♀Adelheid Oppliger

Adelheid Oppliger (christened 21 November 1588) was a woman of Röthenbach im Emmental, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, who married Christian Stauffer there on 18 June 1610 and raised a family in the neighboring parishes of Signau and Röthenbach. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Hans Stauffer.

Life

Adelheid was christened at Röthenbach on 21 November 1588, the daughter of Peter Oppliger and Adelheit Blonier, who had married there on 12 March 1584. Christian Stauffer and Adelheid Oppliger were married at Röthenbach im Emmental on 18 June 1610, with the consent of Johannes Rudolf, the pastor of Signau. The couple had five children christened between 1611 and 1622, among them Hans, christened at Signau on 18 April 1613, whom the register enters as the child of Christen Stouffer and Adelheit Obliger.

Her husband was probably the Anabaptist^W preacher Christian Stauffer who was imprisoned at Thun in 1644 and exiled from Switzerland in October 1671. When Adelheid died, and whether she lived to see his imprisonment or exile, is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Hans and Hans’s daughter Anna Stauffer (born about 1644), and they meet again in Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977), the mother of Ora Emogene Walrath, whose parents Thomas Koons (1855–1938) and Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923) both descended from Adelheid.

Notes

What rests on the registers

Her christening, her marriage and Hans’s christening all rest on the parish registers. The Röthenbach register enters her as the daughter of “Peter Opliger / Adelheit Blonier” on 21 November 1588, and the marriage as “Christen Stouffer, und Adelheit Oppliger, mit verwilligung Herr Johannes Rudolffen, Predicanten zu Signouw, 18 Junij 1610” (with the consent of Herr Johannes Rudolf, preacher at Signau). Hans’s christening on 18 April 1613 is in the Signau register. An online abstract of that register dates it 18 April 1612, but the page falls among entries headed 1613.

Which Adelheid Oppliger

No other Adelheid Oppliger was christened at Röthenbach in the years around 1588, so the bride of 1610 is taken to be the child of 1588. Another Adelheit Obliger married Ulli Ramseier at Signau on 16 November 1618; she was a different woman, since Adelheid was still bearing Christian’s children in 1622.

Her son Hans

That Hans Stauffer, the husband of Madlena Neuenschwander and father of Anna, was the Hans christened in 1613 rests on Richard W. Davis, who in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage (January 1994) names the preacher Christian Stauffer as Anna’s grandfather, and in The Stauffer Families of Switzerland, Germany and America (1992) places Hans among the children of Christian and Adelheid.