Peter Abplanalp, one of my great-great-grandfathers, was born 225 years ago yesterday, on October 4, 1797. He died in January 1879 and is buried in the Prairie Chapel Cemetery of Worth County, Missouri, 59 years before I was born in that same county.
According to the old Abplanalp family legend (which is briefly told in Wikipedia), centuries ago there was an avalanche on Mt. Planalp, a small mountain located near the northeastern bank of beautiful Lake Brienz in the southeastern part of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland.
That fateful avalanche demolished the houses on the
mountainside as land, rocks, and trees cascaded down the mountain toward the
lake at the bottom. Shortly after that destructive avalanche, a basket bearing
a baby boy was found floating on Lake Brienz.
The baby boy, the lone survivor of the avalanche, was
rescued and cared for —but no one knew his name. So, his rescuers decided to
call him Peter and to give him the last name Abplanalp, the prefix “ab” being
Latin for “from.”
That Peter was not my great-great grandfather who is buried
in northwest Missouri, but one of his grandfathers back many generations. (Many
male Abplanalps have been named Peter; both the father and the grandfather of
the Peter Abplanalp buried at Prairie Chapel were also named Peter.)
There are records of Abplanalps in Switzerland back to the
middle of the 16th century, but it is not known exactly when the first “Abplanalp”
baby was found floating in his basket on Lake Brienz. But all of us who have
Abplanalp ancestors are grateful for his providential survival.
There are records of Abplanalps coming to the U.S. as
early as 1795, and many emigrated to southeastern Indiana. Since 1814 Switzerland
County has been Indiana’s southeastern corner county. Peter and Barbara (StĂ€hli)
Abplanalp emigrated to nearby Dearborn County in 1834.
Their daughter Margaret was born there in 1840, and in 1865
she married Christian Leopold Neiger (1840~1901), a Swiss immigrant. Before
long they moved to Worth County, Mo., and her parents came to live near (or maybe
with) them later.
Hans Abplanalp was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1886 and
emigrated to New York in 1906. In 1913 he married Marie Nay in New York, and their
son Robert (1922~2003) became the best-known person named Abplanalp in the U.S.
Robert was a wealthy inventor who became a friend and
confidant of President Nixon. (His obituary
in the New York Times tells of his close ties to Nixon.)
I have been unable to find the connection of Hans and his
son Robert to my family tree, but surely they are also descendants of baby
Peter, the star of the Abplanalp legend.
The Abplanalps and other Swiss immigrants came
to the U.S. primarily for economic reasons. The “new world” of North America
offered the promise of a more affluent life than possible on the farms and
small villages of rural Switzerland.
My great-grandfather Christian Leopold Neiger was the 13th
child of his family. When he was 21, he borrowed money to come to the U.S. in
1861. Four years later he married Margaret Abplanalp, and in 1869 they moved to
Worth Co., Mo., where they bought a farm and lived there until their deaths.
The book History of Gentry and Worth Missouri (1882)
includes two pages titled “Christian Leopold Neiger.” It concludes, “Mr. N. now
has a fine farm, well improved, and is a respected man and good citizen. Few
foreigners, coming as he did, have done better. He has an excellent wife . . .
.”
When my Abplanalp ancestors came to this country in
the 19th century, there were no restrictions on immigration such as
there are now. A sizable percentage of us USAmericans are descendants of people
who permanently left their homes in Europe or elsewhere and freely entered the
U.S.
In recent years, a multitude of
people, especially from countries south of the U.S. border, have sought to come
to this country not only for economic reasons but primarily for their own safety.
Can’t they be allowed to live and to flourish here as the Abplanalps and so many
other immigrants have?
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There have been descendants of Peter Abplanalp living in Worth County, Missouri, (my home county) from the 1860s until the present. My seventh and eighth grade schoolteacher was Freida Abplanalp Elwick (1913~2006). She was my third cousin: Peter Abplanalp was her great-great-grandfather also. She and nearly 20 other people named Abplanalp are buried in the Prairie Chapel Cemetery.
ReplyDeleteThis is so wonderful to read. I am a descendent of the Abplanalps my name is Ariana Andrejko and my grandmother was Rachel Davis who is the great grand daughter of the Mary Abplanalp who you speak of. I remember while growing up we would hear this story from our elders. I am so very proud to be apart of such a legendary family. I hope and pray that one day I can add to our family legacy. Much love to you all ❤️đ¶✌️
DeleteAs expected, there have not been many comments regarding this morning's blog post. The first one I received was from my daughter Kathy, who has known the Abplanalp story for decades. She wrote, "I love this story! What makes it classified as a legend? Oral history?"
ReplyDeleteKathy, I think the story is classified as a legend because there is no written documentation of it dating back to the time of the story. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "legend" as "a story coming down from the past, especially one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable."
DeleteThe avalanche on Mt. Planalp may have been as far back as the 15th century (or even before), and there were probably few people then in rural Switzerland who could read and write. At any rate, there is no written documentation of the story, which as you suggested, was passed down as oral tradition. It is a story which certainly could be true, and Ancestry.com has information about Abplanalps at least as far back as Jakob, who reportedly was born in Meiringen in 1560--and is possibly your 10th-great-grandfather!
Here are comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for these tidbits of your family history. I had known there is a county named Switzerland in Indiana, but I always wondered how that happened. Your blog provides a good explanation--a mystery solved.
As for immigration, our immigration system is broken and bipartisan efforts to fix it have usually been frustrated by Republicans, the ones who scream the loudest about immigration. I prefer a more humane (and efficient) system.
Local Thinking Friend Ann Henning shares this information about her Swiss family history:
ReplyDelete"My Swiss ancestors (Huber) Hoover came in the dark of night from Schaffhausen Canton to the Palatinate to Pennsylvania escaping persecution for their religion (Mennonite). Jacob was born in the Palatinate prior to 1700, settled in Lancaster, Penn., and made his will in 1754. His grandson Mathias was a Revolutionary soldier. I have attended several family reunions in Tennessee where he is buried.
Thanks for sharing this, Ann. As you know, but many readers may not, Schaffhausen is the northernmost canton of Switzerland. It is famous in Mennonite history as Schleitheim is one of the municipalities of Schaffhausen and the Schleitheim Confession, the first written statement of Anabaptist beliefs, was drafted there in 1527.
DeleteIt is sad that the Anabaptists, whose movement began in Zurich in 1525, were persecuted in Switzerland, both by the Catholics and especially by the Reformed Church, begun by the Calvinist Ulrich Zwingli (or Huldrych Zwingli (1484~1531), was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in German-speaking Switzerland, and his followers.
As a long-time "closet" Anabaptist and now a member of a Mennonite church, I have been a bit bothered by great-grandfather C.L. Neiger, introduced above, being a leader in the gathering of Reformed Church members in the village of Denver, near where he lived in Worth County, Missouri--but the Reformed Church in the U.S. in the 1800s didn't persecute Anabaptists, of course,
A few minutes ago, I received the following comments from local Thinking Friend Ed Kail:
ReplyDelete"As the grandson of immigrants from Germany (Sudetenland), I am frequently reminded that everyone now living on this continent immigrated from somewhere else. Even the ancestors of our Native Americans probably emigrated from Eastern Asia over a land bridge during an ice age. What if we all simply acknowledged and celebrated that fact? Apart from immigrants, the USA is nothing."
Hi my Brother Leroy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your Background History.and what a family you had.
Best wishes to you and June.
John Tim Carr
This afternoon, Thinking Friend Michael Willet Newheart, who is currently the interim pastor of First Baptist Church of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, sent these email comments:
ReplyDelete"I found this quite fascinating, Leroy. A man in the church where I was interim pastor during grad school 1981-82 in Columbus IN was named Planalp. I will share this with him.
Columbus is about 65 miles west of Dearborn County, Indiana, where my Abplanalp ancestors lived. Many years ago my parents and my father's sister went to an Abplanalp reunion in Dearborn County, and there were several people there whose surname was Planalp. Evidently some in the Abplanalp family decided to shorten their surname and dropped the "Ab" at the beginning.
DeleteHa Ha--good one, Michael!
DeleteI remember, when I was young, and we would ask someone, "What are you?" it was always understood as a question about our foreign ancestry. People would say, "Irish" or "German" or "Italian" -- whatever. We've lost that and developed a nasty nativism similar to that of the early 20th century when we barred Asian immigrants. It's quite disappointing.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, for seven years I pastored a congregation that was known as the "German church" and also as the "Swiss Church." Many of its members and its first pastor were from Switzerland. It held German-language services up until World War II. That church has now closed, and most of its second- and third-generation Swiss members have died.
Anton, as you know well, many of the Swiss people speak German as their first language, and such was the case for my Abplanalp and Neiger ancestors. I mentioned above about my great-grandfather Neiger being a leader of the Reformed Church gathering near his home in northwest Missouri, but I also remember my Aunt Mary saying that she thought Grandpa Neiger was perhaps more interested in gathering with others to speak German than to have religious services as such. (That may have also been the case for great-grandmother Margaret, who was born an Abplanalp, but I don't remember Aunt Mary saying anything about her and the Reformed Church.)
DeleteSince that church (St. Peter's UCC) closed, I can't get at its historical records, which are now probably in the UCC Missouri Conference archives. I studied its history extensively when I was the pastor. One member even wrote a book-length history of it for a master's thesis in history, but she's no longer with us. I read that history closely. The church, founded in 1865, was originally up in the city, first at 14th and Oak, then at Linwood and Benton, but moved to south KC on Holmes Rd. in the Red Bridge area during the white flight of the 1970s. I double checked my facts a little using a modest centennial book, and I was wrong about the first pastor being Swiss. He was German. However, he had come from the Basel Mission House, a missionary society based in Switzerland. In checking the history, I relearned that the church was originally German Evangelical, so it came into the UCC from the Evangelical side of the Evangelical and Reformed Churches of America, not from the Reformed, which means it's less likely that there were connections with the Neigers. I spent a lot of time with some of the congregation's Swiss members. Of course, they were second and third generation. Curiously, the first baptism in the church, October 29, 1865, was an Anton (last name, Menzinger), born on March 4 of that year.
DeleteThank you, Leroy. This Sunday I will begin the biblical part of my sermon with, "There rose up a king who did not know Joseph," another immigrant who made huge contributions to his adopted country. We all forget so quickly where we came from and how we got here.
ReplyDeleteA tardy comment on Abplanalp. You have a very interesting genealogy Leroy. In just now reading the comments I came across one whose ancestors were Swiss Mennonites fleeing persecution. My wife Patricia's grandmother was a Coffmann, but fled Switzerland as Kaufmanns. (Not sure w/o looking whether one "f" of two. Likewise whether one "n" or two). At any rate they fled Switzerland for America in the early 1700s before there was a United States. Came to Lancaster PA where they were entered in a Mennonite church list. They were quite possibly members of the same Mennonite group as Ann Henning's ancestors. But oh the negative effect capitalism can have on anyone if we are not watchful and mindful. A descendant of those Mennonite refugees migrated south to Alabama and became a slave trader. Not a direct ancestor of Patricia but some degree of great grand uncle. Kikers (as Keichers) were also present in Bucks County PA pre Revolutionary War, but not as Mennonites. My great great grandfather George Adam Keicher b. 1754 in Bucks County was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, as was an Ely immigrant in the maternal branch of my family tree.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how I came across this page, but my grandmother was an Abplanalp. And I was told this story growing up. I believe there is a book published “Midway Portraits of a Town” . And yes, the famous family stories passed down from generations not being washed away. Which I love! ! Our families left New York and migrated West and slowly moved to Heber Utah and Vernal Utah. My grandmother said, the Utah Mountains reminded of Home. There is more stories also on Ancestrydna as well.
ReplyDelete