Judy Hymes: A Hagenbuch Genealogist

I really can’t pinpoint when I decided to begin my second wave of researching and recording of the Hagenbuch family history; but it was sometime soon after Linda and I were married in December of 1974. Our first “housekeeping” was an upstairs apartment in Herndon, Pennsylvania, near where we were both teaching. Once we had moved in, I began to go through some materials I had collected in the first genealogical wave during my teenage years.

My interest in the mid and late 1970s led me to start recording family information on the LDS (Latter Day Saints or Mormon) family sheets which I still reference as the “paper archives”—hundreds of pages for the family members I had researched. It also led me to take some genealogical classes at a local Mormon church, evening affairs where 10 or more of us learned research techniques and how to record information. This was before the internet, so it meant I began to write letters to every Hagenbuch I could find in the country, visit lots of cemeteries, and network with other genealogists.

One method for networking was by placing our family information in a local newspaper column entitled “Our Keystone Families” that was written each week by a local genealogist, Schuyler Brossman. Another networking tool was the LDS magazine, “The Genealogical Helper,” which I subscribed to for several years. For a small fee, one could advertise the families they were researching and ask others researching those families to contact them.

Portion of the obituary for Judith “Judy” Hymes. Click to read the full obituary.

It was through one or both of those venues that Judy Hymes contacted me. She was descended from Captain Henry Hagenbuch (b. 1737, d. 1805), the eldest son of Andreas Hagenbuch (b. 1715, d. 1785)—our family patriarch. This is where the “messiness” for me comes in. While researching information on the previous article about photographs, I found a photo of Judy Hymes which I took of her in 1978 when I met up with her at the Pennsylvania State Library. I wondered what had happened to Judy, so I googled her and found her obituary. She died on July 21st of last year. I immediately felt a pang of regret because I had not been in contact with her since 1978, and it would have been important to have used her knowledge of the Hagenbuchs to further the research on our family.

Here was another problem: I could not find any information in the paper records to locate the complete lineage of Judy, connecting her to Henry (b. 1737). I had little or no notes on what she may have shared with me. I turned to Ancestry.com and found her line. Well, another strike to the brain and I looked in my “letters’ archives” which I have saved from the early 1970s; these of everyone I contacted about our family. Yes, I found a letter from Judy written in February of 1979 and it stated that she would be visiting family in Lancaster County, PA at Easter. “Maybe we could meet up then… at my sister’s” and she gave me her sister’s address. For some reason that never occurred, and we never contacted each other after that.

The photo of Judith “Judy” Hymes taken by Mark O. Hagenbuch in 1978

Once more, my wondering (or was it wandering) brain began to function, and I checked if Andrew or I had ever written an article about Judy and her family line. There it was—a short reference in September of 2023 about her 3rd great grandfather, Joseph (b. 1778), who had married Magdalena Maria Mickley (b. 1778). However, instead of these folks staying in Lehigh County, PA, they had moved to Tioga County, PA before relocating to Lancaster County, PA in the 1900s.

Judy’s line is drawn through several counties and a few different family names: Hymes, Irvin, Sheffer, Mickley, and Hagenbuch. Her line is: Andreas (b. 1715) > Henry (b. 1737) > Joseph (b. 1778, m. Magdalena Maria Mickley [b. 1778]) > Julia Hagenbuch (b. 1822, m. Joseph Sheffer [b. 1815]), > Margaret Sheffer (b. 1845, m. David Irvin [b. 1838]) > Charles Irvin (b. 1879) > Madeline Irvin (b. 1907, m. Raymond Hymes [b. 1908]) > Judy Hymes (b. 1941).

Judy Hymes ancestors Joseph and Julia (Hagenbuch) Sheffer

It’s frustrating that I never kept in contact with Judy. I have tried contacting the relatives found in her obituary to no avail. Recently, I saw Andrew and shared the photo of Judy with him. During that visit, we also looked at the picture of the grave of Judy’s ancestor, Capt. Henry Hagenbuch, that I took in the mid 1970s. While there has been some contention about Henry’s birth year, we noticed that on the back of Judy’s photo I had written her name, the year 1978, and the words “descendant of Henry Hagenbuch 1737!” It would be several more decades until we actually began to use this birth year—oh my!

In the 1970s, I was dating all our ancestors from what William L. Hagenbaugh (b. 1878) had written on his family charts from the 1940s. He had recorded a birthdate of January 20, 1736 for Henry, and we continued to use that until Andrew’s detailed research revised Henry’s birthdate to December 20, 1737. Now I wonder: What evidence led me to record Henry’s birthdate as 1737 on the back of Judy’s photograph?

Back of the photograph of Judy Hymes that was taken in 1978

When I met with Judy in 1978, she must have had information that led her to believe that her Capt. Henry Hagenbuch was born on Dec. 20, 1737 (which, of course, raises other questions since Andreas and his first wife, Maria Magdalena (Schmutz), were not married until April 26, 1737. Unfortunately, my lack of putting two and two together and absence of contact with Judy will prevent these questions from being answered.

Fortunately, I can now add Judy and her family to Beechroots, connecting her line onto our Hagenbuch tree. It’s as though Judy is reaching out from the grave to have me finally integrate her family into our research, as well as to provide more evidence that Henry Hagenbuch was born on December 20, 1737. One wrong does not make a right. But, finding new information and correcting other details is a plus in our hobby. Such is what I can now do.