Since I am not traipsing about the Bavarian countryside inspecting historical sights, I might as well put this blog to use for my genealogy hobby.

Several years ago, I stumbled on a Pennsylvania genealogy bulletin board online from, I think, the 1990s. A user had posted that they were looking for a particular ancestor of mine and would welcome any information. By the time I’d discovered the post, the email address was no longer working (or, who knows, maybe the author was no longer among the living) and my message went unanswered.

Anyway, the Internet’s being forever has its advantages, and since I can no longer find that plea for help, I’ll post my own. Every genealogist has what are called “brick walls”, where the line stops. I have a few, and two of them have been driving me nuts for years. Someday someone will read one of these posts and contact me. Maybe. So, here goes:

I am looking for information about my 4th great grandfather, Samuel Schaffer. He was born probably sometime around 1800, probably in southeastern Pennsylvania.

What I know from genealogical records:

Samuel Schaffer married Margareta Rebecca Thomas around 1827. They had one son, Augustus Hugh in 1828. Rebecca’s parents were Jacob Thomas and Maria Royer/Reyer, who were connected to the church in New Hanover, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Rebecca died in 1828 when her son was 4 months old.
In 1831, Samuel was wed to Christiana Hartranft by the minister of St. Gabriel’s/Morlatton Church in Douglasville. Christiana was a descendant of Tobias Hartranft, one of the Schwenkfelder Exiles who arrived in America in 1734, and a cousin of John F. Hartranft, Governor of Pennsylvania from 1873-1879.

According to a Schwenkfelder genealogy, Samuel and Christiana lived “near Glasgow”, a small settlement with an iron forge on the Manatawny Creek just west of Pottstown. According to a newspaper article about his son Mahlon later in life, our Samuel had been an innkeeper. Which, a kind volunteer at the Pottstown Historical Society explained, could almost mean anything, as there were any number of establishments that could be called “inns”, some as small as a front room in a house.

Samuel and Christiana had a family—Mahlon, John, David, and Mary Ann, and possibly another son named Jacob (He’s listed in the Schwenkfelder genealogy, but I can’t find evidence of him. There was a local boy with that name who died in the Civil War, but he had other parents.)

Then, just as mysteriously as he entered the scene, Samuel disappeared from the records, sometime between the conception of Mary Ann (born January 1839) and the 1840 census, in which a woman named “Janah Schaffer” (pronounced Yanna in German, like the end of Christiana) is living in the Pottstown area with her children. Christiana remarried in March, 1841, moved to neighboring Berks County, and had more children with her new husband. Around that time Augustus, who now no longer had a mother nor a father, took off, joined the army as a teen, and eventually settled in Michigan.

That is what is definitely known about Samuel. There are unfortunately lots of men named Samuel Schafer/Schaffer/Schaeffer in the area at that time, at least two living close by. Many Ancestry users link him to a Christian Schaffer of Berks County due to a baptism record, but that Samuel died in 1820. My Samuel may well have been orphaned or illegitimate. As young men, Mahlon, John and David learned to work in the iron forges.

The next post will be about another Samuel, my other brick wall.