Introduction
John Frederick Zinn, his wife Anna Sophia (Schneider) and at least one child, Philip Jacob Zinn, came to America from Germany in 1738 on the ship Glascow. They landed at Philadelphia in September 1738. One can only speculate on their economic status and movements after they arrived. But before long, they had property in the farming country of southeastern Pennsylvania, in York County. Soon, another son, John Nicholas, was born; and by the mid-point of the eighteenth century, two daughters (Anna Catherine and Marie Margaret) had completed the family.
From this German family of six, there are today perhaps 12 or more generations of Zinns, constituting thousands of Zinn descendants. In 1962, E. M. Grass published the Genealogy of the Zinn family of York and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania. For many years, this admirable work, now out of print, seemed to be a standard for finding descendants of John Frederick and Anna Sophia Zinn. Online genealogies and easy access to federal census records through 1930 continue to increase knowledge of our Zinn ancestors.
One Zinn branch not receiving much treatment, either in Grass (1962) or in other reports, is my branch of Zinns. These are Zinns descending from John Frederick and Anna Sophia's grandson John Jacob Zinn who married Anna Maria (Hoover) Zinn. Maurice Grass only mentions two children (Joseph and George) of John Jacob and Anna Maria Zinn, with no further information on them. John Jacob and Anna Maria had at least six children, one being my great great grandfather, Conrad Zinn, "from York and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to Erie County, Pennsylvania by 1830." Hopefully, what is presented here will be considered valuable by descendants of Conrad and Elizabeth (Newman) Zinn and will be informative to workers with an interest in the other Zinn lines of John Frederick and Sophia (Schneider) Zinn.
Where possible I used what are usually considered English equivalents of German given and surnames. For the cut-off date for reporting birth dates, I arbitrarily used 1912. Unless I knew the person was deceased, I did not report the few dates for people born after 1912.
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