Konigmacher House

I grew up near the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County. I remember when the Cloister Shopping Center was built across the road from the Ephrata Community Hospital where my younger siblings were born. It is familiar territory, but this week I saw it with different eyes as I dug through old deeds and maps. 

Much of the land where the shopping center and hospital stand today was farmed by several related Konigmacher families who descended from immigrant Adam Konigmacher (1738-1793). The Konigmachers were householder members of the Ephrata Cloister, meaning they lived in the surrounding area and worshiped at the Cloister but did not live on the grounds or take a vow of celibacy. Many of the Konigmachers are buried in the cemetery of the Ephrata Cloister.

Below--view of the Cloister buildings from the cemetery entrance.

Two of the Konigmacher houses are still standing. One is on the corner of Route 272 and Martin Avenue, in front of the hospital. It was built by Benjamin Konigmacher about 1910 and was the birthplace of Joseph Konigmacher, founder of the Mountain Springs Hotel on the hill above the town of Ephrata. The other Konigmacher house is directly across 272 in the rear of the shopping center. Today it is a Kingsway Realty office.

This house was built in 1777 by Michael Miller, a member of the Cloister. It was the home of Adam and Eliza (Royer) Konigmacher. Adam (1821-1889) was the son of William (1797-1881) who was the son of Jacob (1771-1839), son of immigrant Adam (1738-1793). 

Adam and Eliza Konigmacher had three children, Jacob Konigmacher (1850-1912), Susan (1852-1917) wife of John P. Hess, and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (1853-1931), wife of (1) Henry Musser (2) Philip Nagel. Susan moved to Iowa and Lizzie to Illinois. Jacob got the family farm from his father and lived there until his death in 1912. He had one son, William Konigmacher, who married Anna Steinmetz. 

Jacob was a prominent person in the community. He was one of the organizers of the Farmers' National Bank in Ephrata where he was a director and vice-president. He was a trustee in the Ephrata Monument Association, serving as secretary and treasurer. He was a member of the Lutheran Church and the Pennsylvania German Society.

After Jacob's death, the farm was sold to Martin L. Zimmerman. This is where our connection to the place comes in. By 1944, Martin was getting old and needed help. Leroy's parents had been married for a little over a year and lived on another farm. They moved into the tenant house on Martin Zimmerman's farm and Pop was the hired man. Leroy was three months old when they moved to this place and they only lived there for one year so he does not remember it.

From the memories of his parents, we know the tenant house was to the left of Martin's house. The place where the shopping center is now was a meadow where cows grazed. When I look at the place now and see what was done in the name of "progress" it seems a shame that a once lush pasture is covered with asphalt, stores, and a McDonalds. Noisy traffic rushes by on a busy road that was once a quiet, peaceful farm.

During the year Leroy and his parents lived in the tenant house, the bridge was built over Route 322. The 272 (then called 222) had been built but the bridge had not because the materials were hard to obtain during the war. The road could not be used until the bridge was built to connect the two parts of 272. When the bridge was being built in 1944, Pop went out to watch and the man operating the crane allowed him to come in the cab with him.

After a year on the Zimmerman farm, Leroy's parents moved to another farm south of New Holland. That is where Leroy's earliest memories were made. They lived there until he was nine and then moved to Berks County where they lived the rest of their lives.

Sign of Jonah

The Pharisees and Saducees asked Jesus to give them a sign from heaven to verify His words. He told them, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. (Matthew 12:39). 

What was the sign of Jonah? The next verse gives us a hint. "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." I always thought the significance of that statement was the "three days and three nights." But that's missing the point.

What happened after the three days and nights? Jonah came out of the fish after three days and nights. He essentially came back from the dead for who ever survived in a whale's belly that long? Jesus was actually saying He would rise again after three days. He was prophesying His resurrection but they didn't get it. And neither did I for a long time. I was hung up on the three days and missed the deeper meaning. Now let's take it to the next level.

The resurrection was the central message of the early church. Peter preached the resurrection on the day of Pentecost and 3000 souls were converted. The apostles preached the resurrection everywhere they went, even to the highly educated on Mars Hill at Athens. 

When persecuted by the Romans in the first centuries after Christ, Christians used the fish symbol to mark meeting places and tombs, or to distinguish friends from foes. According to one ancient story, when a Christian met a stranger in the road, the Christian sometimes drew one arc of the simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in good company. The fish is still used as a Christian symbol.

What does a fish have to do with Christianity? Was it because Peter was a fisherman? Because Jesus said Christians should be fishers of men? Because fish swim in water and Christians are baptized with water? All those are weak theories. 

To early Christians, the fish was a symbol of  the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the resurrection. It is the sign of Jonah. The cross is the symbol of Jesus death; the fish is the symbol of His resurrection. Think about that the next time you see a fish on a bumper sticker.

Missing Persons

One of the things I love to do is track down a family that no one seems to know what happened to them. I just scored another victory with a Stauffer family. I had five generations of the Stauffer family from Mathias to David but that's where his line stopped. Was he never married? No one seemed to know.

David Stauffer was born in 1833 to Henry and Anna (Shirk) Martin. David died in 1876 and was buried in the Weaverland Mennonite Cemetery. That's all I knew about him. I started digging and found his estate papers in Berks County. He moved to the city of Reading about 1872. His will said he had a wife "Mattie" (nickname for Martha) and a son Theodore D. Stauffer. More searching turned up Martha (d. 1895) and Theodore, both buried at Churchtown. Two missing persons found!

Theodore was born in 1864 and died in Reading in 1913. I found his obituary in the Reading Eagle. It said he had one sister, Mrs. Charles Heist. That was a speed bump but I soon found his estate papers which showed that Mrs. Charles Heist was actually his daughter, not his sister. Her name was Helen M. Heist and she was his only child.

Helen was married to Charles Heist in Chicago in 1912 when she was 23 (if she was honest about her age on her marriage license). I don't know what the story is behind being married in Chicago because they were both born in Pennsylvania. They had one son, Charles Jr. Helen and Charles wound up in Buffalo, New York, where they died and were buried. Charles died in 1954 and Helen in 1964. 

Charles Heist Jr. was born in 1916 in Chicago and married Clydis McLendon.  In 1954, he founded a painting and sandblasting company he named after himself, C. H. Heist Company. He had a son, C. H. Heist III who took over the company when Charles II died in 1983 in Florida. Clydis died in 2005.
Charles H. Heist III was born in 1950 and the C. H. Heist company grew to a large corporation under his leadership. He had a son Charles H. Heist IV born in 1982 who is living in Florida today.

That completes the descendants of David Stauffer. It's the kind of puzzle I like to put together. It took some searching but all the pieces were found on the Internet. Genealogy research has become much easier with so many resources available without leaving home. I would have spent a day going to the courthouse to find the records I could see with a few clicks of a mouse.