The Bantas of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky: Their Ancestors and Descendants

$20.00

This book is basically a family history centered on one generation of the Banta family (mid-1700s to mid-1800s), with information on their ancestors and descendants presented against a historical backdrop. The blend of genealogy and related history, especially Shaker history, will appeal to genealogical researchers and historians. “Researching the Banta line has been rather akin to ‘coming home’, and I don’t think the average person can quite understand what would make a man leave his wife and children for the salvation of his soul, unless he were to first understand the history of the man’s ancestry. At the time Samuel (Banta) entered the Shakers. I believe it was like finally reaching the ‘promised land’ after one hundred fifty years of wandering in the wilderness.” A brief background of the family in Holland (1618) is provided, followed by the arrival of the Epke Jacob family in New Netherland (1659), their move to New Jersey sometime before 1675, and their move to the Conewago settlement in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s. The Revolutionary war, the migration to Kentucky, Fort Harrod, the Dutch Reformed Church Society and the Low Dutch Company, conflict with Native Americans. Shakers and the “Great Revival” (1795-1805), Society of Pleasant Hill, daily life in the early 1800s, Millennial Laws (1821), defaulters, lawsuits and other events, hymns, testimonies, and genealogical records spanning nine generations are all covered. A genealogical table, a portrait of Epke Jacobs, numerous facsimile reproductions of original documents and photographs, a bibliography, and a full-name plus subject index augment this well-documented work.

Joan England Murray

(2000), 2010, 8½x11, paper, index, 128 pp.

ISBN: 9780788413964

101-M1396