A satellite view of the area of land that in 1875 belonged to Sebastian Henninger, Lykens Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. The location of his farm house and outbuildings appears in this photo at the end of Moon Lane (right side of view), although the building shown there are modern or modernized. The road at the left side of the picture is South Crossroads. Th newest St. Peter (Hoffman) Church [United Church of Christ], built in 1959, can be seen on the west side of the Crossroads, and the cemetery is directly opposite on the east side. At the bottom of the picture, the building on the east side of the road was the original Hoffman School at this location, and the building on the northeast side of the Crossroads where it joins with Moon Lane, is the brick school house, now a private home, which once served Lykens Township students. [Note: Satellite view from GoogleMaps].
The map below shows the area in 1875, with Henninger’s property of 67 acres and the school house, Hoffman Church and Cemetery.
Sebastian Henninger and his wife Christiana [Deibler] Henninger purchased this property from George Forney and Susanna [Hoffman] Forney in 1871. Forney’s wife was a Hoffman descendant and this land was part of three tracts first owned by the Hoffman family. These tracts were originally known as Walnut Bottom, Hickory Bottom and Hempfield. After changing hands several times, with primary owner/occupants being members of the Hoffman, Salada, Wiest, and Forney families, the lands passed to the Henninger’s in two tracts. One tract had passage rights from the main road, now called Crossroads, to the farm buildings and house located there. The Henninger’s sold or leased a portion of their land to the Lykens Township schools for construction of a brick school house, shown on the map above just to the west of the red circle which notes the location of the Henninger farm.
Census returns from the time period of 1870 through 1900 show that the Henninger’s did not have this property as their primary residence. In each case, they were enumerated in Mifflin Township, Dauphin County. In 1902, Sebastian Henninger and his wife sold sold all this land in Lykens Township, minus the school land, to John Riegel and his wife Mary Jane [Forney] Riegel, and in 1905, the Riegel’s transferred the property to their son Charles A. Riegel.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.
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See also:
Sebastian Henninger (1840-1925) & Christiana [Deibler] Henninger (1839-1895)