Nuts From the Family Tree: William Trautman 1730

Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

I've written a lot about Peter Trautman, also spelled Troutman, who is one of my DAR ancestors, meaning that he served in the Revolutionary War. Now I want to connect him to his father William Trautman.

When I started doing genealogy back about 10 years ago, my personal proof standard was haphazard at best. If I saw it in a tree of someone I knew and trusted, or if Mom had found her proof, then it was good enough for me! Access to records back when Mom started doing genealogy in the early 1970s, was difficult to come by. Luckily, she lived in the geographic center of the locations of most all of our ancestors so if she took a day trip, she could find a lot of documents. When I look at her notes now, much of what I find on Ancestry using the general search function was already found by her. She collected binders full of census records form the early 1790 census to about 1880 for the counties circling our primary locations of interest. She was a non-stop collector of records! She even had at home rolls of microfilm and a reader!!

I've mentioned before about her correspondences with fellow genealogists across the country. She'd evaluate their skills and then share what she could and received whatever they had. It was a slow painstaking process helped along by the message boards. And once she had vetted the correspondent, she used what they sent.

Now, we work off of original records and I'm busy updating the Big Tree she built out over the decades with the best records I can find. It's a slow process but it will be worth it.

I mention all of this because I see this history of The Way We Worked in the DAR Ancestor records. Applications from the earliest time - about 1900 - contain little data and you're lucky to get names and dates. The applications, which are all available on the DAR website at DAR.org under Genealogy along with much else, from the middle of the 20th Century have names, dates, and places and sources. If you are applying today one of the tasks will be to make sure that your application brings with it the most updated information possible. And we're all held to rigorous standards.

So, now on to the Trautman father and son. At some point "proving" my lineal connection to Peter Trautman I realized that his father Wilhelm or William Trautman was also listed as a DAR patriot! But... they were not connected, and in other words, no one who descended from Peter had also made a supplemental or additional application proving their lineal descent from William! Whoopie! I could do that!

So off I went, knowing that I'd already proven my descent from Peter, and set out to prove Peter's connection to William as his son. Sounded easy enough.

So what sort of documents might prove that connection? What would you look for? How about a birth record, or a church baptismal record? That would work, wouldn't it? Hmmm. Peter was born in Berks County, PA, and that was already in the DAR records for him, so I checked FamilySearch Wiki to see what they said about birth or baptism records there. Nothing panned out there or anywhere else I looked, and believe me, I looked. Next stop: what other records would prove a father-son connection?

How about will and probate records? Yup! I have William's will and it names Peter as his oldest son. Got that from FamilySearch. It was written in English and German and probated in February 1790. I even have a transcription from a Trautman cousin years ago, so I wouldn't have to transcribe the whole thing for the DAR application, but would have to check that transcription for accuracy. Easy enough.

But I wasn't going to submit that will alone! I also needed to prove that my Peter Trautman was indeed the one and only Peter Trautman who was born in Berks County and moved to Bedford County that later became Somerset County. How was I going to do that?

I checked all the census and tax rolls for both counties for a William Trautman and a Peter Trautman. The point of this is to prove that there was only one William Trautman and only one Peter Trautman in that location at that time. There is also a William Trautman Jr., son of William Sr. and he's mentioned in the will too as one of the administrators, so that's confusing. Here's what I found, below, and as you can see, while it provided some useful bits that could fill out a timeline, it's not conclusive when it comes to proving a father-son relationship. William Sr. died in berks Co. in 1790.

Census: Year/ County	Peter Trautman	William Trautman
1768 Proprietary Return for the County of Berks for the year 1768		Listed as carpenter. This is William Sr. because Jr was born in 1763. No other William Trautman listed.
1783 PA Supply Tax, Bedford Co PA	no	no
1788 tax and exoneration for Londonderry, Bedford Co	Yes	no
US 1790, Bedford, Berks.	no	no
US 1790, any PA	no	no
1793 Tax Assessment, Bedford Co	yes	yes
Pennsylvania, U.S. Direct Tax Lists, 1798	Londonderry, Bedford Co	Londonderry, Bedford Co
US 1800	Londonderry, Somerset, Pennsylvania	none
PA Septennial Census 1800	Londonderry, Somerset, Pennsylvania	Londonderry, Somerset, Pennsylvania
US 1810	Southampton, Somerset, Pennsylvania	Southampton, Somerset, Pennsylvania

Next, I double-checked Peter's military file on Fold3 and his pension application. There was a nice note from his brother William Jr. vouching for him. William lived in Somerset County. So there was a useful location there. And Peter's pension file stated numerously that he served from Berks County, and that would substantiate the Berks / Somerset connection. But where was the father, William Sr.? Not there. Keep looking.

I've found that land records can be a girl genealogists best friend, and they were here too, but I wasn't too optimistic at first. You see Peter received land in Somerset County through the process of Bounty Land for service in the Revolutionary War from the state of Pennsylvania, so he probably didn't get any land from his father as the first son. And in looking at the chart above, you can see that Peter was in Bedford Co. in 1788. But I thought of land records anyway.

I retraced my steps through the DAR records and applications for William Sr. and Peter. I asked for help in a Facebook group devoted to helping other members work up their lineage. An angel came forward and said that there was reference to a deed in Deed Book 11, Berks County, that named Peter Trautman and also mentioned William Sr. as his father!! Oh joy!

Yes, and there it was. Just as promised. I had already searched the Berks County Recorder's Office online and not found any results for Trautman or Troutman, but it was there just the same. Probably operator error.

It's a beautiful thing, that deed! In it Peter sells his interest in his father's estate. It names as his father as William Trautman of Greenwich Township, Berks County. And it also stated that the grantor is Peter Trautman of Bedford County, later Somerset County. To my eyes, it's a beautiful document!

So there is was. I had the will and I had the deed. I also had the DAR listing for both William Trautman and Peter Trautman, and the dates and places line up perfectly! A triangulation: three documents that prove the same conclusion.

Next step, filling out the paperwork to prove my lineage from myself to William Trautman born in Germany and died in Berks County, PA, who is a DAR patriot because he took the Oath of Allegiance in 1788. Good man.

Deed

Will

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After we came back from our drive to see Comps Church, I took a browse through the Troutman files on the computer. Found this, below. It shows that Benjamin Franklin Troutman, son of Peter Troutman who fought in the Revolutionary War and is buried there in the cemetery, donated the land that the church is built on, and the very land in which he's buried. Take a look. I've underlined the relevant parts, but you might have to click on the pages images in order to read them.

Now, I do love a good timeline and I've been working on one for Benjamin Franklin Troutman (1780- 1856) and his father Peter Troutman (1754-1846). Then to give it a whole other layer of frosting, added Peter's own father, William, born in 1730 in Germany and landed in Berks County where he died in 1790. There an amazing number of documents that filled out that timeline pretty well. When put together it tells the saga of a family's pull west powered by a desire for good and then better farming land.

Peter had already moved from Berks County PA to his Bounty Land Grant in Somerset County which is more westerly in Pennsylvania, by the time his father William passed in 1790. Both Peter and his brother William were mentioned in old William's will. William was appointed as Administrator with his brother John. Peter had already moved to the Southampton area when his father made the will. As the oldest son, Peter might have been named as Administrator and I'd wondered why he wasn't. Did they have a falling out, was Peter deemed untrustworthy by his father? But then I put together the timeline and could see the answer right before my eyes. Peter couldn't have been named Administrator because he had already moved away to Bedford County.

The will of William Troutman Sr. is interesting and was worthwhile looking for. It names his sons, Peter and William Jr., so that's valuable right there. But the probate file had two copies of his will, one in English and one in German. Look there above and see a page from each version. What this told me is that they were still very German and probably spoke it at home and in their close circle of friends.

Just after William died, his son William Jr. moved to Somerset County and lived near his brother Peter. Because he was named as one of the administrators, he needed to renounce so that he could move. I have no documentation that this is the official reason why he renounced but it seems logical. Look.

William Jr., Peter his brother, and Peter's son Benjamin are all buried in Comps Cemetery on land that Benjamin donated to the church. At least I think that's William next to Peter there. Some say it's Peter's son who died early but the stone for William is in pieces now.

That's Peter's stone on the right foreground with the flag. His wife is marked by the brown stone, below, and in the above picture, to Peter's left and above.

That's Benjamin's stone standing tall above and his wife's stone, fallen, to the right.

You can see Peter's grave on the upper right of the image, with the flag.

The land is beautiful here and I just hope that I'll have the time to devote to finding some of those Troutman land records. Just discovered one in Berks that is a deed between William, mentioned as Peter's father, and Peter, separately mentioned as the son of William, and living in Bedford County.

Was talking to Mom when I was back to see her recently and we agreed that there's something about standing on the very soil of the ancestors that is extremely moving. I stood there at the edge of the Comps Church parking lot and I looked at a lovely farm off a ways. Yup, that was sure to have been Benjamin's land.