A to Z April Challenge: H is for Helena

This is Day 8 of the A to Z April Challenge.  My theme is women with unusual names although I must cheat now and then or I’ll have a name and no story.

is for Helena “Ellen” Foland.

Helena Foland is my 3G grandmother.  She was born in Virginia in 1818, the daughter of Jacob Foland and Mary Elizabeth Hinkle; the granddaughter of Johann Valentine and Anna Christina Schuckmaeninn Foland and George and Susannah Goetzinger Hinkle; the great-granddaughter of Jacob and Anna Zufelt Foland, Fernandus and Neeltje Schuckmaeninn, and George and Barbara Rowland Henckel.  

With all that German influence, you’d think I would love knockwurst and bratwurst, but I don’t.  I do, however, really like sauerkraut.

Anyway, back to Helena. Her ancestors were among those many Germans and Swiss who escaped religious persecution by immigrating to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s.  From there many of the German families continued south into Maryland and then into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

The Folands, Schuckmaeninns, and Henckel/Hinkles were among those early settlers.

In 1835, Helena married William Eppard, whose family migration story reads much like that of Helena’s.  They settled in the Naked Creek area of Rockingham County.  They farmed and raised 4 children.

Meanwhile Helena’s parents and most of their children kept moving westward into Tennessee.  Helena was separated from her family not only by miles but also by politics.  The Civil War.  Tennessee was Union.  Virginia was Confederacy.  While Helena’s own son fought for the South, her brothers were fighting for the North. 

A house divided.

Hop on over to the A to Z April Challenge for Hundreds and Hundreds of posts on the letter H.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.