♂Niclaus Stauffer

Niclaus Stauffer (14 September 1555 – 1615) was a man of the Emmental, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, whose children were christened at Signau in 1589 and 1592, in the first years of that parish’s surviving register. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Christian Stauffer (about 1579 – about 1672).

Eggiwil and Signau

Niclaus is said to have been born at Eggiwil, in the upper Emmental, on 14 September 1555. He married Catharina Lehman, and their son Christian was probably born about 1579. Eggiwil lay in the parish of Signau, whose christening register begins in 1589, and the family appears in its first pages: on 30 March 1589 Niclaus brought a daughter, Elsi, to be christened, and on 5 November 1592 a son, Hans, whom the register enters as the child of Claus Stoufer and Thrini Leeman. Five children are credited to the couple: Christian, Elsi, Hans and two daughters named Barbli.

Niclaus is said to have owned the Luchsmatt farm at Eggiwil by 1597, and to have died there in 1615.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Christian, Christian’s 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 Niclaus.

Notes

The Signau christenings

The two christenings stand in the Signau register. The first runs “Niclaus Stoufer ein dochter toufft, heisst Elsi … 30. Martij” (Niclaus Stoufer had a daughter christened, named Elsi), and does not name the mother. The second runs “Claus Stoufer und Thrinj Leeman ein Sun toufft, heisst Hans … 5 Novë” (Claus Stoufer and Thrini Leeman had a son christened, named Hans). Claus is the usual short form of Niclaus, and Thrini of Catharina. An online family tree dates Elsi’s christening 30 March 1590; the entry belongs to 1589, and there is no Elsi among the christenings of March 1590. The two daughters named Barbli, given as christened in 1591 and 1594, come from the same online family tree, without a source.

Birth, farm and death

His birth on 14 September 1555 at the Luchsmatt farm comes from an online family tree, without a source; no parish register in the district reaches back to 1555. Richard W. Davis, in Emigrants, Refugees and Prisoners (p. 363), has him owning Luchsmatt in 1597 and dying there in 1615.

His son Christian

That Christian Stauffer was his son rests on Davis, who writes of Christian: “He was the son of Niclaus”. No christening survives to confirm it: the Röthenbach register for 1578 to 1581 has no child of a Niclaus Stauffer, and the Signau register begins only in 1589. The same online family tree names Catharina Lehman as Christian’s mother, without a source, and names Niclaus’s own father as Ulrich Stauffer, also without a source.