Johan Daniel Schlappich, my 6G-Grandfather


Today I took a look at some of my grandmother Alma's matches on MyHeritage. I feel fortunate that she allowed me to swab her cheeks for a DNA test last year, as her matches are essentially two generations closer than my own would be to the same people. Alma was born a Lingle, and I've followed the Lingle line backwards, but I haven't spent as much time on her other lines, including her Schlappich/Schlabbig line,  3G-grandmother Elizabeth Schlabbig Seaman, born in Upper Bern Township, Berks County, in 1754.

  A small match of  25.8 cM in a cluster with a known Seaman descendant caught my eye as I reviewed matches. This match had a medium size tree with 80 people on MyHeritage, and I immediately saw the name Schlappich, a variation of the same spelling, and a hard name to forget. This match clearly didn't match further down their tree, so the shared ancestor had to be further up- earlier in time. Here is where that two generations comes in really handy - this match turned out to be a 5C2R to Alma, so they would be 7C to me. Neither I or my Dad Gary share any DNA with this match, so without Alma, they would be invisible to me.
Map showing the location of Ewersbach, Germany



It turns out that you don't need to travel much further into the past to find our Schlappich immigrant. Elizabeth's father, Johan Daniel Schlappich, was born in 1725 in Ewersbach, in Lahn-Dill-Kreis (Hesse), Germany, a bit north of Frankfurt. He arrived in Philadelphia on October 2, 1753, on board the "Edinburg" out of Rotterdam, along with his wife Anna Brachthauser and an infant daughter. Daniel and his brother, Jost, must have had some means, because they bought land almost immediately, and tax records show Daniel Schlappich farming 60 acres in Upper Bern, Berks County by 1767. 

In America, the Schlappich family and the Seaman family are intertwined with the history of Upper Bern Township, which is ALSO the home of our Strouse and Kline lines which lead to the Paul family, so our Lingle's and Paul's probably share some DNA back 250 years ago. All four family names appear in the Baptismal registry of St.Michael's Church in Hamburg, PA, where several of our ancestors are buried. The Schlappich name morph's over the years to various forms, including Schlabbig, Schlapia, and even Sloppy. Let's be glad our ancestor was a girl...






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