♂Hans Stauffer

Hans Stauffer was a man of the parish of Röthenbach, in the Emmental in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, who married Adelheid Schnyder there in the mid-1590s and whose daughter Anna was christened there in 1602. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Anna Stauffer (christened 1602).

Röthenbach

Hans Stauffer and Adelheid Schnyder were married at Röthenbach im Emmental, Canton Bern, late in 1594 or early in 1595; their entry in the marriage register gives no day. Nine of their children were christened there between 1596 and 1617. Their daughter Anna, the third, was christened on 6 May 1602, and the register names her parents as Hanns Stouffer and Adelheit Schÿderin, “siner eefrouwen”, his wife. One of her godmothers was Catrin, the wife of Claus Stouffer.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Anna, who probably married Michael Schenk of Eggiwil at Signau on 15 October 1619, at the age of seventeen, and through Anna’s son Michael Schenk (born 1639). They divide in the nineteenth century between Cattarina Gingerich’s sons Samuel Kunz (1825–1904) and Jacob John Kunz (1814–1866), and meet again when Samuel’s son Thomas Koons (1855–1938) married Jacob’s daughter Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923). Their daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977) was the mother of Ora Emogene Walrath.

Notes

The marriage entry

The marriage stands in the Röthenbach register as “Hanns Stauffer und Adelheit Schnÿder”, with no date of its own. It is the last entry but one of 1594: the entry above it is dated “20 Wynmonat 94”, and the next page opens the year 1595 with an entry of 2 March. The marriage is dated here between 20 October 1594 and 2 March 1595. Wynmonat, the wine month, was an old German name for October, so the entry above it is dated 20 October 1594.

Their daughter Anna

That the Anna christened at Röthenbach in 1602 is the Anna Stauffer who married Michael Schenk in 1619 rests on Richard W. Davis, “Four Generations of the Descendants of Michael Schenk and Anna Stauffer”, Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage (January 1994), who calls her “the daughter of Hans and Adelheid (Schnyder) Stauffer”. The Signau marriage entry names only the bride and groom, as Michel Schenck and Anna Stouffer. Her age at that marriage, seventeen, fits the christening of 1602. Anna’s other godparents were a Josias Sieber of Steinbach and a daughter of Steffan Neuenschwander; both names are uncertain in the register.

Not the Hans Stauffer of Ibersheim

He is a different man from the Hans Stauffer whom Davis names as the husband of Madlena Neuenschwander, and from their son Hans Stauffer, who lived at Ibersheim and Alsheim in the Palatinate and left for Pennsylvania in November 1709. That family belongs to a later generation: their daughter Anna Stauffer married Michael Schenk the younger at Eggiwil in 1660.

Birth and death

When and where he was born and died is not known.