Today is the anniversary of the birth of my 3rd great-grandfather Johannes Georg Ilgenfritz (1750-1831). Johannes (generally known as “John”) was the second of 15 children born to Margaretha Mohr and Johannes George Ilgenfritz, Jr., in York, Pennsylvania, over the course of 28 years.
John’s parents were both born in Germany and married in York in 1748.
John’s father (generally known as “Hans”) had founded two prosperous businesses in York. He owned a flour mill and also a business that made Conestoga Wagons, including the wagons that accompanied General Braddock in his unsuccessful effort to take the French bastion at Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War in 1755.
John married three times. His first wife was Margaret Mummert, whom he married in 1770 and with whom he had six children before her death in 1793. His second wife was Keturah Clark, whom he married in 1794 and with whom he had 11 children before her death in 1812. His third wife was Permilia Mary “Millie” Jarvis, whom he married when he was 66 and she was 20. They had five children, including my 2nd great-grandfather, Solomon, who was their next-to-last child. When Solomon was born in 1725, his father was 75 years old and his mother was 30.
Solomon anglicized his name at some point in his life; he was born an Ilgenfritz but died an Ellefritz.
John died in York in 1831 at the age of 81. The local Reformed Church of York, Pennsylvania, chartered Prospect Hill Cemetery in 1849. The first burial in the cemetery took place two years later. When the Old Moravian Church relocated in the 1860s, the graves of people interred there were relocated to Prospect Hill..
I connect to John through my Ellefritz family line.
I Seek Dead People 