Capt. Yost Harbaugh

Patriot in the American Revolution with the rank of Captain. DAR# A051323

Name: Yost Harbaugh

Sex: M

Birth: 11 OCT 1741 in Berks Co., PA

Death: 1 AUG 1831 in Washington Co., MD of Asiatic cholera

Death: 16 AUG 1831 in Hagerstown, Washington Co., MD 1

Burial: Prospect Hill Cem. York, PA

Military Service: 1 OCT 1777 Capt. in 7th Co., 2nd Battalion, York Co. Militia 1

Military Service: Braddock's Expedition 1

Note:

The York Republican of Aug. 16, 1831 states that he was born on the 11th of October, old style, or 22nd of October, new style. He died of Asiatic cholera at the home of his son-in-law Benjamin Emmert. The body was buried at Antietam, near Hagerstown, but later removed to the Emmert lot near Funkstwon, Md. There is a gravestone in Prospect Hill Cemetery at York, Pa.

From the records it is known that in 1755, Benjamin Franklin, then Postmaster General of Penna., obtained 150 wagons and 250 packhorses in York, Lancaster and Cumberland Counties for Braddock's Expedition to Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh. Yost Harbaugh was then 14 years old, but he was a teamster in that expedition.

In the Revolutionary War, we find that he was appointed Captain, York Co., Militia, Sept. 11, 1776, and served in the campaign in New Jersey, in Colonel Wm. Rankin's Battalion Tork Co., Associators. He was again active in the campaign around Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777.

Captain Yost was a very large man, over six feet tall. He often rode horse-back, wearing a blanket in cold weather instead of an overcoat. Sometimes he jorneyed (sic) on foot from choice. He was a member of the Legislature from York County in 1799.

--From the Harbaugh History, by Cora Bell Harbaugh Cooprider, 1947, p. 402

Father: Yost Harbaugh b: APR 1699 in Aspach, Kaiserslautern, Germany

Mother: Maria M. Klein b: ABT. 1707 in Ulmey, Palatinate, Germany

Marriage 1 Eva Bahn b: 23 DEC 1743

Married: FEB 1764

Children

Julia Johanna Harbaugh b: 1764

Eva Harbaugh b: 1766

Anna Catharine Harbaugh b: 8 DEC 1769

Anna Maria Harbaugh b: 9 MAR 1774 in Kreutz Creek, Hellam Twp., York Co., PA

John Harbaugh b: 22 JAN 1776

Maria Margaret Harbaugh b: 28 DEC 1778

Jacob Harbaugh b: 25 DEC 1781

Susanna Harbaugh b: 13 SEP 1784

Elizabeth Harbaugh

Marriage 2 Elizabeth Eshelman b: 1746

Married: 28 MAR 1797

Sources:

Title: A roster of Revolutionary ancestors of the Indiana Daughters of the American Revolution

Publication: Unigraphic, Evansville, Ind., 1976

Note: Mailed by Cathy Pentola, 7/5/05.

Repository:

Media: Book

Page: 272

The son of the immigrant Yost (Jost Herbach) Harbaugh and Maria Margaretha Kleim, farmed in York county. He served as Captain in the Revolution, and was a member of the State Legislature from York county in 1799. He died while visiting his daughter in Washington, County, MD.

Children of the first marriage: Julia Johanna Harbaugh, married John Knaub; Eva Harbaugh, married George Daniel Wolf; Ann Margaret Harbaugh, married (first) John Walter and (second) John Fisher; Anna Maria Harbaugh, married Benjamin Emmert; John Harbaugh, married Anna Margaret Becker; Maria Catharine Harbaugh; Jacob Harbaugh married Anna Maria Loucks; Susanna Harbaugh married John Ther; and Elizabeth Harbaugh.

In 1755 Benjamin Franklin, Postmaster General of PA, obtained 150 wagons and 250 pack horses from York and Lancaster and Cumberland Counties to be taken to Pittsburgh for Braddock's expedition at Fort Duquesne near Pittsburgh. Yost at the age of 14 was a teammaster in that expedition and was Captain of the 7th battalion York Co Militia. He served with General Braddock on the expedition against Fort Duquesne and saw service at Bloody Run during Indian War. He died of Asiatic cholera at the home of his son-in-law Benjamin Emmert. The body was buried at Antietam, near Hagerstown but was later removed to the Emmert lot near Funkstown, Maryland. He was a large man - over 6 feet tall. He often wore a blanket in place of an overcoat, and sometimes went on foot by choice.

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Yost, the sixth son, was born on the homestead on Krentz Creek in 1741. In 1755, when he was fourteen years old, he did duty as a teamster in Braddock’s expedition; also to Bloody Run in the Indian wars, and, during the Revolution he was a captain in actual service. In 1799 he represented York county in the State legislature. He was a very large man, fully six feet in height and well proportioned. His dress continued throughout his long life to be of the old continental style, and his habits strictly temperate, his diet plain and frugal, and his temper and disposition calm and sober. He was a man of robust frame and health, industrious ways, and great powers of endurance. Even in his old age, he was accustomed to make an annual trip, sometimes on horseback and sometimes on foot, without overcoat or umbrella, from his residence near York (now Mr. Jacob Yost’s, just north of the Chicken Bridge) on a visit to a daughter (Mrs. Benjamin Emmert,) then residing on what is now the historic Antietam battle field. Though he was what is usually called an uneducated man, he possessed great native vigor of intellect, abundance of strong, practical, common sense, keen, ready wit, a high notion of personal honor and integrity, a deep sense of moral and religious obligation, and withal, a wonderfully retentive memory. He remembered, and, in his extreme old age, loved nothing so well (unless it was his accustomed bowl of mush and milk) as to sit, on winter evenings by the big fire on the hearth, surrounded by groups of merry young folks, and tell them tales of the olden times, of times and things when he was young, of the early days when the Indians were still about; of the little Indian village on Canoe Run, near Krentz Creek church; how the town of “Little” York had to be guarded and defended against their hostile incursions; how some sturdy, robust farmer of the neighborhood came with his rugged plow with a wooden moldboard, and drew a furrow around the town along which the armed sentinels paced to and fro, in the dead of night, ready to sound the note of alarm and give the terrible warning of the approach of the savage foe. How, when he still lived on his farm, now Samuel Rutter’s, near Emigsville, where still stands the old Swiss stone barn erected by him in 1793, and which bears his name carved in a stone in the gable, the children (of whom the writer’s mother was one) went to gather whortleberries in the woods on the hill beyond the Codorus, and found in the leaves and bushes several pretty little puppies, as they supposed, which the girls took pity on and carried home, where they were told by him, to their great surprise and consternation, that the little foundlings were young wolves! How some of the harvest hands proposed to kill them, and how he, on the score of prudence as well as humanity, accompanied by several of the men with loaded rifles and an ample supply of ammunition against a not improbable emergency, carried the mistaken and unwelcome pets back to their forest home, and left them as nearly as possible where they had been found; fortunately without encountering the old wolf folks. For many years afterwards that hill was known in the neighborhood by the name of “der Wolf Berg” (Wolf-hill). In those days, he said, it was nothing unusual for wolves to attack and destroy sheep at night, if left exposed in the fields, and even to carry away the younger lambs. To the young, there is nothing so entertaining and fascinating as tales of wild and startling adventure, and often did our still more wild and startling midnight dreams take on the hues and shapes of the stories we had listened to in breathless silence, broken only by our beating hearts, at the knee of grandfather Harbaugh, when gathered around the old time family hearth fire on a long winter evening. Well and sweetly did Scotland’s greatest poet sing: Thus while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charmed me, yet a child; Rude though they be, still with the chime Return the thought’s of early time; And feelings aroused in life’s first day Glow in the line and prompt the lay. All these tales of our venerable grandsire, were told in our native dialect, then comparatively in its infancy. Grave and stern as he was, none the less fond of a good practical joke, and he expelled most unlettered men of his time in quick, keen wit, sarcasm and repartee. He lived to the great age of almost ninety, (eighty-nine years, nine months and nine days), and died in the full possession of all his senses and mental faculties on August 16, 1832, of Asiatic cholera, after an illness of four days, at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Benjamin Emmert, and lies buried now, side by side with many of those who fell in the cause of their country on the bloody field of Antietam He lived and died in the faith of the German Reformed Church, to which his ancestors and nearly all of his posterity, the latter now numbering more than 200, belong or did belong, while living. Among the survivors are some of the descendants of his daughter Eve, late wife of Daniel Wolf, of West Manchester Township, (deceased); of his son John (deceased), Adams County; of his son Jacob, late of York County (deceased), namely; Mrs. Sarah Spangler (widow), of Jackson Township, and her children: Caroline, wife of Reuben Lauer; Henry W. Spangler, Esq.; Susan, wife of Charles E. Smyser; Sarah, wife of Martin Smyser; Julia Spangler; Leah, wife of William Eyster; Dr. Benjamin F. Spangler; Edward W. Spangler, Esq. And Dr. Jacob R. Spangler, all of whom except four (three of whom are unmarried) have children. Mrs. Sarah Spangler, the venerable mother and grandmother, now in her seventy-eighth year, her daughter Julia and son Henry, still reside in the old Mansion House, formerly and for many years kept, and so well and favorably known as the “Seven Mile House,” a good and true old time country hotel; a pleasant and popular resort for sleighing parties from tows and villages of the surrounding country. Many and pleasant are the memories inseparably associated with the place. And, As the shingles lie close to the rafters, And to gable the ivy clings fast, So the heart of the lone, widowed mother, To the homestead will cling to the last. Taken from the book, “History of York County, Illustrated 1886” by John Gibson, Historical Editor

(The Harbaugh family were German Swiss, not German, which is supported by information provided on the metal tablet on the rock of Saint John's Reformed Church, Sabillasville, MD)

The son of the immigrant Yost (Jost Herbach) Harbaugh and Maria Margaretha Kleim, farmed in York county.

Capt. Yost Harbaugh's participation as a teamster in Braddock's Expedition (1755) when he was only 14 year's old. He served as Captain in the Revolution, 7th Company, Second Battalion, York County, Mililia, appointed in New Jersey and active in the campaign around Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777. He was a member of the State Legislature from York county in 1799.

He died of Asiatic cholera while visiting his daughter Anna Maria Emmert of Beaver Creek, Washington, County, MD. He was buried at the Dunker graveyard at Beaver Creek, Washington County, MD.

Children of the first marriage: Julia Johanna Harbaugh, married John Knaub; Eva Harbaugh, married George Daniel Wolf; Ann Margaret Harbaugh, married (first) John Walter and (second) John Fisher, and Casper Spangler; Anna Maria Harbaugh, married Benjamin Emmert; John Harbaugh, married Anna Margaret Becker; Maria Catharine Harbaugh; Jacob Harbaugh married Anna Maria Loucks; Susanna Harbaugh married Johannes Lehr; and Elizabeth Harbaugh.

They had no issue from the second marriage.

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 30 2018, 0:25:15 UTC