was tax collector for Lynn Tp 1758.

The Gnadhutten (Lehighton) / Allemangel (Lynn Township) Moravian church book transcription shows the burial entries for both Barbara and John on pages 47 and 48.^[4]

• Elizabeth Harris says: “ John Holder's obituary (1784, see http://www.fmoran.com/johnholder.txt) states that 7 of his 12 children survived him. We know for sure that Maria, Joseph, George, Catharina, Charles and Barbara lived past 1784, and that Andreas, Sybilla, Elisabeth, and an unnamed daughter did not. That leaves John Jr. (born 1725, death date unknown but after 1774, and Jacob. One of these sons must have been living in 1784 and the other not. We now think that this was Jacob [see Holder-744], whose age corresponds to a Jacob Holder who died in Berks Co. PA in 1820.

• Fact: Christening (1694) London, Greater London, England (again, see top, there is no such record of a christening at St. Mary le Bow in this time period for any "Holder).

Sources

1. ↑ Moravian Historical Society: Page 393
2. ↑ from his obituary; see http://www.fmoran.com/johnholder.txt
3. ↑ Parish registers for St. Mary-le-Bow Church, London Baptisms (St. Mary), 1653-1697 image 137 of 614
4. ↑ Moravian Church records; congregation at Allemengel transcribed and typed August 1973 Raymond H. Hollenbach p. 47

• "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 12 August 2020, 18:57), entry for John Holder Sr(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:LJGS-MJ4); contributed by various users.

See also:

• For more info: Search Moravian records in PA.

• Holder's children are listed in article by Sylvia Ann Moyer Graybill in Fall 1999 Jnl of the Berks Co Gen Socy, pp. 21-23 (Holder on p.22).

• See http://www.fmoran.com/holder.html. See http://cooke.net/~clwhite/holder.htm [2001].

• See Kunkel's genealogy page for PA -- has Brobst, Kistler, Volck, etc. — http://home.ptd.net/~bkunkel/ [2001].

• Lovell, Rosemary (Faulk). Owen County Cousins (J. G. Hauser, Inc., 1977) For repository information see: WorldCat, p. 1

Works cited:

• Moravian Historical Society. Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society. Nazareth, Pa. [etc.]: [s.n.], 1876.