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 (Stähli)
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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