Person:Johann Clotfelter (1)

Excerpts from a magazine article by Ruth Clotfelter Camenisch of Springfield, MO, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Jacob:

..."Jacob Clotfelter was a third-generation American, the grandson of Casper Glattfelder, who immigrated from Switzerland to Pennsylvania in 1743. We have traveled to York County, Pa., to attend the annual reunion of the Casper Glattfelder Assn. of America, Inc. (held since 1906), and presented our distant relatives the story of our "lost" Jacob, whose name was altered when he dropped out of sight and left Pennsylvania in 1800 for the wilds of Tennessee with his bride and her family. His movement, first to Tennessee, then Illinois, and finally to Nebraska, paralleled the expanding frontier.

It was this promise of more land for the taking that lured our Jacob at the advanced age of 87 to the unsettled plains of southeast Nebraska at the close of the Civil War. There he survived long enough to see his children and grandchildren settled on nearby homesteads. Shortly after, he died and was buried there on the hilltop beneath the praire sod, and there his loving family erected a stone that he not be forgotten."

The stone reads: "On Earth Awhile--In Heaven Forever -- Jacob Clotfelter b. 1780 d. 1867"

Excerpt from "Glattfelder/Clotfelter" authored by Janet L. Zemanek and Ruth Clotfelter Camenisch:

Married: August 21, 1803 likely in Anderson County, TN to Eva (Eve) Saddlar, born January 30 1784, likely in York County, PA. She died February 5, 1855, likely in Mason County, IL, buried Mount Zion Cemetery, Mason County, IL. She was the daughter of Frederick and Barbara Saddlar.

1.   Johann Jacob Clotfelter's page on Find A Grave (w/ portrait and pictures of tombstones): http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=21590689