Individual Biography

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.
  
• Related Bios:
  • David Ammen

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 .