James, after you mentioned the Carakers were Germans in Pennsylvania I went
to a book I have titled "Pennsylvania German Church Records - From the
Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings and Addresses" published by
Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. in 1983. The names listed below are not
in the index but there are several Kaucher (Aurelia Louisa, Loesch, Henry
B. Louisa Augusta, Olivia, and William) but no Phillip.
Do you think this could possible be a variant or not. Glenda
=============snip
I hope I can be of some help to this site. My mother was a Carreker.
We are descendant of Phillip Karcher/Caraker/Carriker/Carreker/Caragher.
I have found the family using all of these different spellings.
Actually, the first couple of generations probably did not speak much
english and if they did it was with a strong German accent and their
names were probably spelled phonetically and anglicised by others.
Phillip Karcher was born 1726 in either Augsburg or Kreuznach, Germany
in 1726. He was the son of Johan Philip Karcher, b abt 1680 in Germany
and Anna Margretha Reeb, also born in Germany. Phillip was the third of
three known children. Others were Maria Catherine & Anna Maria
Magdalena Archer. It is believed that Johan was a painter and that he
moved to Palatine from Augsburg soon after 1700. Philip immigrated to
Philadelphia in 1740 and married Catharina Eisenmann abt 1751 in
Philadelphia. They are three known sons, George, b 10/25/1752 in
Philadelphia, my ancestor, Andrew and Phillip, Jr. It was this
generation that really had numerous spellings of the name.
I hope this line ties into your Caraker line and that we can hopefully
share information about our ancestors. The spelling is still
unresolved, I have third and fourth cousins that spell their name
Carriker. In fact, two of George's children came to Georgia from
Mecklenburg Co., NC in the earl 19th century. One spelled his name with
an e and the other with an I. One settled in Pike County, GA around
1830 and my gg-grandfather moved to pike county about 50 years later and
spelled his name with an e. There are both spellings from the same
ancestor in the very small, rural Pike County about 40 miles southwest
of Atlanta.
James Majors