William Pancake 1793-1867
2010
William Pancake was born near Harrisburg in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania to Johann George Pfannekuchen and his wife Anna. He was the oldest of seven children born to his parents. His father changed his name to George Pancake and went by that surname from the late 1700s forward. Direct ancestor William was always known by the surname of Pancake. However, some of his siblings retained the original Pfannekuchen name for an undetermined period of time. William migrated with his parents from Pennsylvania to Columbia County, Ohio where his father bought land. In 1818, William married Mary Crawford. They move on from Columbiana County to Coshocton County where they bought land and became the parents of three children. William and his wife were among the founders of the first Methodist Church in their county. It was called the Mohawk Methodist Church and Cemetery. The church is gone but the cemetery remains. In fact, that is where William is buried . . . near the town of Warsaw.
William’s oldest child Jane married and became a mother to two daughters. Upon the birth of her second daughter, Jane Pancake Thompson died. While Jane’s widowed husband re-married, his daughters are often found in records in the home of their grandfather William Pancake. William’s second child was direct ancestor Samuel Crawford Pancake. He was born near Warsaw in 1820. A third child was William.
William and his family suffered much heartache as was often the fate of many early settlers. After the death of his daughter Jane at the age of 24, his son William’s only son Oliver died before the age of two in 1862. He was buried in the churchyard cemetery. In 1864, William’s grandson Stewart, son of his son Samuel, enlisted in the Union Army and left to serve in the Civil War. At the same time, William’s youngest son William was called to serve as well. At the end of their enlistment, in 1865, both William and Stewart Megge Pancake returned home to Warsaw, Ohio. Within a period of only a few weeks, William Crawford Pancake died of the disease he had contracted while fighting in the war. He left behind a wife, Maria and three daughters. He was buried in the Mohawk Cemetery next to his little son Oliver. Two weeks later William’s granddaughter Emma died. She was the daughter of his son Samuel. Emma was only five. Two weeks after that, William’s granddaughter Pauline died. She was also Samuel’s daughter. She was only six.
William Pancake made a Will. Less than two years passed from the time his son and granddaughters died until he, too, died and was buried in the Mohawk Cemetery in the yard of the Church he had helped to build. In his Will he left his estate in the power of his wife to use with some stipulations. His son Samuel was his only surviving child and was the executor. He remembered his oldest granddaughters who were the daughters of his deceased daughter Jane. He remembered his three granddaughters who were the children of his namesake and youngest son William. One third went to his surviving son Samuel.
In 1871, Maria Wilmott Gallagher Pancake died. She was only thirty. She was the widow of William Pancake Junior. She was buried in the same cemetery as her husband and all the other family members who had gone before her. Her children were orphaned but are found in the home of their grandmother Mary Crawford Pancake. Mary Pancake lived until 1880, when she joined her family in the churchyard burial ground.
This is the grave stone of William Pancake in the Mohawk Methodist Churchyard Cemetery in Warsaw, Coshocton County, Ohio. It was photographed for us in 2005 by a stranger, who gave us our first look at our ancestor’s resting place and gave us, for the first time, the names of three children whose names we had not known. They were Oliver, Emma and Pauline Pancake.
The migration of William Pancake.
Pennsylvania to Ohio
