Person:Ralph Landenberg (1)

Notes

In 1784, Ralph Landenberg, a wealthy wine merchant, died at Salisbury, England after a long life in Castle Street, Westminster, in the Parish of Saint Martins in the Fields. Originally from Frankenthal, northwest of Mannheim, Landenberg left 27.16.8 (pounds sterling) to each of the six children of his deceased sister Catharina Elizabetha Wlhemina Lotspeich. In 1795 two of those children, Joanna Frederica Lotspeich Jacoby and John Christopher Lotspeich, recovered their shares in Virginia and in Bourbon County, Kentucky, respectively. Their brother, Johann Wilhelm Lotspeich, son of the tailor Johann Conrad Lotspeich and Catharina Landenberg, had arrived in Virginia from Philadelphia in 1772, apparently bringing his brother and sister. His sister married a late arrival in Virginia, Lucas Jacoby, who had come to Virginia with his father, John Daniel Jacoby, in about 1760. The father of the Lotspeichs died in 1778. Despite Frankenthal's advantageous location on a major trade route through which many German-American agents regularly passed, no recovery attempt had been made. Instead, only the connection to their wealthy uncle in London secured the property.

[Source: From 'Palatines, Liberty, and Property', German Lutherans in Colonial British America by A. G. Roeber. (c) The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London].