Frederick Stahring Stahring

Frederick Stahring was born c.1613 in the Palatinate of Germany. He died c.1686 in Wonshiem, in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Frederick married Barbara (unk). She was born c.1616 in Germany and died February 16, 1697/98. There is only one known child, Johann Nicholas.

The Stahring name is also found as Staring, the version some of his descendants were using when they emigrated to America. His first name is also found as Friedrich and similar spellings.

Child of Frederick Stahring and Barbara (unk):

• Johann Nicholas Stahring, b., Wonsheim, Alzey, Palatinate, Germany.

See also:

• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rice/pivotrock/starnes.pdf
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/w/e/e/Donald-L-Weed/WEBS... [now a dead link]
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rice/master2-o/p94.htm#i5431
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/u/l/Diane-Muller/WEBSI...

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Our Starnes Family History

    From scant records that have been found in the German Palatinate, Frederick Staring, born ca. 1613 and his wife Barbara, born ca. 1613 are our earliest known ancestors. Their son, Johann Nicholas, born ca. 1638, married Elisabeth Barke (baptized 26 Dec 1659) in the Lutheran Church in Mannheim, Germany on July 17, 1686. 

    Johann Nicholas had two children prior to his marriage to Elisabeth, (1) Johann Adam and (2) Johann Nicholas, II. Johann Adam Staring is next in our family line. He was born ca. 1675 in the German Palatinate and died in New York.

    Johann Adam had a son named Frederick Staring (Starn, Starns, Starnes), born ca. 1700 in Alzey, Germany. Frederick Starnes is the American patriarch of our Starnes Family.

    Our Starings were basically farmers who grew fruit, tended vineyards and raised livestock on the slopes of the Setz River valley. The surname Staring is Dutch in origin and has been found in the Netherlands in the 1570's. It is commonly associated with the poet Antoni Christiaan Winnand Staring (1767~1814) and an estate in Gelderland close to the city of Zutphen near the German border.

    Beyond the plundering of the Palatine homeland by the French army in the summer of 1707, the most intense cold began in 1708 that anyone could remember. Fire could not be started in the open in November, and wine and spirits froze into solid blocks in January 1709. Even the Selz River was frozen solid. This period of about 1645 to 1715 later was called the "little ice age" by climatologists. Due to some very enticing advertising by the English proprietors in North Carolina had been circulated in the Palatinate as they sought cheap, experienced labor for their large land grants in the colony. The Carolinas were portrayed to be tropical with natural growths supplying food for the picking. The Rev. Joshua Kocherthal, a German evangelical who had never been to America, had published a book in 1706 in London encouraging the Palatines to come to England in order to be sent to the Carolinas with three editions in 1709.

     In late April 1709, the ice broke up on the Selz and floated north into the Rhine. The Staring family members said good bye to their father and grandfather, Johann Nicholas Staring, for the last time and began their journey on a barge. The voyage down the Rhine to Rotterdam took just over three weeks. The Dutch government became very alarmed at the number of Palatines, a thousand a week, arriving to miserable overcrowded living conditions on the wharfs and in the warehouses on the city waterfronts. de to the similarity of the languages, the Starings could converse with the Dutch.

    This while movement depended on the benevolence and charity of British Queen Anne. There was no official promise or proclamation from the Queen or Parliament that these poor Palatines would be given anything. Prince George, Queen Anne's consort, and a Danish Lutheran had died in October 1708 leaving her in a deep state of mourning. So it is speculated that she wanted to help these poor Protestants.

    Finally in early August, the Starings sailed form Rotterdam to London, but there was no plan for sustaining or settling these people anywhere. They were quartered in over crowded camps, old sheds, barns, warehouses, military tents and any conceivable shelter in and around London. There was hardly any employment to be found at any lowly job at any low wage. Young Frederick Staring may have been obliged to join the ragged children beggin on the streets of the city.

    All manners of schemes to settle the Palatines were advanced by the British government. Colonel Robert Hunter, the newly appointed governor of New York and New Jersey, proposed that the 3,000 Palatines to be sent to New York be employed in the production of pitch and tar for the Royal Navy.

    On Christmas Day 1709, ten ships arrived on the Thames and boarding began that night. The ships did not weigh anchor and sail for a miserable winter week in the confusion of berthing, porvisioning and amendments to the vessel's charters. Bureaucratic entanglement in obtaining the Queen's approval lasted until January 11, 1710. The shipping contract had not been signed, so the ships did not set a course for New York but moved along the coast to put in at Portsmouth and Plymouth.

   These small ships were designed to haul freight, and our ancestors were cramped in the vermin infested holds with 300 or more of their countrymen. Rations were far too small and were of the cheapest worst food that could be bought on the London waterfront. On April 10, 1710, Colonel Hunter and the convoy left Plymouth and set a course for New York Habor.

   Four lists were made of the emigrants encamped in the London area up to June 1709 and five Rotterdam Embarkation lists and the Staring family does not appear on them. We do not know how many members of the family began this emigration to America, but do know that Nicholas, his brother Adam and his Frederick were the only Staring survivors sometime after the convoy arrived in New York Harbor on June 14, 1710.

   The vessels were not allowed to dock or anyone to come ashore because of the "Palatine Fever" (Typhus: transmitted by lice and fleas) and deplorable conditions the city doctors found when they rowed out and boarded these ships. The Germans were quarantined to Nutten Island (Governors Island). Of the 2,814 Palatines who began the voyage in December 1709, Governor Hunter reported 446 had died by the end of July 1710.

    The first appearance of the Staring name is on August 4, 1710 on Governor Hunter's Palatine subsistence list was Nicholas Staring for three adults which were for himself, Adam and young Frederick (Children 10 years old and beyond were entitled to adult subsistence). The treee and one third days' allowance suggests they were added to the list on August 1, 1710 and had only been in New York a short time. The vessel "Herbert" wrecked on the eastern end of Long Island on July 7, 1710, and the Starings may well have been aboard her rather than in quarantine with the majority of the Palatines.

   In early October, two sloops moved over 300 Palatines up the Hudson River to Livingston Manor. The Starings remained in New York and were transferred to Livingston Manor's West Camp Palatine settlement on the west bank of the river about 40 miles south of Albany on April 23, 1711. There were now four adults on the subsistence list since Nicholas had married Maria Catherina. This site is still called the Villiage of West Camp, NY.

    Pine trees on Livingston Manor were the wrong species of this conifer from which tar and pitch could be made for the Royal Navy, and the project had to be abandoned. In North Carolina the pines would produce tar and pitch. Probably less than 200 barrels of tar had been produced and the pork barrels used would not hold the tar in containment. Governor Hunter terminated the subsistence in September 1712 and the Starings and all the other Palatines were on their own for survival.

   Rev. Joshua Kocherthal recorded the marriage of Johann Adam Staring, the son of Johann Nicholas Staring of Wonsheim commune Alzey, in the Palatinate on December 2, 1712 to Anna Maria, widow of the late Bernhard Lifenius in the West Camp Lutheran Church.

   About the last week in March 1713, the Staring family and others set out from their primitive cottages in West Camp and headed for "Schohare" via Albany and Schenectady pulling sledges loaded with their meager belongings. The took no tools or anything that could be construed as stealing from the Crown. After an arduous and ehausting trip, the Dutch in Schenectady gave them food and shelter before having to cut a road in the brush to Schoharie Creek Valley.

   There they found the Palatines who had preceded them living in cruder housing than they had at West Camp. The Starings settled at Gerlachsdorf in small log cabins with earthen floors and wild animal skins covering the door opening. this dorf was named for Johann Christopher Gerlach, the former listmaster for the tar making in oone of the West Camp settlements. 1713 was a very difficult year for the Starings. The family had to exist largely on plants that the Indians told the Palatines were edible.

   Slowly these pioneers in the valley overcame the hardships and perils of the wilderness and began to be self sufficient, and felt they were doing well for the first time since leaving their homes in Germany. In July 1715, a naturalization act was passed by the New York Province Assembly. Its intent was to help secure titles for the large land owners of foreign birth. Adam Staring was one of the Palatines to take advantage of the opportunity for naturalization under this law.

    After the baptism of his and Anna Maria's daughter, Maria Catherina, born September 28, 1715, when the Rev. Kocherthal visited Gerlachsdorf January 24, 1716, Adam went to Albany. On January 31, 1716, he took the "Allegiance and Supremacy Oath." The records show the first spelling of our current surname: "At a Mayor's Court held at ye city of Albany on the 31st day of January 1715/16 the following person to witt Adam Starn." Occasionally this spelling was found for the Starings in New York until about 1790 after the Revolutionary War.

    Adam Staring and wife, Anna Maria, and three children are listed on the 1717 Simondiger Register as residents of Gerlachsdorf. The children would be teen age Frederick about 17 or 18, a child by Anna Maria's first marriage, and the toddler Maria Catherina.

    Governor Hunter always opposed the Palatine settlements in Schoharie and considered them to all be troublemakers. The Palatines destrusted the New York government and did not know how to follow the procedure to obtain title to their land which caused a lot of problems. The new New York Governor, William Burnet, was instructed in London to provide the Palatines suitable land, and he arrranged for them to obtan Indian land in the Mohawk Valley.

    One hundred acre lots were surveyed and assigned to 92 persons on the 28 day of March 1723. In this group of patentees there were seven Starings. By this time Frederick had reached maturity, married Mary Goldman of Schmidsdorf and fathered a son, Valentine. This is the first time he is named in the records. The Starings moved hurriedly onto these Burnetsfield Patent lots in the now Villiage of Herkimer and Herkimer County along the Mohawk River. The official Patent was not granted until April 25, 1725.

     The head of the family received one lot in their name and a second one in the name of a close relative, often the oldest son even if he were a child. Valentine received 100 acre lot #6 adjacent to his father's 70 acre #24 on the north side of the Mohawk River. Frederick also received a 30 acre portion of Lot #24 in the level area of the patent area now in the center of the town of Herkimer including the park where the S.T.A. erected a historical marker in 1998 to honor their common Starnes ancestor. Southern Migration

    Frederick Starn in 1741 lead a small group of two or three families from the Mohawk Valley of New York to settle on the Juniata River in Pennsylvania. They were on land that the Delaware Indians claimed was their best hunting ground and too close to their tribal capitol of Shamokin. A delegation of Indians from the Six Nations in 1742 came down to Philadelphia and lodged a complaint that these settlers were violating their treaty with the Proprietor William Penn, with Governor Thomas and demanded the trespassers be immediately removed.

    Richard Peters, Secretary of the Province of Pennsylvania, was concerned in serving the order to vacate their cabins that the settlers might refuse and probably were armed, arrived with a detail of Militia in June of 1743. Frederick Starn and his family showed up on the New River  frontier of Virginia the early spring of 1744 with the exception of eldest son Valentine who was married to Jean Conyngham whose family owned the large Burnetsfield Patent lot next to his in New York and had moved to Pennsylvania.

    During the French & Indian War (1754-1763) Frederick I was wounded and captured in his fields by a small band of Shawnees but managed to escape July 3, 1755. The next year he served as a county commissioner supplying beef to the Virginia Militia who were commanded by Lt. Col. George Washington. It appears that Frederick II and his brothers served short periods of time in this 700 rough and rowndy irregulars who were supposed to defend 350 miles of frontier.

     Valentine had returned to the Juniata (the present small town of Mexico, PA) and managed to reclaim his father's land. He died there February 15, 1761, naming his father, brothers Frederick II and Leonard in his will. He left "one hundred acres of my land upon the Juniate to my brother Frederick's eldest son John." John Starns of Mecklenburg County, NC on June 19, 1775 sold this one hundred acres to Thomas Rankin of Cumberland County, PA for 180 pounds.

    By 1769 the Starns family had begun to move from the New River due to their increasing numbers and boundary disputes southeast to the Middle Fork of the Holston River near the present town of Chilhowie, VA. In mid February 1770, Frederick II was appointed Constable "for the precinct where he lives." Frederick II 400 acres of land was on the east side of the river. His father's and brothers Leonard and Thomas's farms were on the other side of the stream.

    Eventually, the Starns family migrated down into North Carolina and east into Kentucky. Frederick Starns II made his will before going to Boonesborough, KY (where his son Jacob had gone with Daniel Boone) with his brother Joseph (1732~1779). He and his brother Joseph were killed on a scouting expedition April 7, 1779 known as "Starns' Defeat." Frederick's will was probated May 18, 1779 in Washington County, VA. Captain John Starns was not mentioned iin his father's will due to his assets being much beyond those of his siblings and the need to take care of his mother and minor children.