29. Januar 2023

I found the following printed books which can be called Carper genealogies.

1)

The Carpers of Roane County

Author: Peggy A. Grubbs, published in 1985

2)

The Carpers of Carpers Valley

Authors: Janice May Carper and Lois Christine Carper Marbert, published in 1987

It reports family traditions in chapter 1.

3)

Chronicles of a Carper Family

Author: Joan C. Fraser, published in 1998

4)

The Carper Family Tree

Author: Lloyd George Melgard, published in 1949

The typewritten booklet can be found in the internet archive (archive.org).

It starts with a Jacob Carper who is said to have immigrated from Germany in 1733. I cannot verify what is written there. There seems to be no connection with the Weinsheim brothers.

So long, I had found no opportunity to read the Roane County book. But I found a summary of this book in RootsWeb.com written by Don Norman. The genealogy begins with “Nicholas Carper” who is, according to the information given, identical with “Niklas Körper” / “Niklas Kerper” in the ship lists. Only one son is mentioned, Jacob, who “is believed to have been born in Germany”. The author does not say anything about the origin of Nicholas. Therefore, I presume that there is also nothing in the book about this issue. I do not believe that this is reliable information about the earliest generations. For the following generations it seems to be a trustworthy source.

Joan C. Fraser claims in her book that Niklas Körper from the ship list is identical with a Nicolaus Körber who was born in the village of Unter-Ostern, a place situated near Reichelsheim in the Odenwald region. Many Ancestry members rely on this information and use it in their family trees. But it is wrong. The “Ortsfamilienbuch Unter-Ostern” is available in the internet (https://ofb.genealogy.net/unter_ostern/). It shows clearly that there is no Nicolaus Körber or similar who can have gone to America. All sons with such a name died in their home region. I never believed in her theory and now I am glad that it has proved wrong so clearly.

For the moment we concentrate on Carpers Valley. This is a region in Virginia where the surname Carper is very frequent. Hence the name. The authors found out that the earliest man with the surname Carper was a Philip Carper who died in 1790.

In the context of my narrative this Philip is identical with Johann Philipp Cörper from Weinsheim.

As no other source suggests a connection between the two men, I have to explain here how I came to my assumption. Therefore, we have to look into chapter 1 of the book.

There the authors report family traditions they had gathered during their research work.

Such traditions are a mixture of facts and legends. I think that the following details can be facts:

The family originates from Germany. Three brothers came to America. Two of them married and had children, but the third did not. They came from Holland. The latter tradition results from the fact that the ships with the Palatines started from Rotterdam.

Everything else in these tales seems unreliable to me. When they were written down at least 150 or more years had passed. Names were mixed up with the names of relatives. So, the names of the three brothers given in the book have little reliability. In the 19^th century masses of immigrants came to America via New York. No wonder that this was also assumed for the immigrants in the first half of the 18^th century.

As I do not think that everything in the family tradition will be wrong, I integrated those traditions seeming reliable to me in my narrative. Thus, I came to my conviction that the Carpers descend from the three brothers from Weinsheim, a village in the Electoral Palatinate of the 18^th century. When Andreas came to Pennsylvania, he was already 46 years old and did not marry again. But when his two brothers, Nicolaus (28) and Philipp (24), came to America they were just in the right age to marry and set house. Nicolaus did it in Pennsylvania, Philipp in Virginia.

In chapter 1 of “The Carpers of Carpers Valley” it reads: “Philip Carper made his will on 7 June 1790, and it was probated 7 September 1790.” This means that he died between June 7, 1790 and September 7 of the same year. According to my narrative, he would have reached the age of 70 years.

My emigration-immigration story combines all relevant information from the American publications with the data drawn from German church books. Everything fits together but in a very loose way. It is impossible to call it a proof. But my story can claim a much higher grade of probability than any other version given in the internet.

It could only be proved wrong by another story with an even higher probability.