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Surnames: Zinn, Linck, Link
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/0JYBAEB/277.1
Message Board Post:
Patricia
It is my own quite personal hunch that your Jacob Zinn (b. ca 1723 and buried in
Lancaster Co PA) and my ggg grandfather John Zinn are somehow related. According to his
application for a Revolutionary War veteran’s pension, my ancestor John Zinn was born in
Berks Co PA in 1763 and was taken by an uncle John Link at age 12 first to .Augusta Co VA
and then to Ruddle’s Station Kentucky, where in March 1780 enlisted in the militia. In
June the Indians under British leadership captured the Fort, and the inhabitants including
John Zinn and his uncle John Link and family were taken by the Indians to Detroit, and in
the case of the Link family to Canada. We have no other information as to his Zinn family.
He stated that he had not seen his father since leaving PA. There is no mention of a
mother, so that I wonder if he was not partially an orphan.
We do have information however on his Uncle John Linck, and also connections between this
Uncle John Linck and Jacob and Catharine Zinn of Cocalico Twp of Lancaster Co PA.
The British kept records of non-captive displaced families such as a family they list as
John and Margaret Linck, and children which include a son John who would have been born in
1769. All this information matches a baptismal record of Rev. John Waldschmidt at Epler
German Reformed Church of the baptism on 25 March 1770 of John a son of John and Margaret
Linck.
Rev. John Waldschmidt recorded two entries in regard to Jacob and Catherarine Zinn.
First, in 1756 he baptized their son John Jacob in Cocalico Twp of Lancaster Co. And in
Berks Co in 1770 (the same year that he baptized my John Zinn’s first cousin John Linck
Jr. he records Jacob and Catherine Zinn in the same church at Epler’s in Berks Co as
being sponsers at the baptism of a John Jacob Hauser.)
We also have evidence of a connection between another uncle of my ggg grandfather John
Zinn, Martin Linck, and Jacob Zinn of Cocalico Twp. My John Zinn’s Uncle John Linck
settled after the war in Virginia. Thus in Pendleton Co WV Deed Book Records 1788-1815
Estate Settlements one finds the following: On 7 March 1796 his widow Margaret as the
“widow and relict of John Link, deceased et al convey to “Jacob Link, power of attorney to
execute to Jacob Zinn, Lancaster Co. Martin Link, a brother of John, has conveyed one
share of the land, but no title has yet been made for John’s part.”
The 1790 US Census for Lancaster Co PA shows a listing for a Martin Link and a Jacob
Zinn, Jr. to be on adjacent lines. (Separated by a single other surname on the same cencus
page are George Zinn and another Jacob Zinn.)
If John and Catharine Zinn of Cocalico Twp had a son John baptized in 1756, on the face
of it they could hardly be the parents of a John Zinn born in 1963. It seems probable to
me that they were related in some other way.
That the same families belonged to the same church in Berks Co, and transacted property
to one another as neighbors in Lancaster Co. may be coincidental. My hunch however is that
there is one extended family.