Valentine Hunsicker (1700-1771)

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From A Genealogical History of the Hunsicker Family:

Our Ancestor Valentine Hunsicker was born in the Canton Zurich, Switzerland, ----, 1700.

He was an orphan, and came with his maternal grandfather, Valentine Klemmer, to America in 1717. Died 30 March, 1771.

After a short stay at Germantown, Pa., among the Palatinate settlers, the family in company with some others pushed into the interior of the dense forests of Eastern Pennsylvania, going as far north as northern Bucks County, into a district known as "der gross Schwamm" (big swamp), later called Lower Milford, which name it still retains.

In common with other primitive settlers, their house was built of roughly hewn logs, plastered with clay, and their living depended on what they could extract from hasty clearings and from the game then abounding in these wilds. It is needless to add that they were poor, compelled to depend mainly on axe and spade for a living. Young Valentine was at once thrown upon his own resources as a laborer, and was hired out to chop wood, and at intervals assist his grandfather at weaving, to help pay the cost of his passage across the ocean.

About 1720 or 1721 he went, with his uncle Henry Klemmer, who was a stone-mason, to Van Bebber (now called Skippack) and assisted him as a laborer. He helped his uncle to build the first Mennonite meeting-house there in 1724 (the second in America; that at Germantown was built first, in 1708). He remained in Skippack, and by industry and economy saved enough to purchase 125 acres of wild land, for which he paid five shillings per acre, to which he subsequently added 100 acres more. The same or part of the same was lately occupied by Henry B. Hunsicker of the sixth generation.

Philadelphia County Records show, by census taken in 1756 by Walter Johnson by order of the Provincial Government, that Valentine Hunsicker had five children, and was assessed for 225 acres of land, 100 acres being clear.

He married in 1728; the name of his first wife is unknown. By his first marriage he had two children, the eldest, a daughter, Elizabeth; she married a man named Ruth, of which family we have lost trace; and a son named Samuel, who never married. In 1732 Valentine's wife died.

He afterward, in 1735, married Elizabeth Kolb, daughter of Jacob Kolb. I have her ancestry traced back six generations to Holland, through the Van Sintern, Vander Mers, and the De Vossens, very distinguished families of Amsterdam. Two members, at different times, were Burgomeisters of their native cities.

Valentine Hunsicker became a deacon in the Mennonite Church and was active in building up the congregation in Skippack, though his ancestors in Switzerland were Reformed. By persevering toil and industry, he had cleared fully one-half of his land in his lifetime. Had a family of seven children: five sons, Jacob, Isaac, and Henry (our grandfather), and two daughters, Sara and Catherine (two children, Valentine and Abraham, died in infancy). He died 3 March 1771, and lies interred in the old Mennonite burying-ground in Skippack, but no stone marks his resting place. He directed, by will, that his son Henry, though still a minor at his father's death, should come in possession of the farm, which he did. He in turn left it to his son (our uncle Garret). Garret left it to his son Christian, Christian to his son Garret. Garret's son Henry lately occupied the same. It belonged to the family almost 170 years.

Henry A. Hunsicker, 1911

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