The Hess Family of Lancaster: Henry Hess

We concluded our previous blog post about Salinda and Henry Hess with an outline of the Hess family tree. As discovered, Salinda remained single her entire life, and left no descendants to track down. Henry, it was assumed, would have been the son of one of Salinda's brothers, as they shared a surname (thus his Hess parent would be a male). However, as it turns out, the Mennonite families of Lancaster County were... large. After researching the Nissleys and Rissers, it became apparent that it was naive to believe the relationship between Henry and Salinda would be so simple as nephew-aunt.

I had no luck on FamilySearch attempting to link our Henry to one of Salinda's brothers, so I turned to an alternate source: Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society. 

I thought it was lucky of me to have found two portraits of Henry Hess at Joy's Antiques, but lo and behold, he has two more posted by LMHS!

Though his 'profile' does not include information as to who his parents were, it does give some more idenfying clues: his middle initial was F., and he was born in 1873.

Armed with this information, I was able to open up the treasure trove that was Henry's life. Let's begin.

Henry F. Hess was born on December 9th, 1873 to Jonas H. Hess and Anna C. Franck. He grew up with a multitude of siblings: Lizzie, Catharine, Christian, Anna, Fannie, Jonas, and Ellen, and they all lived on the historic Hess farmstead in Warwick, Lancaster Co., which was first surveyed in 1730 for the Hess family patriarch, Hans Hess.

Henry's father Jonas inherited this farmstead, and in turn, Henry eventually inherited it; but I shouldn't be the one telling you all this: Clarke Hess did a fantastic job explaining the history of the Hess family on his blog, where I sourced much of my information. To convey to you just how historic this farmstead is, it has it's own entire Wikipedia page! 

Henry and Anna's marriage details

Henry married Anna Shenk on August 31, 1902, and they were the last two Hess' to live on the famed Hess Farmstead until the aforementioned Clarke Hess bought the property in 1985. A year after their marriage, their only child, Raymond Hess, was born, and in 1921, Henry, Anna, and Raymond moved to Anna's family's farm, which today is the famous Conestoga House.

You can see some of the items they owned here.

Henry worked as a farmer for most of his life, until 1930 when he worked as a packer in a tobacco factory. He died on September 4th, 1959, at the age of 85.

His son, Raymond Hess would go on to marry a woman named Alverta Brubaker.