♂Abraham Stetler

Abraham Stetler (died between 1753 and 1760) was a German-speaking settler of Bethel Township, then in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who held a 226-acre tract named “Reading”, and whose German-language will was still being recited in a deed of 1814, sixty-one years after its date. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Elizabeth Stetler.

Land and family

An Abraham Stettler, probably this settler, reached Philadelphia from Rotterdam on the ship Thistle and took the oaths of allegiance on 19 September 1738. A Christian Stettler sailed with him, and so did Christian and Henry Brechbill. The identification is probable rather than proven: a Christian Breckbill of Bethel Township was appointed guardian of Abraham’s daughter Catharine in 1771, which fits the Brechbills on the ship.

A warrant of 22 May 1747 had the tract “Reading”, 226½ acres in Bethel Township, surveyed to Abraham Stetler. He had four sons, John, Henry, Abraham and Christian, and four daughters, Maria, Elizabeth, Anna and Catharine; his wife Barbara was probably their mother, though no record names her as such.

He wrote his will in German at Bethel Township on 14 August 1753, describing himself as weak and sickly. Everything went to “my house Woman Barbara” to keep house for as long as she remained his widow, with a third of the estate hers if she married again. The will names none of the children, saying only that “there shall have none a more Right as the other”, so they were to share alike. Rudolph Hundsecker and Casper Shirk were its executors. It was proved at Lancaster on 27 August 1760, and an English translation was recorded there.

Death and estate

He had died by 27 August 1760, when his will was proved. Nearly eleven years later, on 5 June 1771, the Lancaster County Orphans’ Court appointed a guardian for his daughter Catharine, then under fourteen, and described him as “late of the same Township deceased”. Guardians for Christian, Abraham and Anna followed on 17 June. On 3 June 1772 Casper Shirk the younger, the executor of Rudolph Hundsecker, who had been executor of Abraham’s will, passed his account, and the balance was divided “as directed by the Will”: a third to Barbara, and equal shares to each of the eight children, one of them paid to “John Haldiman and Elizabeth his wife”.

The farm went to that daughter’s household. The records disagree on how John Holdeman came to hold “Reading”. A published genealogy records him buying it from the heirs on 27 January 1774, but a deed of 4 February 1814 reciting the title says instead that he bought out the co-heirs’ shares by indentures of 7 April 1783 and 27 January 1794, and the last eighth from Peter and Catharine Neakommet in 1814 and 1816. When John deeded part of it to his own daughter in 1814, the deed recited Abraham Stetler’s will and his whole family, and conveyed the land through “John Holdeman and Elizabeth his wife in right of the said Elizabeth”. In law, that meant the land was hers by inheritance.

Notes

The will is recorded, in English translation, in Lancaster County Will Book B, page 333; the original was in German. The first executor’s name is not clear in the recorded will; the 1814 deed and the estate account give it as Rudolph Hundsecker. An online family tree identifies him with an Abraham Stettler baptized at Bern, Switzerland, in 1711, the son of a Bern family, and names his wife Barbara Stucki, married at Bolligen in 1741. No record found so far connects the Bethel settler with that family, and that tree’s baptism entry cites no source. A marriage at Bolligen in 1741 also does not fit a man who had reached Pennsylvania by September 1738, so either that marriage belongs to another Abraham Stettler or the date given for it is wrong. Barbara’s maiden name is not known from any record.

The 1738 arrival is from the printed ship lists: Strassburger and Hinke, Pennsylvania German Pioneers, vol. I (1934), List 57, the ship Thistle, John Wilson master, from Rotterdam, qualified at Philadelphia on 19 September 1738; Rupp, Thirty Thousand Names, prints the same voyage. The captain’s list writes him “Stidler” and the signed list “Stettler”. That he is the Bethel settler rests on the Brechbill guardianship of 1771 and is probable, not proven.