Johannes Peter Wolf of Germany

In tracing our Wolf family line backwards through time and across the ocean to Germany I have attempted to find the father of Johan Jacob Wolf (b. 1694 in Germany).  I used Ancestry.com to look at Wolf family web sites. Different sites claimed different fathers for Johan Jacob Wolf and I could find no actual sources for their claims.

In my visit to the York County Heritage Society; 250 East Market Street, York, Pennsylvania I looked at the family files for the Wolf surname. There was an amazing amount of information, not all linked to ‘our’ Wolf family. Among the piles of papers in the files was a photocopy of page from a book, a book in their holdings:

Bugert, Annette Kunselman. Eighteenth Century Emigrants from German - Speaking Lands to North America. Volume II: The Western Palatinate. Birdsboro, Pennsylvania: 

The Pennsylvania German Society, 1985.

The book discusses emigration from the Western Palatinate section of Germany. As an example it focuses on the Ulmet parish. The oldest church there dates back to 1091. “Ulmet parish provided an unusually large number of emigrants to Pennsylvania.” On 24 May 1632 a battle of the Thirty Years’ war was fought there. Emigrants who appear in the Ulmet Parish records after the Thirty Years’ War include: Jacob Wolf & Joh. Peter Wolf. A later list of inhabitants “reflects the surnames that remained in these villages after the emigration period”. One Wolf family remained in Ulmet parish.

Johannes Peter Wolf & his wife, Susanna, are among the many families detailed in this book. They were the parents of Johan Jacob Wolf, b. 3 May 1694. He married Anna Barbara, daughter of Hans Jacob Orth, in May 1716. Residents of Ronneberg. Their children were: 

Maria Magdelena b. 3 Feb 1717; 

Maria Barbara b. 29 October 1718; 

Joh. Peter bp. 1 Nov 1720; 

Joh. Ludwig bp. 5 Mar 1723, died.; 

Anna Maria b. 10 June 1724; 

Johannes bp 18 May 1726; 

Johann Nickel bp 4 Nov 1728; 

Maria Barbara bp 27 Dec 1730; 

Maria Christiana b 12 Jan 1733; d 16 Jan 1733; 

Joh. Friederich b. 16 Aug 1735; bp 21 Aug 1735.

“Jacob Wolff of Ronneberg moves with wife and children to America.”
“Descendants of Johannes Wolf were prominent citizens of Western York county. The family name became attached to a union church in West Manchester township near York. A plaque at the door of the Reformed Congregation retains the name.”

This information matches with other information I had already unearthed about our family and clearly shows Johannes Peter Wolf & Susanna as the next generation back in the family branch.

The data in this blog post may not contain the most recent research.

For updated information check recent posts related to this family or go to my website.