Mathias Bender PAINTER

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  General Notes:

From the notes of F. V. N. Painter, Salem, VA., Sept., 20th, 1904

The Painter family in the United States is of German origin. Though there are Painters in England, there is no evidence, so far as I am aware of, that any of them migrated to America. In Warton's “History of English Poetry”, we find the following statement: “Before the year 1570 William Painter, clerk of the office of Arms within the Tower of London, and who seems to have been master of the school of Sevenoaks in Kent, printed a very considerable part of Boccacio's novels. His first collection is entitled “The Palace of Pleasure”, the first volume containing sixty novels out of Boccacio, London, 1566” The name is also spelled Paynter in Warton.

The German form of the name is Bender. I have examined an old record-book of Zion Church in Shenandoan County, partly English and partly German, in which the two forms are used. There are deeds in the Clerk's office of Frederick County at Winchester, written in English with the name Painter, but signed in German Bender.

Israel Daniel Rupp published in 1876 “A collection of upward of thirty thousand names of German, Dutch, French, and other immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776, with a statement of names of ships, whence they sailed, and the date of their arrival at Philadelphia, chronologically arranged, together with the necessary historical and other notes, etc.” I have examined this work, and found that no fewer than twenty-five Benders or Painters arrived in Philadelphia between 1727 and 1765. They came from Palatinate, a part of Bavaria. They decended (sic) the Rhine, and embarked usually at Rotterdam. There may have been Painters who landed at other ports: but it seems safe to conclude that Philadelphia was the center from which they were scattered into other parts of our country.

I have the following record of Bender immigrants taken from Rupp's book: Hans Jacob Bender, 1727; George Bender and Hans Adam Bender, 1732; Jacob Bender, 1738; George Michel Bender, 1739; John Adam Bender 1740; Rupertus Bender, 1742; John Bender and John Bender, 1743; Paulus Bender, 1748; John Bender, 1749; Conrad Bender, 1750; Martin Bender, and Joseph Bender, 1751; John Bender, Hans George Bender, John George Bender, Jr., Ludwig Bender, and John Martin Bender, 1751; John Ludwig Bender, 1752; John Bender, 1754; John William Bender, Sen., and John Philip Bender, 1754; George Bender, 1763; George bender, 1764.

In as much as these Painters all came from the same duchy in Germany, it is presumable that they are of the same family and more or less related. John and George were evidently favorite names; and the large number of Johns and Georges makes it very difficult to trace genealogical lines with certainty.

Near the middle of the eighteenth century, the Valley of Virginia was settled. A tide of german immigration flowed in from Pennsylvania. The town of Stephensburg was founded in 1758; Strasburg and Woodstock were both established in 1761. All these towns, Kersheral tells us in his “History of the Valley, ere settled almost exclusively by Germans. The German language was long used, and the earliest Church records are in that language.

As appears from the foregoing facts, Shenandoah County was the center of German immigration for the Valley of Virginia. Among these immigrants or settlers, as shown by an examination of Court and Church records, were many Benders or Painters. For example, a deed recorded in the Clerk's office of the County of Orange, which for a time included the Valley region, shows that John Painter, Sr., purchased from Joist Hite a tract of land on the north side of Shenandoah river in 1742. Again, in the records of the Clerk's office of Frederick County, (if I mistake not) we find that four hundred acres of land were granted to John Painter on a branch of Stony Creek “by the late Lord Proprietor of Northern Neck of Virginia, bearing date the 2nd day of February, 1749.” So far as I have been able to determine, this is the ancestor of the Painters in Pulaski County---the grandfather# probably, of Mr. James B. and the Rev. G. W. Painter.

Through inquires continued for several summers in the Valley of Virginia some years ago, I have been able to trace out pretty fully the Painter line with which my own family is connected. There were two brothers, John and George Bender (or Painter), who settled in Shenandoah County, as well as I can make out, about 1740. They owned considerable tracts of land a few miles south-west of Woodstock, which locality is still known by the name of Painter town. George Painter, as Kercheral informs us, had erected a large log house with a good sized cellar. The location was pointed out to me some years ago by Mr. John Spriggle, a connection of the family, and the depression caused by the cellar was still plainly discernable. On the occasion of an Indian incursion in 1758, the people of the neighborhood took refuge in this house. “Mr. Painter”, to use Kercheral's words, “attempting to fly, had three balls shot through his body, and fell dead, when the others surrendered”. Some were slain and other (sic) carried captive.

Mathias married Anna Catharina in 1699 in Germany. (Anna Catharina was born in 1681 in Germany and died in 1764.)