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I too am working on the line of Nicholas H. Crist - I come from Stephen Crist b. 1799 - one of the last mentioned in the "Account Book". Found the following on naming of German children which might help someone.
Have a lot of Info on Stephen and his family and will be happen to exchange.
19th CENTURY GERMAN NAMING PATTERNS:
At baptism, if two given names were given to the child, the first given
name was a spiritual, saint's name, originally developed from Roman
Catholic tradition and continued by the Protestants in their baptismal
naming customs. The second given name as the secular or call name, which is
the name the person was known by, both within the family and to this rest
of the world. The spiritual name, usually to honor a favorite saint, was
usually repeatedly given to all the children of that family of the same
sex. thus the boys would be Johan Adam Kerchner, Johan George Kerchner,
etc., or Philip Peter Kerchner, Philip Jacob Kerchner, etc. Girls would be
named Anna Barbara Kerchner, Anna Margaret Kerchner, etc., or Maria
Elizabeth Kerchner, Maria Katherine Kerchner, etc. But after baptism, these
people would not be known as John, Philip, Anna, or Maria, respectively.
they would instead be known by what we would think of now as their middle
name, which was their secular name. Thus these people would be known
respectively as Adam, George, Peter, Jacob, Barbara, Margaret, Elizabeth,
and Catherine in legal and
secular records. For males, the saint's name Johan or John was particularly
heavily used by many German families. The child's secular name was really
John, if and only if, at baptism he was named only John, usually Johannes,
with no second given name. Many researchers, new to German names, who find
a baptism of an individual with a name such as Johan Adam Kerchner, thus
mistakenly spend a lot of time looking for a John Kerchner, in legal and
census records, when he was known after baptism, to the secular world, as
Adam Kerchner. Also when reading county histories, etc., especially those
written by individuals in the 20th century, and the author is referring to
someone as John Kerchner, and you are not looking for a John Kerchner, but
the history sounds otherwise familiar, further research may turn up that
this person was really not a John Kerchner, but instead was someone else
such as a Johan George Kerchner. You would thus find all his 18th century
records recorded under the name George Kerchner and not John Kerchner and
therefore after checking the data and correlating the facts you may find
this is really a story about your missing George Kerchner.
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