Hans Rudolph Glattfelder

The family of John Peter Glattfelder (1700-1742)

As already noted, the Glattfelder-Walter party when it left Switzerland included the family of John Peter Glattfelder. In the absence of any evidence, we simply do not know whether his widow, who before her marriage on November 23, 1721 was Salomea Amberg, or am Berg, survived the ocean crossing. If she did, we do not know where she lived in Pennsylvania or whether she might have remarried. The fact is that Salomea does not appear as a sponsor, or godmother, for any of the more than twelve of her grandchildren whose baptisms were recorded in York county parish registers, beginning in 1750. If she were alive, one would expect her to have been chosen to act in that important capacity on at least several occasions.

In making his report of emigrants in 1744, the Glattfelden pastor wrote that six children, whose names and ages he gave, accompanied Salomea to America. Unfortunately, neither the names nor the ages which he listed correspond with those contained in a letter which a later pastor of the same congregation wrote to Samuel F. Glatfelter on January 16, 1901. Regrettably, the only copy of this letter in the Casper
Glattfelder Association archives is a typescript of what was probably an English translation of the original German version.

It contains a number of evident errors. In the case of John Peter's six children, it purports to give birth dates from the parish register, but they may well have been baptismal dates instead. The children named and their dates, of either birth or baptism, were as follows: Elizabeth, June 14, 1723; Barbara, August 12, 1725; Felix, February 2, 1727; Hans Rudolf, March 25, 1731; Magdalena, November 29, 1733; and Casper, July 17, 1740.

There are records of at least four of these six children in America. First, Elizabeth married Jacob Rein (1726-1794) on November 18, 1750. A few months later he obtained a warrant for fifty acres of land south and east of Shuster's church. As late as 1762, Jacob Rein was a taxable in Shrewsbury township. Soon thereafter, he and Elizabeth took their family to North Carolina, where they spent the rest of their lives. In his will he called himself a resident of Lincoln county in that state.

Second, Barbara (1725-1794) married John Hildebrand, who has already been identified as having taken up land south and east of Casper in Shrewsbury township, where they reared a large family. Third, Felix (1727-1814) married Sarah Meyer (1731- 1813) on October 24, 1750. Their marriage, as well as that of Jacob and Elizabeth Rein, was recorded in the register of Christ Lutheran church, York. The baptisms of six of their children were recorded in York county Lutheran and Reformed parochial records. There is no evidence that this Felix ever took up land in York county and his name does not appear on the 1762 tax list, the earliest for the county which has survived, but the baptism of his sixth child was recorded in the York Reformed register in April 1763. Soon thereafter Felix and his family went to what was then Rowan county, North Carolina.

He and Sarah were buried in Bethany Reformed cemetery, then Rowan but now Davidson County, North Carolina. Fourth, the register of the Reformed church in Lancaster records the marriage on March 21, 1767 of "Rudolph Glattfelder" and Veronica Hetzberger. Presumably the groom was the son of Peter and Salomea, but there is no evidence to indicate why the marriage took place in Lancaster county or why the groom was already in his midthirties when it occurred. Rudolph, or Rudolf, and his family moved into western Virginia and then North Carolina, where he died, apparently in 1804.

Charles H Glattfelder "The early Glattfelder family in America: Overview. Published by Casper Glattfelder Assc.