According to a Muffley history of 1889, Nicholas was unmarried upon arrival in America. He married before land purchases. Nicholas reportedly married a Miss Wyant in America, probably by 1739. Their children included 4 known sons: Peter, Christian, Joseph, and John/Johannes. Nicholas took a sacrament in a Moravian church (which served persons of other denominations), but later was a member of a Lutheran congregation.
Nicholas Muffly had a son Peter, and a son John, as well as the other kids. Peter had a son John. The Johannes/John Muffly who was my ancestor was almost certainly the brother of Peter, not the son of Peter (the latter view is reported by some researchers). My father, Robert Pierce Muffley, concluded that our John was the brother of Peter, after searching old records in all areas of Pennsylvania associated with our ancestry. John the brother of Peter migrated to Westmoreland County Pennsylvania, married Maria Barbara Yockey, and died in Westmoreland in 1813. John the son of Peter died in Lehigh County, according to the 1889 “Genealogical Record of the Muffly and Eckert Families” by Joseph Robert Muffley (1837-1908).
Nicholas’ first known land grant by the Penn family was in 1745. This was at Maxatawny Township (then Philadelphia County, later Berks County). Over the years there were acquisitions, sales, and gifts of parcels of the Maxatawny land, east of Kutztown. My father Robert P. Muffley mapped the location of the Muffly’s Maxatawny holding, and I have visited this place. Nicholas deeded some land to his eldest son Peter in 1763, the year of the end of the French and Indian (Seven Years) War.
Well before the Revolutionary War, Nicholas had moved away from Maxatawny to Northampton County. During the war, Private Peter Muffly of Northampton Co. Penn. was in the Company of Capt. Frederick Coons, and this company was part of the militia regiment of Lt. Col. Frederick Kerns. Also in the Northampton militia was Frederic Sechler, ancestor of Kathryn Carson Muffley, my wife.
Nicholas Muffly died in 1786, thus after the Revolutionary War, but before the first U.S. census of 1790. Nicholas and his Wyant wife were buried at the Old Towamensing (now St. Johns) Church cemetery, in Palmerton, north of Lehigh Gap, in Carbon Co. (then Northampton Co.) Penn.
