Name: John Ammen
Formal Name: John Ammen
First Date: 1800; Last Date: 1801
Function: Publisher
Locales: Botetourt County
Precis
Publisher of first newspaper in Botetourt County, The Herald of Virginia (1800), a short-lived joint venture with his youngest brother David Ammen (008).Notes
Publisher Fincastle, Botetourt Publisher of first newspaper in Botetourt County, The Herald of Virginia & Fincastle Weekly Advertiser (1800-01), a short-lived joint venture with his brother David Ammen (008). A weaver by trade, John Ammen was apparently the financier for his brother David's press. Fourteen years David's senior, John had already built a weaving mill on family land along Looney's Mill Creek. When his father, Durst, brought the family to Botetourt County from Pennsylvania in 1785, John was twenty-five years-old and looking to establish a freehold of his own; his mill became the means to that end. He married Anna Deardorff of Bedford County in 1788, evidently once the mill was operating; the couple apparently had only one child, who died in infancy. In 1810, after Anna's death, he remarried, this time to another Botetourt County resident, Christianna Beckner. In land transactions throughout this period, John is seen divesting himself of the land conveyed to him by his father, likely for capital needed to expand his weaving business, while assisting other family members in building up their nearby farms. He remained engaged in the business that he had started until his 1846 death. His journalistic career, however, died when Fincastle's Herald did in mid-1801. Personal Data Born: Sept. 7 1761 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Married [1]: In 1788 Bedford County, Virginia Married [2]: July 10 1810 Botetourt County, Virginia Died: June 17 1846 Botetourt County, Virginia Children: Infant daughter (d. 1799) Sources: Imprints; Brigham; Austin, Botetourt County Families; Stoner, Seed-Bed of the Republic. The spelling of his surname varies between Ammen and Amen; in early Virginia records the Amen form prevails, anglicizing a Germanic name; but the family's genealogical accounts, his brother's later Ohio imprints, and his nephews' biographies all embrace the Ammen form; so the style employed here follows that convention.