Niclaus Maffli was born in 1707 at Höfen-Amsoldingen bei Thun, the primary Maffli ancestral home. The church at Amsoldingen is the collegiate church of St. Mauritius. Next to the church is the Amsoldingen “castle”, now more of a manor house following reconstruction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
My own trip to Höfen-Amsoldingen bei Thun many years ago unfortunately did not include the interior of the church at Amsoldingen. The church & adjacent castle were reportedly built with stone from Aventicum, the capital of Roman Switzerland. The church is described as an Ottonian basilica. The Ottonians were a dynasty of German kings, 919-1024. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
I have not yet visited St. Stephan, which I did not know about while on my Swiss voyages of the late 1960s and 1970s. The St. Stephan village church, surely attended by our Jäggi ancestors, was begun in the early medieval times, with tower and choir from the 800s. The church was most recently expanded in the 1400s. At one time this church was affiliated with the church at nearby Zweisimmen, and then was under Interlaken Abbey from 1335. Bern Canton officially adopted the Protestant Reformation in 1528, a move which was resisted in the Bernese Oberland. This was about a century and a half before the probable birth of ancestor Christian Jäggi Sr., and it is unknown whether his ancestors were then in the vicinity of St. Stephan. In the early Jäggi days near St. Stephan, the economy was largely agricultural. Cattle were located on the valley floor and in seasonal alpine herding camps. Christian Jäggi Sr. was reportedly born about 1680-1685, and lived in the time of the Old Swiss Confederacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Secondary Maffli ancestral villages of Oberdiessbach and Buchholterberg were also visited by Marilyn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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| Photos at top: Village of St. Stephan, Oberdiessbach, Bottom photos: Buchholterberg, Amsoldingen Church and Castle photo credit: Marilyn Wagner Bernstein |
Niclaus Muffley’s son Johannes married Christian Jäggi’s daughter Maria Barbara Yockey in Pennsylvania. In 1774, Johannes/John signed the Ft. Allen Petition of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. This was one of several petitions asking Governor Penn for greater protection against Indian raids. Other signers of the Ft. Allen Petition included Peter Wannemacher (brother of Regina Wannemacher Muffly), Peter’s son-in-law Philip Klingensmith, and Balthazar Meyer. Brian, an adoptee & recently discovered autosomal DNA cousin of Gary Muffley, reportedly is a descendant of Philip Klingensmith, his Wannemacher wife, and also a Meyer woman who could be kin of Balthazar Meyer. It is noteworthy that that we do not yet know the surname of Elizabeth, wife of Johannes’ son Jacob. Was she a Klingensmith, Wannemacher, or Meyer? Jacob (b. 1784) and his wife were 3rd great-grandparents of Gary. The autosomal DNA (atDNA) chromosomal shared segment with Brian lies mostly on Chromosome 14, and the total of shared segments is 48.33 centiMorgans. So, the link is substantial, and hopefully is a connection researchable in documents &/or with further DNA analyses. This data may be found at www.gedmatch.com under ID # F170106 for Gary. Brian is under ID # M220416 at GEDmatch.
The Johannes Muffly family may have lived in the vicinity of Muffley Hollow Road, shown at www.spokeo.com/Muffley+Hollow+
By the way, our Johannes Muffly and wife Maria Barbara Yockey of Westmoreland Pennsylvania had a nephew & niece, respectively: John Muffley and his wife Maria Barbara Yockey. This had led to confusion in reported genealogies, and mistakes which defy attempts to correct. The younger couple reportedly never left southeast Pennsylvania. The younger John Muffley, still single, appeared in church records in southeast Pennsylvania at a time when his uncle Johannes (our ancestor) was married and living in southwest Pennsylvania.
Gary’s atDNA appears to have remnants from 5th great-grandfather Christian Jäggi/Yockey (b. 1720) &/or his wife Maria Catharina Christ. Christian & Catharina were the Most Recent Common Ancestors for Gary & new atDNA cousin Don of Kittanning Pennsylvania. The total of shared chromosomal segments is 28.77 centiMorgans, with the largest shared segment lying on Chromosome 10 at 17.26 cM. So, it might be possible that Gary also has a bit of detectible atDNA from Niclaus Muffley too. Niclaus was one of 128 ancestors at the level of 5th great-grandparents. Don’s ancestor Margaret Whitaker (b. 1816) was a daughter of Martin Whitaker and the wife of Samuel Loyd. I have from Don a seating chart for St. James Church, 1838-1839. On this chart Martin Whitaker and his son-in-law Samuel Loyd have adjacent seats. The chart has several familiar names, some of which figure in the ancestry of Muffley cousin Becky. One listing is William Muffley, brother of my 3rd great-grandfather Jacob Muffley (1784-1844). Margaret Whitaker Loyd’s maternal grandfather was Peter Yockey, brother of our Maria Barbara Yockey Muffly. St. James Church had previously been known as Yockey’s Meeting House, so the 1838-1839 seating chart naturally shows several Yockey people.
The seating chart also lists the surname Wolford. John Frederick Yockey (b. 1775), grandson of Christian & Catharina, married Elizabeth Wolford. John’s & Elizabeth’s grandson was Corporal Daniel Yockey (b. 1833). Daniel was in Company B of the 139th Pennsylvania Infantry during the Civil War. His regiment participated in a large number of battles, including Gettysburg. At Gettysburg, July 1863, his regiment was in the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division, XI Corps of the Army of the Potomac. The XI Corps was called the “German Corps” because of so many German speakers. The XI Corps was also associated with Robert Cumming Schenck, of Dutch ancestry, and thus perhaps my kinsman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Daniel Yockey and his family migrated from Pennsylvania by wagon to Washington State. In 1890 he arrived at Douglas County, and cultivated timber southeast of Dyer. His grave is in the Wenatchee City Cemetery, Chelan County, Washington. Find A Grave Memorial # 2238668.
When our ancestor Christian Yockey left Switzerland, he probably migrated via the Pfalz region of Germany prior to arriving in America from Rotterdam in 1737. In 1837 in the Pfalz there was born Jacob Yockey, who migrated to Ohio. I suspect that Christian left Switzerland with Yockey kin who remained in the Pfalz/Palatinate near the Rhine River. Jacob Yockey’s ancestry is thought, but not yet proven, to stem fromSwitzerland, according to researchers of this line. Autosomal DNA testing may clarify probable connections, and such testing is in progress right now.
For some time now, we have had 67 STR (Short Tandem Repeats) markers yDNA data from Richard, who is this descendant of Peter Muffly Sr. (b. 1739): ID P5N2S at www.ysearch.org Matches to this sample in the Y-Search database have so far been very distant and unhelpful for genealogical research. We now also have 67 STR markers yDNA data from myself, Gary Muffley. I descend from Peter’s brother Johannes. So, the Most Recent Common Ancestor for me and Richard, the donor of Y-Search sample P5N2S, was immigrating ancestor Niclaus, our 5th great-grandfather. Richard and Gary match on 62 of 67 STR markers. This data confirms that there were no Non-Paternity Events down the 2 lines from Niclaus to Richard and myself. We have a good approximation of Niclaus’ yDNA 67 markers STR pattern. Niclaus would indeed have carried the R1b yDNA marker S21+/U106+, perhaps brought into the Maffli part of the Aare River Valley by the Alemanni tribe.
Gary’s 67 STR yDNA markers results may be viewed under ID T7ND3 at www.ysearch.org and under Kit # 170106 at www.familytreedna.com/public/
I wish to take exception to the Ancestry.com statement about the origin of Muffley as “Americanized form of South German Muffele, nickname for a surly person, from a diminutive of Muff”. Taken from a dictionary of American family names. This is exactly the kind of approach rightly criticized in the book “Surnames, DNA, and Family History”, by Redmonds, King, and Hey. A multidisciplinary approach to surnames is what is needed, not limited to the traditional surnames-philologist approach. Know the family history, and the DNA if possible. Did the person(s) who came up with this explanation even know of the existence of the Alemanni Swiss surname Maffli, present in that exact spelling from the 1500s in the Aare River Valley? Or refer to the Swiss Family Name Book? I think not. We have a continuous line of evidence from the Swiss Maffli to American Muffley. Niclaus was born Maffli, but the “a” was pronounced “oo” in the Highest Alemannic dialect, so the spelling got altered even prior to arrival in America. One of the earliest Muffley histories reported that Niclaus himself said that he was Swiss. Years ago, I contacted the president of the American Name Society about the Swiss Maffli surname, which was new to him. His guess was that the nickname Maff may have derived from something like Magafrid. A typical Germanic two-theme name, corresponding to Macht (strength) plus Fried (peace). Maffli would have been a son of Maff, in the patronymic pattern typical of Germanic Switzerland. What else does Ancestry.com have to say about the surname Muffele? One Gillis Van Muffele (a Low Countries place) arrived in 1676 in Batavia, traveling from the Netherlands with the Dutch East India ship “Prins Willem Hendrik”. German or Swiss? I think not. A bit more care in surname interpretation would be nice, lest a person become surly.
