The Mystery of Henry Shanower: A Solution

In my very first post for this blog, I asked the question: “Who was Henry Shanower?” That’s a question that Shanower family researchers keep running up against. We can trace the Shanower genealogy back to Henry Shanower, who died sometime in the early 1800s in Adams County, Pennsylvania. But no one has been able to determine Henry’s parents, much less siblings—or even the name of a wife.

It’s not as if there are no records of earlier Shanowers. There are plenty. Spellings of the last name vary widely—Shonower, Shonauer, Schoenauer, even Shinaver. Records of earlier Schonauer generations extend back through Germany to Switzerland in the 1500s.

So there’s a gap between the two sections of the Shanower family tree. How does Henry Shanower connect to the earlier Shanowers? That’s the big mystery.

After many months of sifting available evidence, I've come up with a possible solution. I want to stress that this is simply a possible solution. I can’t claim that it is the solution. I don’t know whether anyone will ever be certain of that, since so far there’s no proof.

I’ll begin with the three known Schonauer immigrants to the USA in the 1700s:

1. Anna Schonauer
2. Jost Schonauer (1707-1777)
3. Hans "John" Schonauer (1688-1749)

Anna Schonauer, #1, can be discounted as Henry’s direct Shanower ancestor because any children she had would have carried her married name, Gehman.

Jost Schonauer, #2, arrived in the USA on the ship Phoenix in 1754, very possibly in the company of Anna Schonauer. But women weren’t generally listed in passenger lists, so who knows? Jost was probably a relative of Anna, perhaps her brother, but I have no proof of that. Christian Gehman (Geimmer), Anna’s husband-to-be, was on that Phoenix voyage, too, so maybe they were all traveling together. Jost’s descendants have been pretty well traced by his great-great-great-great-grandson Robert Cole and there doesn't seem to be any point where the Henry Shanower branch of the family fits among them. Other details indicate these two branches of descendants are distinct. Jost’s early descendants lived and died in Berks County, Pennsylvania—mostly in Cumru Township—while Henry Shanower died in Adams County. Jost's line was Lutheran while Henry's line seems to be German Reformed Brethren. And the spelling of the Shanower name evolved differently in Jost’s branch. It’s unlikely that Henry Shanower was Jost’s descendant.

That leaves Hans "John" Schonauer, #3, who was Jost Schonauer’s uncle. Hans "John" seems to be the best bet as the immigrant ancestor of the Henry Shanower branch of the family. Hans "John" and his immediate descendants lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—mostly in Cocalico Township—as opposed to the Jost Schonauer line in Berks County. Hans “John” and his wife Ursula (abt 1690-abt 1773) had several daughters, who did not pass down the Schonauer name. They also had three sons:

1. Christian Schonauer (1717-bet 1764 and 1770)
2. Abraham Schonauer (1722-bef 1762)
3. Jacob Shonauer (1724-1764)

Christian, #1, didn’t marry and seems to have had no offspring.

Abraham, #2, had no sons. He and his wife, Barbara Graff Schonauer (1731-unknown), had three daughters, but none of the daughters passed down the Schonauer name, of course.

Jacob, #3, however, seems to have fathered three children with his wife Maria Magdalena Haldeman Shonower Van Gundy (abt 1738-1820). Here they are in reverse order of their births:

1. unknown (1764-unknown)
2. Barbara Shonower (abt 1762-unknown)
3. John Shonower (abt 1760-unknown)

Child #1, unknown, was not yet born when its father Jacob died in 1764 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This child has seemed to Shanower family researchers Vel Shanower Kirchner and Dan F. Shanower to be the best candidate for the identity of Henry Shanower, and until now I’ve agreed. However, I’ve found no evidence that this child even survived childbirth, and the only gender I've seen associated with this child is female, although I don’t know whether that’s proven. If she lived to have children, a female wouldn't have passed down the Shonower name.

Barbara, #2, was certainly female and wouldn't have passed down the Shonower name.

That leaves John Shonower, #3, the eldest of these three children, born about 1760. John left records of his existence. In 1774 at fourteen years old he inherited whatever was left of his father Jacob's estate. He belonged to the Lancaster County Militia in 1785 and may have fought earlier in the American Revolution. In the 1780s he paid taxes on land in the municipalities of Warwick, Bethel, and Cocalico, all in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1781 he married Elizabeth Handshue (bef 1767-unknown) in Cocalico Township.

John Shonower, here spelled Shonauer, belonged to the 2nd Regiment, 6th Battalion of the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Militia during the fall of 1785. His name is last on the right-hand page. Click picture to enlarge.

Who were John Shonower and Elizabeth Handshue Shonower’s children? I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t have any, but that would have been unusual for a married couple in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the late 1700s.

John Shonower, here spelled Shownauer, is listed fourth on this page in the Cocalico Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, tax list for 1785.

So here on one hand is childless John Shonower, born about 1760. And on the other hand is parentless Henry Shanower, likely born about the same time as John, since Henry’s only known child was born in 1785.

If only Henry's child, Jacob Shanower (1785-1829), had been a son of John and Elizabeth, not a son of Henry! If only John had actually been Henry!

Wait a minute—let’s take a closer look at Henry Shanower.

The source of the name Henry Shanower (Shaneour).

Where did the name Henry Shanower come from? The only recorded evidence I know of for Henry is in the 1888 book Portrait and Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, Michigan. Henry Shaneour is said to be the father of Jacob Shaneour and the grandfather of David Shaneour (1812-1897). (You’ll notice the spelling of the last name has evolved again. David Shaneour deliberately changed it after he quarreled with the rest of his family.) How reliable is the information in Portrait and Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, Michigan?

Books filled with short biographies and sometimes photographs of prominent residents of Midwestern counties seem to have been all the rage in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. Every county had to have one. They are a great help for general genealogical guidance—but for guidance only. They are not reliable evidence. Their information must be verified by external sources before it can be counted on as true. These biographies contain mistakes, as I've found time after time, especially mistakes about earlier generations.

To cite one example from David Maxine’s family, one of these biographical albums from Kentucky mentions his great-great-great-great-grandmother Amah Anna Lawrence. Only it doesn’t call her by that name, it calls her Lawrence Slainks. It’s clear where the “Lawrence” part came from, though not why the writer thought it was her first name. But one can only imagine where the name “Slainks” came from, since it doesn’t occur in David’s family. I suspect someone provided notes in really bad handwriting to the writer of the entry, who deciphered the scribbles as “Slainks.” Whatever the case, the name Lawrence Slainks has spread like a weed through family trees across the internet. But it’s incorrect. David’s research proves that.

So could the name “Henry Shanower” be wrong, too? I think it’s possible, even probable. I even have a logical explanation, although I need to make it absolutely clear that this is speculation.

Portrait and Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, Michigan says that Henry Shaneour's son Jacob married a woman named Elizabeth Henry. Think about that—a daughter-in-law with a maiden name of Henry—a father-in-law with the first name of Henry. Could that be one Henry too many? Elizabeth Henry’s name has been independently corroborated. So if there’s a mistake, then it must be with Henry Shaneour’s name, a name recorded nowhere else that any Shanower family researcher has discovered. I think that the person who wrote this biographical sketch somehow got the information mixed up and mistakenly assigned Elizabeth's maiden name, Henry, as the first name of her father-in-law. And so Henry Shanower was invented by accident. He’s a transcription mistake.

My solution to the Henry Shanower mystery is that there wasn’t anyone named Henry Shanower.

Then who was the father of Jacob Shanower, born 1785? I propose that his father was actually John Shonower, husband of Elizabeth Handshue Shonower.

This solution fills the gap and leaves no loose ends. There's geographic plausibility, since the Pennsylvania counties where these Shanowers lived—Lancaster, York, and Adams—are all adjacent. But there’s no proof, no evidence for this solution. There’s only lack of contrary evidence—plus the suggestion of a continuity of first names in this Shanower branch.

The continued use of first names in successive generations of a family line can give guidance in determining genealogical ties. A continuity of names is far from proof, but it can be a clue to family relationships, especially among the Pennsylvania Dutch in the eighteenth century. In this case, there are three names to consider:

1. Henry
2. Jacob
3. John

The name Henry, #1, doesn’t occur anywhere else in the Shanower/Schonauer line until much later—in 1859 among Jost Schonauer’s descendants and as David Henry Shanower’s middle name in 1881. Yet other names, such as John, Christian, Anna, and Barbara, were repeated from one generation to another. However, it’s dangerous to draw any conclusion from this. Other Schoenauer names—such as Melchior and Nichlaus—aren't repeated either. And there may have been Henrys in maternal lines I don't have information about.

In contrast, the name Jacob, #2, occurs on both sides of the Henry Shanower gap—both among the sons of immigrant Hans “John” Schonauer, as well as among the descendants of the reputed Henry.

The name John, #3, also occurs repeatedly on both sides of the gap. If John Shonower, born about 1760 and husband of Elizabeth Handshue Shonower, is actually the father of Jacob Shanower, born 1785, then there would be a case of John (Hans) Schonauer having a son Jacob who had a son John who had a son Jacob who had a son John. Talk about continuity!

In closing let me repeat that this solution—that Henry is in fact John—is speculation. There’s no proof. But considering the available information, I believe there’s no better candidate for the identity of Henry Shanower than John Shonower.

Who is Henry Shanower?

Records show that my great-great-great-great-grandfather was Jacob Shanower (1785-1829), born near York, Adams County, Pennsylvania. But the only record of Jacob Shanower’s father, Henry Shanower, that I know of is a reference in the book Portrait & Biographical Album of Hillsdale County, Michigan, 1888. On page 413, in a short biography of William Shaneour (1842-1923), the text states:

"His father, David Shaneour, is a native of Adams Co., PA, where he was born Jan. 27, 1813, the son of Jacob Shaneour and the grandson of Henry Shaneour . . ."

Don’t be thrown by the alternate spelling of the last name Shanower as Shaneour. One branch of the family still retains that spelling, so it’s not unusual. But what’s frustrating is that this reference gives no other information about Henry Shanower. Who were his parents? Where and when was he born?

Members of the Schonauer (yes, another variant spelling) family immigrated to the USA from Europe in the middle of the eighteenth century. Hans Schonauer (1688-1749), also known under the Americanized name of John, immigrated about 1744-45 and settled in Cocalico township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Originally from Switzerland, his family had been persecuted for being Anabaptists. Hans “John” Schonauer’s particular sect seems to have been Mennonite.

Hans “John” Schonauer’s nephew, Jost Schonauer (1707-1777), sometimes known as Joseph, sailed from Germany on the ship Phoenix and arrived at the State House at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on October 1, 1754. He settled in in Cumru township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, the next county over from where his uncle Hans, already five years dead, had settled. Jost seems to have been Lutheran, not Mennonite.

Many of the descendants of these men are recorded. Jost Schonauer’s descendants are traced down to the present. There doesn’t seem to be room to fit Henry Shanower into Jost’s branch of the family tree.

Jost’s uncle Hans “John” Schonauer seems a better candidate as a forefather of Henry Shanower. Could Henry be Hans’s grandson? Hans “John” and his wife Ursula had seven known children, three of them sons: Christian (1717-?), Abraham (1722-1762), and Jacob (1724-1764). I have found little trace of the eldest child Christian after his birth, although he was alive when his mother Ursula made her will in 1764. Second son Abraham’s will mentions two daughters, names unrecorded, but no sons. Hans’s third son Jacob, however, married Maria Magdalena Haldeman (1738-1820) and had two children, John Shonower (about 1760-?, yet another variant spelling) and Barbara Shonower (abt 1762-?), before he died in January 1764. Jacob’s wife, Maria Magdalena, is reported to have been pregnant at that time with a third child, whose name, gender, and birth date remain unknown. If this child survived birth and infancy, and if it was a boy, could this third child have been Henry Shanower?

That’s the theory that a couple other Shanower family researchers have developed. It’s an attractive theory. This child born after its father Jacob Schonauer died would have been born in 1764. That’s a perfectly reasonable birth year for the father of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Shanower (1785-1829), the one I began this post with.

Maria Magdalena Haldeman Schonauer re-married after the death of her husband Jacob. About 1764, not long after her first husband died, she wed Joseph Van Gundy (abt 1740-abt 1795) and had seven more children.

Court records show that Jacob and Maria Magdalena Schonauer’s son John Shonower inherited his father’s estate at the age of fourteen in 1774. But I can find no further mention of John or of his sister Barbara or of their unnamed sibling born after their father’s death. I had hoped to find mention of any of these three Shonower children with Maria Magdalena’s new family, the Van Gundys. But no luck.

There are other Schonauers in Pennsylvania at this time that are probably related, but don’t yet fit with certainty into either the Hans or Jost branches. One is Anna Schoenauer (another variant), who about 1755 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, married Christian Gehman as his second wife. There are indications that Anna Schoenauer is related to Hans “John” Schonauer and his nephew Jost Schonauer. Anna came from Hochstetten, Canton Bern, Switzerland, the area where Hans “John” and Jost were both born. Her soon-to-be-husband Christian Gehman arrived in the USA at the same time and on the same ship, Phoenix, as Jost. But I don’t know exactly how Anna is related to Hans and Jost. Her offspring wouldn’t have had the last name of Shanower anyway, so she’s not Henry Shanower’s mother, but Anna is an example of other Shanowers that don’t fit clearly into the known branches.

Two of these dangling Shanowers are Jacob Shanower, orphan, and his deceased father, John Shanower. In 1750 the Orphans Court of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, appointed John Bare as this Jacob’s guardian after his father’s death, since Jacob was still a minor. Who are these unknown Jacob and John Shanower? Could they somehow correspond to the Hans “John” Schonauer and his son Jacob that are already part of the family tree?

The answer to that seems to be “no.” It’s true that Hans “John” Shanower’s death date is recorded as 1749, so if he’d left any minor children as orphans, they could logically have had guardians appointed in 1750. But Hans “John” Schonauer didn’t leave his children orphans. His wife, Ursula (1690-1773), was still alive in 1750 and would remain so for twenty-three more years. Perhaps Ursula Schonauer married again, this time to John Bare, and her new husband was appointed guardian of her children. But I know of no record of a second marriage for Ursula. And even if such a second marriage did occur, Hans “John” and Ursula Shonauer’s son Jacob was born in 1724, so he was no longer a minor when his father died. The age of majority was then 14 years old, and the Jacob born in 1724 would have been 26 years old in 1750. In fact, none of Hans “John” and Ursula Schonauer’s seven children were minors in 1750. Their youngest, also an Ursula (1732-1766), was about seventeen when her father died, and the next year she married Abraham Hershberger. None of these Schonauer children would have needed a guardian because of minority.

So in any case, Henry Shanower springs upon the scene without any proven forebears. It’s reasonable to assume that he’s related to the Hans “John” and Jost Schonauer family. But how does he fit in? Maybe it’s true that he was the third child of Jacob and Maria, still waiting in the womb when his father died. Or maybe he was the son of Christian Schonauer, of whom so little is known. Or maybe someone introduced an inaccuracy into the records. Who knows? Errors are likely. But I hope that one day the puzzle piece that will solve the riddle of Henry’s origin will turn up.