Ahnentafel № 34 · The compiler's 3× great-grandparent
Jerimiah Nicholas Stutsman
1830–1901 · of Hendricks County, Indiana, United States of America
Birth
May 1830
Hendricks County, Indiana, United States of America
Death
21 Nov 1901
Danville, Hendricks, Indiana, USA
Biography
From the Hyten family archive; subject is Jerimiah Nicholas Stutsman (1830–1901), a 3× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth, parentage, marriage, daughter, and the context of antebellum and post-Civil-War Hendricks County, Indiana. Notable: Stutsman surname indicates Anabaptist/Mennonite heritage among the early Pennsylvania-German settlers who migrated westward into the Indiana frontier.
Jerimiah Nicholas Stutsman was born in May of 1830 in Hendricks County, Indiana, and died on the 21st of November, 1901, in Danville, the county seat — a life thus bounded by his native ground across more than seventy years. He was the son of David Stutsman (1799–1886) and Jane Nichols (1808–1888), in a household whose surname carries the unmistakable imprint of the Pennsylvania-German Anabaptist and Mennonite migration that pressed westward into Ohio and then Indiana during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Hendricks County itself had been organized only in 1824, scarcely six years before Jerimiah's birth, and his earliest years were therefore spent amid the labors of a newly cleared frontier, where settlers raised cabins, broke prairie, and shaped townships out of timbered land.
He came of age during the 1840s and 1850s, a period in which central Indiana matured from frontier to settled agricultural community, served by the National Road and the early railroads pressing westward from Indianapolis. The Civil War years (1861–1865) fell across his early manhood, and Hendricks County, like much of Indiana, sent a considerable number of its sons into Union service; the era was one of profound disruption to rural households throughout the state.
Jerimiah married Isabella A. Foster, and from this union there is recorded a daughter, Mary Alice Stutsman (1858–1931), through whom the line descended toward the compiler. The closeness of his birthplace to his place of death — both within Hendricks County — suggests a life rooted in the soil and community of his parents, in keeping with the pattern of many Indiana farming families of his generation, who, having received their land from pioneering parents, in turn passed it to their children.
Jerimiah was a 3× great-grandfather of the compiler on the paternal-paternal-paternal line.
Additional research
Subsequent research has firmly anchored Jerimiah's family to Center Township, the central township of Hendricks County in which the county seat of Danville itself is situated (per hendcogen.org). It was thus within a single township that the principal events of his long life — and his death in 1901 — unfolded. The county had been formed in 1824 from Putnam County and unorganized territory, scarcely six years before his birth, a chronology that underscores how nearly his lifespan coincided with the formative settlement of the county itself.
Of particular interest is the documented existence of a Nichols–Stutsman family cemetery in Center Township, catalogued by the Indiana State Library in a 1993 compilation by M. Young (per library.in.gov). The conjoined surnames of the burying ground — uniting his paternal and maternal lines, David Stutsman and Jane Nichols — stand as a quiet but eloquent confirmation of where these intermarried Pennsylvania-German families established themselves on the Indiana frontier.
The 1886 Hendricks County Soldiers Enrollment List, derived from Indiana State Archives records, contains an entry for "Stutsman Nicholas" of Center Township, listed as a Private in the Indiana Volunteers (Militia service) (per hendcogen.org). The conjunction of surname, the distinctive middle name Nicholas, and the Center Township residence is consistent with our subject, suggesting — though not conclusively proving — that Jerimiah rendered militia service during the Civil War era.
Further authoritative records await consultation: the WPA Index to Marriages in Hendricks County (1824–1920), compiled in 1939, should document his union with Isabella A. Foster (per hendcogen.org); the 1874 People's Guide business and religious directory may capture his occupation, politics, and church affiliation; and the Hendricks County Department of Health, which holds death records from 1882 onward, would preserve the formal record of his passing in Danville on November 21, 1901 (per raogk.org).
Through his daughter Mary Alice Stutsman, Jerimiah remains a 3× great-grandfather of the compiler, Jacob Hyten, on the paternal-paternal-paternal line.
Family
Parents
- fatherDavid Stutsman(1799–1886)
- motherJANE NICHOLS(1808–1888)
Children
Sources
Source citations and original documents will appear here as research progresses. Currently sourced from Ancestry tree hints — to be verified.