Extracted from Appendix I of HISTORY OF THE DESCENDANTS OF JACO B GOCHENOUR, Robert Lee Evans [3512 North Third Street; Arlingto n, VA 22201], 1977, Carr Publishing Company, Inc., Boyce, VA 226 20. EUROPEAN AND PENNSYLVANIA GOCHENOURS The Gochenour family is of Swiss ancestry. On the shores beautif ul Lake Zurich is a small village named Gruningen an here was th e ancestral home of the Gochenours. It is recorded in the Ausbund which is the original hymn boo k of the Mennonites, published in 1751, that one Jacob Gochnaue r of Gruningensuffered persecution in 1654 because he adopted t he faith of his choice, that is held to the tenets of- the Menno nite Church. He was imprisoned in a castle dungeon and his famil y was turned out in the fields. Mr. David T. Gochenour of Grinne ll, Iowa, has one of these books written in the German languag e with Jacob Gochenour hand written on the fl - leaf. It belon ged to our first Virginia Gochenour ancestor, Jacob Gochenour. We next find evidence of the Gochenours living in the German Pal atinate. This is an area along the Rhine River and in the Sevent eenth century was divided into many small principalities. The rulers of these provinces at various times allowed persecute d religious sects to live in their dominions subject to variou s discriminations. In The Mennonite Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, (1940), pat{ 15, i s published a listof Mennonites permitted to live at Churpfal z Landen in 1685, and among the list is the name of Heinrich Go chnaur saying he had eight children. These Mennonites we permit ted to live in this province on paying a fine to the ruler.Th e lists were made to show who had paid the fine. Another list published in the Quarterly shows that the followin g Gochenours were living in this vicinity. Jacob Gochnauer and H ans Gochnauer. Later lists for 1738 and 1740 omit the names of J acob and Hans Gochnauer. Possibly this Jacob Gochenour was one o f the two emigrant Jacob Gochenours who came to America, landin g at Philadelphia, Penn., one on the ship Samuel from Rotterda m, Holland arriving August 11, 1732, and the other in the ship Harle also from Rotterdam arriving Sept. 1, 1736. Large numbers of the inhabitants of the Palatinate came to Ameri ca in this period. Often the rulers of the several German state s revoked their consent or license to the religious dissenters m ostly Mennonites, and began to persecute them. Also a series war s devastated the area causing the unhappy people to leave e coun try and come to America. The large number of German-Swiss persons emigrating to Pennsylvania aroused fears in the Governor and Council of that state that these persons would make Pennsylvania a German state. Consequently laws were passed requiring that the captain f eac h ship make a list of aliens (persons other than Englishmen) tha t he was bringing to America, that each person sign an oath ackn owledging themselves to be subjects of the King of gland, and th at the King was rightfully head of the English These lists are of interest to us because they show that two Jac ob Gochenours arrived in philadelphia in different years, 1732 a nd 1736. Jacob Gochnauer, Christian Gochnauer and Kathrina Gochnourin (the in on the end of a German name ~denotes a feminine person) appear as passengers on the ship Samuels, Hugh Percy, Commander, which landed at Philadelphia on August 11, 1732. Their ages are given as 20, 17, and 18 respectively and the ship s ailed from Rotterdam, Holland. Another Jacob Kochenauer (obvious ly a variant of Gochenour) arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Harle Ralph Harle, master, from Rotterdam, Holland, on Sept. 1 , 1736.
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