RANCK FAMILY HISTORY
Note: *See also the book Rank of the Rancks, by J. Alan Ranck.
Compiled and typed by Sterling King Hixson, 1959.
(Re-typed for digitizing by Richard S. Hixson, April 2006.)
The first of the present known Rancks* lived in the province of Languedoc, France. Vibrac was the name of the family estate. At one time or another the family lived in Paris and Strasburg. As far as our knowledge can enlighten us at this time, the family at first spelled the name “Rance”. While in Strasburg the letter “e” was dropped and the “k” was added for reasons that will be explained later. In the United States we find a variety of spellings: Rank, Ronck, Ronk, and Ranck. Ronk probably approximated the French pronunciation of Ranc more closely than any of the other spellings.
The first record mentions a Pierre del Ranc in an act October 11, 1112, reported by “Thalamus” of Montpellier. Montpellier was the chief own of Languedoc and stood in a fertile plain near the right bank of the small river Lez. It is said that at this time, Montpellier had a fine school of medicine, and its law school dates from the year 1160. The city had a wall around it and during the religious wars the Protestants from the Catholics captured it and the walls were razed. This was about 1628.
The writer ”Revoir” gives the Ranck family a Spanish origin and states that some of its principal members accompanied Christopher Columbus to America on one of his expeditions. By he year 1498 records show that the family was firmly established in France.
In “Amorial de la Noblesse de Languedoc” M. de Bezons gives the pedigree of the Senior and Cadet lines. It was the custom of families to record genealogical data for the Senior male heirs only, for it was they who inherited the family estates. Usually it was the younger sons who had no share in the family wealth who immigrated to American countries or sought fortune in other avenues of endeavor such as trade and education.
Why did some of the Ranck during the first half of the seventeenth century leave their family estate in Languedoc and go to Paris? That question we cannot answer. By that time, Paris had become a great city and Louis XIII and XIV were in process of making it the most beautiful in the entire world. John Ranck born in Paris in 1641 is the first Ranck whose name and date of birth we know. His son, Hans Valentine was born there too in the year of 1668. John Ranck was a Protestant Minister, a Huguenot as the French called them. The years between 1641 and 1712 representing the life span of John Ranck were turbulent ones in the history of France and Germany. France witnessed the religious struggle between Catholics and Protestants, the terrible persecutions and revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). The Huguenots were the most industrious and prosperous class in France. The Catholic Church never ceased its opposition to the heretics, as all who differed from them were called and so whenever a Catholic became powerful in the government, laws were passed restricting the activities of the Protestants. First their political rights were taken away, and then their fortified towns, soon their property was confiscated and finally their very lives were in danger. Records show that the Reverend Ouis Ranck, pastor of the Church at Die suffered death in 1745 at the hands of the Catholics. John Ranck, the one born in Paris was also a minister. He knew that if he continued to preach in France, his life would surely be forfeited. Realizing all this, the family disposed of their property, exchanged it for gold, concealed it on their persons and fled two hundred miles to the Protestant free city Of Strasburg on the Rhine. But they were not long secure here for Louis and his armies soon recaptured it, and the Ranck were in even greater danger than before. It was during this residence in Germany that the letter “k” was added to the name, no doubt to help disguise their French origin by giving the name a German connotation.
Though we mentioned that the Rancks were Huguenots, they were of a far more ancient faith than the mere word Huguenots generally implied. They were adherents of the Moravian Church, the oldest of the Episcopal churches and one that existed long before the reformation of Luther. The Huguenots were of the education middle class of the population. They were of the finest blood of the nation. France lost the best blood of the nation when these people were driven away. It is said that the Catholics massacred 100,000 of them.
Peace was not to be had in “Strasburg. Still fearful for their lives, the Ranck family escaped from the armies and sailed down the Rhine River to Mannheim Baden. Here John contemned to preach but this city did not prove to be the peaceful haven he so desired. The armies arrived in that area and that is when Hans married Marguerita Phillips at Mannheim. She was of French and Dutch descent. It was at this time that these people heard the words of William Penn and of his plans to found a colony in far away America where every one could worship as he desired and peace would reign always. It was from this region that the great migration to Pennsylvania came in the following years.
Reverend John Ranck died in 1712 but his son Hans had preceded him in 1710, leaving four children. John Michael was age nine, John Philip was age six, Susanna Marguerita three, and Johann Valentine was one year old. The life for the widow must have been difficult indeed in the years that followed. The youngest son died in 1712, but John and Philip grew to manhood in Mannheim. John married Anna Barbara Schwab, also a resident of Mannheim. News came to them that a colony of Moravians from Saxony was coming down the Rhine past their city on their way to a new home in Pennsylvania. After the privations of their early days the thoughts that they too might find a new home more to their desires in a new country thrilled them and they decided to contact these Moravians and ask them to smuggle them aboard their ship as it stopped at Mannheim. This was done and John and his wife, Anna Barbara, and Philip were soon on their way to Rotterdam Holland where the Moravians had secured passage on the English ship “Morton House” for Pennsylvania. Thenceforth their fortunes were interwoven with the Moravians. They landed at Philadelphia on August the 28th, 1728. John’s brother Philip and his family came to America one year later. Together they sailed among the friendly Indians and the exiled Huguenots and others in the wilderness afterwards known as Lancaster County Pennsylvania. There nearly half a century before the American Revolution while Sir Patric Gordon was the proprietary Governor of Pennsylvania, they aided in founding the town which the settlers called New Holland in remembrance of that brave and sturdy country which had welcomed and protected them in their day of trouble. Phillip’s arrival was one year later but came on the same ship as John.
Samuel Ranck was born in 1742 according to official archives of Pennsylvania. He belonged to the 1st Battalion of the Flying Camp organized in that state in 1776. Col. James Cunningham commanded it. On the 27th of August 1776 he participated in the disastrous battle on Long Island and on that ever-memorable Christmas night of 1776 he crossed the ice-gorged Delaware with George Washington and early the next morning was one of the cold and hungry victors of the battle of Trenton. He was at the battle of Germantown on the 4th of October 1777 and in the month of December of the same year, contributed largely of the products of his farm to relieve the need of the soldiers of General Washington who suffered in miserable Winter Quarter not far from Samuels’s property. Later he was one of the volunteer forces, which guarded the Hessian prisoners when they were removed from Lancaster to Philadelphia. Nearly all the members of the Ranck family that was capable of bearing arms fought in the Revolution.
It is interesting to note history records that Samuel donated the silver case of his watch, which he wore on the battlefield to the collection of metal that is now the Liberty Bell. His sister Margaret Ranck Grosh helped to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers and with other sisters of her church, helped to make a silk crimson banner, which has been preserved in Baltimore.
In 1778 Samuel aided in the equipment of the cavalry of Count Pulaski, which was partly recruited, in his section of the state and it was at that time that his sister Margaret helped to make the banner. It was a banner of silk presented to Pulaski as a token of gratitude for the protection he had given them during the occupation of the place. The banner waved from a lance head above Pulaski’s Legion when the hero fell at the siege of Savannah and is on view in Baltimore. Longfellow commemorates the incident of its presentation in his poem commencing with familiar lines; “When the dying flame of day, through the chance shot its ray.”
Peter Ranck Sr. was born in Pennsylvania, a son of Samuel. His birth was in the year of 1777 and he died in 1859. He married Margaret Eicholtz. Not much is recorded of this couple. They lived as farmers and raised a good family. One, Peter Jr. was born in Earl, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on June 20th, 1815. He grew up and married Ann Lemon on August 18th, 1840.
Ann Lemon was born out of wedlock in Pennsylvania and was raised by a wealthy family by the name of Byers. After she was married the opportunity came to listen to the teachings of a new religion. The Byer family told her that if she joined this new Church called the “Mormons”, she could not share in the wealth of the family. On April 20th, 1845 in spite of all this, she, together with her husband, Peter Jr., were baptized into the Church by elder William Appleby.
In July 1846, Peter and his wife “Ann, with their children left their home in Pennsylvania and went to Nauvoo Illinois where he took an active part in the last battle which was fought between the mobcrats and the Mormons. He was ordained a Seventy in the Church in 1847 and in the same year he filled a mission in Missouri. While in Nauvoo, two of their children died. Catharine on July 17th and William on the next day in the year of 1846. The times were so hard that it was necessary that Peter make the two little coffins for them. They were buried in Nauvoo in a city lot belonging to Brother Martin Peck.
In the autumn of 1846 he and his family were driven from Nauvoo with the rest of the Saints and went to Winter Quarters, now know as Omaha, Nebraska. They lived in a log room that Curtis Bolton had built in the summer of 1843. Later, Peter Ranck and Henry Bailey built a double log house in Winter Quarters and the Ranck family lived in one room and the Bailey family in the other. A short time later, Peter went to Pottawattamie County, Iowa and built another log room and moved his family there. Here he was made presiding bishop over the branch of the Church for the years 1848 and 1849. In the spring of 1852 Peter with his wife and family of five children crossed the plains by ox team in Isaac Stewarts Company, which arrived in Salt Lake City September 20th, 1852. He located in East Mill Creek, now a part of Salt Lake and spent the first winter in a log cabin. Shortly after he built a log room on the same ground, which belonged to John Neff. In the spring of 1855 he moved this room onto forty acres of land that he owned on the bench and in 1861 he built an adobe three-room house onto the log room.
By occupation he was a carpenter and a farmer. He owned a shingle mill in Mill Creek Canyon and supplied the neighboring towns with shingles. In the early days when coffins were hard to obtain, he made them for his neighbors and friends. Being a carpenter he built many houses and barns for the early settlers. In 1860 he was called back to Pennsylvania to his mother’s deathbed. After her death, the family property was divided and with his share he purchased dry goods and groceries, which he brought back to Salt Lake in 1861. He brought a company of saints with him. In November of the year 1861 Peter and Ann were sealed in the Old Endowment House. Peter revisited his native state in 1888 to get the family genealogy and in spite of the fact that his people were bitter towards the Church; he secured about five hundred names. After returning from Pennsylvania he was ordained a high priest by Joseph E. Taylor on December 26th, 1891. Peter and Ann had 11 children, seven daughters and four sons. They were sealed to their parents in the Logan Temple in October 1886. Nine children survived Peter at the time of his death on November 18, 1895.
Ann lived a grand and useful life. She assisted in the birth of over 500 babies. Ann preceded her husband in death by 11 years. Of their 11 children, the second born to them was my grandmother. Most of the preceding history was obtained from family records both in Utah and Pennsylvania, but from this point on, I shall write from knowledge gained from actual contact with my grandmother and my father.
My grandmother’s name was Margaret Elizabeth. She was born September 4th, 1843, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She experienced the hardships of the family as they moved from place to place already recorded in this writing. She vividly remembered the crossing of the plains when she was 9 years old, and one time when I took her to Rock Springs, Wyoming to visit my sister Lisle, she told us of the places where they camped along the route.
When 19 years of age, grandmother married James Monroe Hixson. Shortly after, they left the Salt Lake valley and traveled some 40 miles to the east and were one of the first settlers of Wanship, Utah. They built a house, which they called the “Farm” and then later on built one in Wanship town where most of their 10 children were born and raised. Grandmother Hixson was a long and faithful worker in the Church auxiliary organizations and throughout her 93 years was an exceptional person.
People loved her and she had magnetic warmth about her that made the young people want to be around her. She was a lady in every respect. Her children and posterity were eager to be with her. Many experiences stand out in my memory when I stayed with her during the summers. The doctor from Coalville to take tonsils out used the front room of her home constantly. There were times when major operations were performed such as cancer, appendicitis, and goiter operations. The town’s children used to line up against the wall on chairs and their tonsils were removed in assembly line procedure. Grandmother died in September of 1936 in her 94th year. I had just returned from my mission in Holland and visited with her just once before she passed away. She was buried in the family plot at Wanship.
It gives me a great deal of pleasure knowing that we are descendents of a fine group of religious, patriotic forebears that have sacrificed so much for the freedom that we enjoy today. We owe much to them for the peace and comfort that we enjoy today.
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