George Ranck

GEDCOM Note

GEDCOM data

GEDCOM Note

Family History George was born in 1735. Six years earlier, his parents had been given about two hundred and forty-three acres just southeast of New Holland, extending eastward past Blue Hall and East Earl to a tiny

GEDCOM Note

Life Sketch

http://ranck.org/J251/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=...

George was born in 1735. Six years earlier, his parents had been given about two hundred and forty-three acres just southeast of New Holland, extending eastward past Blue Hall and East Earl to a tiny community called Fetterville, between Pennsylvania State Route #23 and the Welsh Mountains.

Being a part of the growing German population, they suffered some minor discrimination even in the enlightened Penn's territory. They were allowed naturalization only reluctantly and as non-English residents they were subject to a tax of forty shillings per head. They also lived, as would be expected, under English common law. It may be surprising to be reminded that penalties for civil misdemeanors, even at this stage of the development of modern civilization, were burning in the hand, pillory, cutting off the ears, and lashes on the back "well laid on."

Nature itself treated these new colonists harshly, we are told. There was a plague of locusts in 1732; an earthquake in 1737; prostrating heat in the summer of 1738; bitter winters of 1740 and 1741; a drought from 1753 to 1755; and the famous "Hard Winter" in 1780 when ice on the ponds became twenty inches thick!

These Huguenot and German settlers often went fishing with their few Indian neighbors. However, the infringement of their rights by Penn's heirs made the Pennsylvania tribes resentful. One of the ugly memories of Lancaster County is the murder in 1763 of a small remnant of Conestoga Indians who were being detained for their safety in the county jail. They were seized and brutally slain by the infamous "Paxtang gang".

Naturally not all was harsh and foreboding. There must have been plenty of good fun. We are told that at one time New Holland had three places where the young men raced their horses, one of which was on the Ranck farm east of town.

George’s father John Philip associated himself with the Zeltenreich's Reformed Church five miles to the southwest. The records of Trinity Lutheran Church in New Holland also contain evidence of some ministerial acts performed there for members of the family. Occasionally also the families travelled the longer distance to Bethlehem where a larger colony of Moravians had been established.

In those same early years, the ferment of political freedom stirred in the colonies. Pennsylvanians entered the independence movement somewhat more slowly than the colonists of Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. Many of them had come from Germany, France and Switzerland. Many were Quakers, Dunkers, and Mennonites, inherently opposed to violent revolt. In order to become citizens of what was then a British colony they had to take an oath of allegiance to Great Britain and the British crown. John Philip took this oath in 1760 to gain his new citizenship. His certificate reads:

"I, Edwin Shippen, Prothonotary of the Supream Court of the Province of Pennsylvania, for the said Province of Pennsylvania, do hereby certify, That at a Supream Court hold at Philadelphia, for the said Province of Pennsylvania, the 24th Day of September, in the Year of our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty, Before William Allen, Lawrence Growdon, and Wm. Coleman, Esquires, Judges of the said Court, between the Hours of Nine and Twelve of the Clock in the Forenoon of the same Day, Philip Rank - of Earl Township in the County of Lancaster being a Foreigner, and having inhabited and resided for the Space of Seven Years in his Majesty's Colonies in America, and not having been absent out of some of the said Colonies for a longer Time than Two Months at any one Time during the said Seven Years: And the said Philip having produced to the said Court, a Certificate, of his having taken the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper within Three Months before the said Court, took and subscribed the Oaths, and did make and repeat the Declaration (appointed by an Act, made in the first Year of the Reign of his late Majesty King GEORGE, the First) according to the Directions of an Act of Parliament, made in the thirteenth Year of his present Majesty King GEORGE, the Second, intitled, An Act for naturalizing such foreign Protestants, and others, therein mentioned, as are settled in any of his Majesty's Colonies in America; and thereupon was admitted to be his Majesty's natural born Subject of the Kingdom of Great-Britain, pursuant to the Direction and Intent of the said Act of Parliament. In Testimony whereof I have hereunto set my Hand, and affixed the Seal of the Supream Court, the 24th Day of September, in the Year first above mentioned. "Edw. Shippen jr. Pro."

These new citizens had an inherent respect for authority and their loyalty oath so recently taken meant much to them. Furthermore, the liberal government set up by William Penn had saved them some of the more offensive burdens of the Massachusetts colony. Nevertheless, when the call to arms came, members of the Ranck family joined their countrymen in the War for Independence. The names of nine Rancks are listed in the Colonial Army rosters — Ludwig, John, Jacob, Valentine, Samuel, Michael, Philip, Adam and George.

The battlefields of the Revolution were sometimes relatively close to Lancaster. Valley Forge, the winter headquarters of General Washington's troops in 1777, was only forty miles away. The city of Lancaster, although never exposed to fighting, became a central focus in several ways - a major location for detaining captured prisoners of war, the temporary seat of the Continental Congress in exile from Philadelphia when it fell into the hands of the British, and a supply depot from which food and clothing were shipped to the beleaguered, ill-supplied troops of General Washington. Hospitals were also set up in Lititz, Ephrata, Manheim, Reamstown and Brickerville. Apparently the Ranck farms were never overrun by British or Hessian troops or devastated by foraging soldiers, but they must have felt the pressures of the conflict.