The Endless Debate over Anna Elizabeth Walthour

The greatest unsolved mystery of our Eleven Generations genealogy research has been proving that Anna Elizabeth Hawk (b. 1767), wife of George Hawk (b. 1760), was, in fact, a Walthour by birth. The Walthours were a well documented family in both Pennsylvania and Georgia. Their property in Brush Creek was the site of a famous fort built to defend the new settlers against Indian attacks.

Anna Elizabeth Hawk lived beyond the 1850 Census, which would indicate she was over 80 year old. After bearing 12 children from 1788 (her eldest, Michael Hawk) through 1811, it's no wonder where we derived our fertility. You'd expect a woman who lived that long and supplied the forebears of half the population of the Eastern United States would have a better record of her lineage. Sadly, no.

In our earliest stages of discovering the Hawk history, virtually every "Family Tree" on Ancestry and other sources posted that Anna Elizabeth was the daughter of Stephol (Stophal, Stoph) Walthour and Dorothy (Dolly) Lenhart. This claim was completely unsupported by any documentation: birth records, baptismal records, marriage records, family lore, property records, etc. Some records about Dolly Lenhart show her in the same age bracket as George Hawk; hence, making her too young to be the mother of a child born in 1767. Lineage of Stoph Walthour is nonexistent.

The most reliable source for all things Hawk was the excellent book, "Early German Hawk Families of Westmoreland County, PA" by our cousin and WWII hero, Kenneth Hawk Slaker. In Slaker's book, he writes that Anna Elizabeth (who went by Elizabeth or Liz), was a Walthour; but, he fails to show how. As much as we respect Slaker's research, we were unwilling to take his word for it.

A wild goose chase ensued. We traveled to Western Pennsylvania and spent time in various cemeteries and the historical society digging into books about the Walthours and Hawks. We paid researchers to find birth and marriage records. We found ample material on the most notable of Walthours, as well as Conrad, Hans, and George Hawk, and Michael Hawk and his children, including his youngest, namesake Michael, who served in the Civil War and was a prisoner at Andersonville; nevertheless, we found nothing about Stoph Walthour.

We speculated that maybe Liz was an orphan by the time she married George Hawk. Her parents (or at least her father) may have died of disease or Indian attack, which was certainly common. The baptismal records, which were a rich source of finding connections among family members, show no Walthours sponsoring any of George and Elizabeth's children - which was strange, since if the Walthours were family, at least one of them would be present at their grandchild/nephew/niece's baptism.

Instead, one family became intertwined with the George Hawk family from early on: The Walter Family. Since "Walthour, Waldhauer, and Walter" were likely the same name once Anglicized, maybe Elizabeth was actually a WALTER. There was a plethora of evidence to support this theory: first, the matriarch of the Walter family was named Anna Elizabeth (nee Volick). She married George Hawk's father, Conrad, in 1789. Based on the census records, her sons followed the Hawks from eastern PA to Westmoreland County and fought with George Hawk in the same militia lead by Christopher Truby. Anna Elizabeth Walter's late husband left a will that was posted on Ancestry, and mentions a daughter, Anna Elizabeth.

We know from previous history that the Hawk men married their neighbors and cousins, so the idea that Anna Elizabeth married into the Hawk family is very reasonable. Her mother didn't marry Conrad until after Michael was born, so it wasn't as if she was George's step-sister yet. The Walters appear in several census records, in the baptismal records, and in documented histories of the family. Why not surmise that Anna Elizabeth Hawk II was, in fact, a Walter by birth?

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!