Rev. Andreas Henkel

• formal_name: Rev. Andreas Henkel
• first_date: 1808
• last_date: 1811
• function: Printer, Engraver
• locales: New Market
• precis: Printer and engraver in the family-owned Henkel Press (1808-11) at New Market.
• notes: Printer & Engraver
  New Market
  Printer and engraver in the family-owned Henkel Press (1808-11) at New Market.
  The Henkel family was one of Lutheran evangelicals who conducted a press in New Market that produced imprints supporting their ministry. Their crusade was founded on the idea of an unadulterated Lutheran canon focusing on the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Yet the acculturation of German settlers into English language and ways in early-Republic America was then distancing those immigrants from their ethnocultural roots. So if the Henkels were to advance their style of "confessional Lutheranism," they needed to also preserve German language and culture as well. Thus the output of the Henkel Press was a combination of religious and linguistic imprints – religious ones promoting their theological perspective, linguistic ones encouraging the use of German by their followers and prospective adherents. Both genres sustained an itinerant ministry stretching from southern Michigan to northern Georgia, though focused primarily on the family's home hearth in the Great Valley regions of Virginia and North Carolina.
  Andrew Henkel was the fourth son of Rev. Paul Henkel (217) and his wife Elizabeth Negley. He would follow his father into the evangelical Lutheran ministry, though he started out as a printer and engraver in the family's press office. Andrew was sent to Philadelphia in 1808 specifically to learn copperplate-engraving, and for several years he employed those skills in New Market when brother Ambrose (214) conducted that office. Andrew evidently trained his brothers as engravers on his return in 1809, but he was always deemed the most skillful among the Henkels because of his formal training.
  In 1811, Henkel abandoned the printing trade to take up a ministerial calling, as would all of his brothers except Solomon (218), who would conduct the family press until 1847. Initially, Andrew itinerated in western North Carolina before being called to a pulpit in Germantown, Ohio, possibly at the recommendation of his brother Charles, who had gone to Ohio to preach at about the time of the founding of the Ohio Synod in 1820. Andrew served the Germantown church for the remainder of his life, with only brief interruptions to supply churches in Goshen, Indiana, and Lewisburg, Ohio. As a result, he became an influential figure in the Ohio Synod, in part by picking up his brother's fallen mantle after Charles died in 1841, and in part by following the family's penchant for publishing their religious writings. At his death in 1870, Henkel was remembered for works "evidencing great versatility and vigorous mind," echoing the obituaries written for his brothers Ambrose and David (216).
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  Oct. 21
  1790
  New Market, Shenandoah County, Virginia
  
  Married:
  in
  1815
  Margaret Trout @ North Carolina.
  
  Married:
  ca.
  1830
  Elizabeth Swartzell @ Ohio.
  
  Died:
  April 23
  1870
  Germantown, Ohio
  Children:
  All by Margaret: Hiram; Julia; Paul; Margaret; Vandalena; Sabina; George; William; Edward
  
  Sources: Imprints; Henkel Memorial (1910); Life Sketches of Lutheran Clergy.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Rev. Ambrosius Henkel
  • Rev. David Henkel
  • Rev. Paulus Henkel
  • Dr. Salomon Henkel

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.