REYNOLDS HISTORICAL (SBNEALOGY COLLECTION GENEALOGY OF JOHN SHANK ARIAEN DEGOEDE. ELIJAH TEAGUE AND .J? . THOMAS SWANN H • fA • SV\cvw V(_ Copyrighted i960 by Henry Mercer Shank III All rights reserved. Manufactured in United States of America ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is greatly indebted to scores of persons who provided dates, documents^ and background material from fragments to records of whole families for this Genealogy. Special mention must be made of and credit given to Bernice West Youngblood of Jasper^ Alabama, who furnished the key to the early history of "Shank"; to Robert Lee Shank and (Miss)Clifford Shank of Washington, Georgia; to Brooksie Brown of Ft. Gaines, Georgia; to John Wallace Shank and Carl Shank respectively of Tyler and Center, Texas; to Austin Kay of Kilgore, Texas; to Paul J. Anderson of Anniston, Ala. for furnishing nearly all of the data on the descendants of Elijah Teague 8; to lone Swann Rainer of Albuquerque, N. M.; Jonnie Swann Joyce of Alpine, Texas; Major James Swann of Chicago, Illinois; to Lou Degoede of Caldwell, Idaho; to Anna Jfery Shank Hitt of Big Spring, Texas and her son, Rev. Harold Parks Hitt of Lindale, Texas; to Mrs. Effie M. Neale of Jackson, Miss, for Genealogy of Catery C. Swann, and to Misses Ruth Considine and Sylva Tanberg in the Genealogical Division of the Denver Public Library, whose patience and helpfulness were without limit. The original data on "Degoede" is written in Dutch and requires both a skilled interpreter and genealogist for correct interpretation. This material has been repeatedly checked and edited, yet it is almost certain errors have crept in. Much of the statistical data has been copied many times by many people. In a few instances data from different sources has disagreed. The most likely has been used. Early day writing is often confusing, with similarities between 1 and 7; 7 and 9; 3 and 5, and with the same name in the same document not uncommonly spelled two ways. Consequently, the author declines to be held responsible for these or other errors. Quotations from Dr. John Caruso's "Appalachian Frontier" are by special permission of Bobbs-Merrill Publishing Co. of Indianapolis, Indiana. From Kuhns' 'German and Swiss Settlements in Pennsylvania" by special permission of Henry Holt and Co., N. Y. From the "Dictonary of American History" by special permission of Charles Scribners Sons, N. Y. From "The History of Shenandoah Co., Virginia" by special permission of Shenandoah Publishing Co., Strasburg, Va. The copyright on Alvards "Illinois Country" has expired, according to the Illinois State Historical Library. Hence no permission is necessary to quote from it. The Author 1S02101 To Joel David Shank 20 June 1950 A descendant of "those dominant, resourceful people who gave to American life the bone and sinew of greatness." <S6 47. JOEL DAVID SHANK AND THE AUTHOR JULY I960 INTRODUCTION The first identifiable Shank of this Genealogy was born in Pennsylvania in 1761; the first identifiable Teague was an adult in North Carolina in 17^0; and the first identifiable Swann was acquiring land in North Carolina in 1765. A bit of orientation in what brought them here is in order., Most of the early immigrants to Pennsylvania were natives of the Palatine in southwest Germany and of adjacent areas in Switzerland, who fled from devastating wars, religious persecution, impressed military service, and burdensome taxes., Kuhns in "German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial Pennsylvania" says: "The inhabitants of the Palatinate are the descendants of the group of German tribes called the Rheinfranken, with an admixture of the Alemanni„.... They are still among the best farmers in the world, in many districts having cultivated the soil for thirty generations=....distinguished for indomitable industry, keen wit, independence and a high degree of intelligence." A series of events triggered their migration to America beginning about 1710 and maintained it until the Revolutionary War. James Truslow Adams in "The Epic of America" says: ".....the results of the Thirty Years War which ended in 1648 had been ghastly beyond comparison. One county alone (in Germany) had lost 85 per cent of its horses, over 80 per cent of its cattle, 65 per cent of its houses, while 75 per cent of its people had been killed.....To all of this was added political and religious persecution. Between 1683 and 1727 probably twenty thousand of these unfortunate Germans emigrated to Pennsylvania." So favored was this land (in Germany) that recovery was rapid after the end of the Thirty Years War until in the years 167^-75 the war between France and Holland brought destruction once more. Kuhns says, "The scenes that followed surpassed even the horrors of the Thirty Years War.....At the conclusion of hostilities, the Protestant Church in the Palatinate was practically crushed..... The devastation and pillage did not include Switzerland which received many refugees from negh'boring areas. However, the lower classes who tilled the land and labored with their hands, had no share in government and but little freedom.....The traffic in soldiers which was a constant source of discontent among the people was a primary cause of Swiss emigration to America." The final blow was the privation and hardship of the unusually severe winter of 1708-09. John Caruso in "The Appalachian Frontier" says, "In December 1708 wine and liquor froze into solid masses.....In January 1709 saliva congealed before it touched the ground. Before the month ended most of Western Europe was buried in ice and snow. All the rivers, including the swift Rhone were frozen; all along the Coast the Sea was solid enough to bear heavily laden carts. Persecuted by their rulers and ruined by the wintry blasts, many Palatine husbandmen and winedressers resolved to leave their wretched country.....The Majority were transported to New York and Pennsylvania." Kuhns ascribes the 1710 Migration to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to the Swiss and says that "between 1710 and 1717 there were no large arrivals of Germans at Philadelphia." Lancaster and surrounding counties were rapidly settled, the first of these settlements being at the mouth of Conestoga Creek about twelve miles south¬ west of Lancaster. Rupps "Thirty Thousand Names of Immigrants in Pennsylvania, lists: 1709 Johannes Sehenck 1712 Michael Schenck I The first list of taxahles in 1717-1718 lists five Schencks or Shanks, depending on the source and the spelling. The name, along with many others, was immediately anglicized in public records, virtually all officialdom in Pennsylvania being Anglo- Saxon then and for some time afterward. Some of these immigrants moved south and west to Maryland and Virginia and as early as 1732 Pennsylvania Germans made their way along the Shenandoah Valley and settled Rockingham and Shenandoah Counties (at first this was Dunmore County). But for fifty years or more the Allegheny Mountains presented an almost impassable barrier from Lake Erie to Georgia. Included in the names of the early German and Swiss immigrants are hundreds who have added luster to the business, political, military and professional scene in America. Such are Swope, Steinmetz, Weber, Eichelberger, Kreitzer, Trautwein, Schwab, .Schweitzer, Shantz, Keplinger, Hoover, Eisenhauer and many others. Moving nearly simultaneously with the Germans were English, Scotch Highlanders, Welsh and Scotch-Irish. They were largely descendants of Scots and Englishmen who migrated to Ulster in North Ireland, which by the end of the Seventeenth Century was predominantly Scotch-Irish and Protestant. They fled their native country with the restoration of the Stuarts. Caruso in "The Appalachian Frontier” says "Their commercial success, which was considerable, proved their undoing. England passed laws prohibiting importation from Ulster of the produce of the Scotch-Irish and in 1670 passed acts excluding their vessesl from the American Trade. In 1699 they were prohibited from exporting manufactured wool to any country and in 1704 an act excluded Presbyterians from all civil and military offices and forbade their ministers from celebrating marriages on pain of fine and imprisonment. These were the tyrannies which impelled the Scotch-Irish immigration. They came through New York, Newcastle, Philadelphia and Baltimore. By 1750 they had occupied the mountainous region of Pennsylvania as far west as Bedford. They then turned south into Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. By 1750 Scotch-Irish were in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina in numbers. Because they had been oppressed, they believed in freedom; because they were underprivileged they believed in social and political equality.....The poverty and dangers they shared in common made them equals. They were bold, persistent, aggressive and boastful.....Their responses to their environment converted short¬ comings into the virtues they needed to survive and succeed on the frontier." Among them were the ancestors of John Sevier, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, George Rogers Clark, William Blount, Jefferson Davis, Davy Crockett and many other names contemporary with epic achievements. The names Blount and Davis occur in the family line of the author's paternal forebears, and it is certain that the first Swann of this Genealogy was in this migration. It seems more likely that the Teague line which is Celtic (deriving from TAIDHG) came to America from England or Scotland via the Barbados, although some family tradition says the name is Scotch- Irish. This line seems not to have landed north of Virginia, ans possibly not north of North Carolina. The many persons herein who reached maturity and some of whom married but whose issue thereafter are unaccounted for, offer unlimited opportunities for further and interesting search. It is hoped this will stimulate others to attempt it. It should be soon. The longer it is postponed the dimmer the trail and the fainter the scent. There is known to be much interesting biography of people which could have been included herein had the subjects been less modest.