Böhm Family of Lancaster Co., PA

Introduction
Jacob Boehm, born circa 1693 in Zweibrücken, Palatinate, was an early Mennonite immigrant to Pennsylvania. He is traditionally stated to have arrived in Conestoga Township (present-day Pequea Twp., Lancaster Co., PA) in 1712 or 1715. It is more likely that he arrived with the second group of Mennonites in 1717. Jacob and his wife, Barbara Kendig, had twelve known children. The descendants of this immigrant family number in the tens of thousands today and are located throughout North America.

Very little is known about Jacob's personal life, except for the following glimpse, written by his grandson, Henry Boehm:

"Reminiscences, Historical and Biographical, of Rev. Henry Boehm", Rev. J. B. Wakeley, D.D., 1875, pp. 10-11.
He had several children, of whom Jacob, the third, was my grandfather. He was born in 1693, and emigrated to this country in 1715. Many of the Mennonites emigrated from Switzerland and Germany.

My grandfather was induced to come to America from the glowing description given of this country by Martin Kendig, one of the seven families who had settled in what is now Lancaster County, PA. He landed in Philadelphia, from thence went to Germantown, then to Lancaster, and finally settled in Pequea, Conestoga Township. Soon after he married a Miss Kendig. My grandfather was a lay elder in the Mennonite Society.

Soon after his arrival he bought a farm and built him a house. He was also a blacksmith, the first in all that region.

During the twentieth century, a number of family historians began the arduous task of tracing the numerous descendants of Jacob Boehm. Among these researchers were Morris Stanley Boehm and Don Beam of Canada, Shirley Deane Briggs (wife of Lewis William Beam), and James Galloway and his wife Dorothy Jean Wolfley.

For those family members interested in their heritage, we owe a debt of gratitude to Jim and Dorothy Galloway. They spent more than twenty years traveling across North America, visiting courthouses, libraries, and cemeteries, conducting family interviews, organizing family reunions, etc. Their research established the connections between the various branches of the family, which had migrated south to Virginia, north to Canada, and west to Ohio during the eighteenth century. (Photos of Jim and Dorothy Galloway)

Goals
The initial objective for this website is to make part of the research of Jim and Dorothy Galloway available to all interested family members. This includes articles and anecdotes written by Jim Galloway and the genealogy of Jacob Boehm and his brother, Rudolph Boehm, down to at least the seventh generation. Future plans include adding more generations of descendants, scanned images of early court records, "antique" family photographs (pre-1900), and providing information on the Boehm family Y-DNA study.

Presentations and Anecdotes by Jim Galloway

Other Boehm/Beam/Beahm Family Articles