JOHANN ADAM WAGGONER  (1744 – 1779)

Johann Adam Waggoner was the son of Johannes Adam Waggoner and Anna Maria from the town of Raubach, province of Hessen-Nassau, in what would later become Germany. They arrived in Philadelphia on October 8, 1744 in the ship Aurora from Rotterdam by way of Cowes. Anna Maria was probably in an advanced state of pregnancy with Johann when their ship docked in Philadelphia.

Johann Adam Wagner, known simply as "Adam," grew up in Hunterdon County, NJ. Adam and Maria Sophia Apgar were married about 1760, probably in the Alexandria Church, although the earliest surviving church records date from 3 years later (1763).

Adam and Sophia Wagner’s first child, Wilhelm (William) Wagner, was born in 1765. Adam and Sophia’s second child, Christ (Christian or Christopher), was born June 10, 1763 and his baptism a month later was preserved in the records of the Alexandria Church.

In the decade after the French and Indian War many "Palatine" German settlers headed westward from Philadelphia (where the vast majority landed). They tended to stick together with other relatives and friends for company, mutual help, and protection against Indians and others of alien language, religion and culture.

The young Wagner family left Hunterdon County during 1764, the last year that Adam Wagner’s name appears in the records of the Alexandria Church. They traveled down the Delaware River to Philadelphia, where Sophia’s brother Heinrich was tending a hotel. Then they rumbled out the Forbes Road to York, PA, an area where relatives and some former neighbors and friends from Germany, were living. After a relatively short period, although perhaps as much as a few years, they continued down the "Monocacy Trail" to the town at the foot of the Catoctin Mountains, now called Thurmont ("door to the mountains"), in Frederick County, MD. There they settled and became members of the congregation of the German Reformed "Apples Church".

In the early years of the Revolutionary War, beginning in 1776, Adam Waggoner and many of the other able-bodied male pioneers around Thurmont served with the American military forces, usually the local militia units.  Adam would serve in the Frederick County – Middle District militia under the command of Captain Vallentine Creager. 

The record of Adam Waggoner’s will in the Frederick County Courthouse in Maryland indicates that it was written in October 27, 1779 and marked with an "X". (Apparently Adam was illiterate, so changes in the spelling of his name and those of his children were at the whim of the scribe of the occasion.). The will names as beneficiaries: "Sophia Waggoner my dearly beloved Wife…my dearly beloved son William Waggoner…my second and well-beloved Son Christopher Waggoner (and)…my Brother’s Daughter Catherine Waggoner". The latter was included, contingent on her staying with widowed Sophia "until her full age." Both sons were admonished to live with and help their mother at least until they married. This will was recorded in the courthouse on December 4, 1779 (apparently after Adam’s death). Sophia, his widow, acted as administrator. Adam’s estate was finally settled December 9, 1780.