I previously wrote about my 6th great grandfather, Peter Hendricks, immigrating to America in 1754 from Germany in the origins of our Hendricks ancestors. Another 7th great grandfather who immigrated to America from Germany, or what was Bavaria, is Johan Jacob Hamm, born in Rhine Valley, Miesbach, Bayern, Bavaria, Germany on 1721 to Thomas Ham and Sarah Ann Berry. Johan Jacob Ham married Barbara Tull/Tuell and had at least three sons.
After the birth of their first son they arrived in the port of Philadelphia in 1753. They settled in colonial Virginia, living through the revolution in their new country, aiding the war effort by carting things with their wagons for the revolutionary army.
Their second son, Jacob is our 6th great grandfather. After serving in the war of 1812 Jacob received land in Kentucky which he farmed until his death in 1817 at McBrides Creek, KY.
Jacob married Maria Keim, whose family had also come from the Palatinate. Her grandfather, our 8th great grandfather- Johannes “John” Keim, had a carpentry business in Speyer, a city in Rhineland-Palatinate that was destroyed during the Nine Years war in 1697.
He came to America first in 1698 and staked a homestead surrounded by a Walnut Grove by Manatawny Creek Pennsylvania. He then returned to Rhineland, married and brought a wife back to what is now Oley, PA in 1707. They followed Pastorius and the Quakers here in America but were French Huguenots back home. The family in various forms stayed in the Walnut Grove until 1911 when it was sold and levelled within a year. Some of the Walnut trees were five feet wide and 100 feet tall.
Maria Keim and Jacob Hamm’s daughter Elizabeth Ham is our 5th great grandmother. Elizabeth married Frederick Hendricks, son of the original Hendricks immigrant, Peter.
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