Ahnentafel № 68 · The compiler's 4× great-grandparent
David Stutsman
1799–1886 · of ,, PA USA
Birth
1799
,, PA USA
Death
11 DEC 1886
Danville, Hendricks, IN USA
Biography
From the Hyten family archive; subject is David Stutsman (1799–1886), a 4× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his Pennsylvania birth, parentage in the Stutsman-Kuntz line, marriage to Jane Nichols, his son Jeremiah, and his later years in Hendricks County, Indiana. Notable: bears the surname of a prominent Swiss-German Mennonite lineage in early America.
David Stutsman (1799–1886) entered the world in Pennsylvania in the closing year of the eighteenth century, the son of Nicholas Stutsman (1773–1851) and Mary Catharina Kuntz (1772–1812). The Stutsman name carried with it the heritage of Swiss-German Mennonite families who had settled the Pennsylvania countryside in the eighteenth century, drawn to William Penn's province by the promise of religious liberty and fertile soil. Into that quiet, agrarian, plain-living tradition David was born, and from that tradition he would carry both name and bearing westward.
David was scarcely thirteen years of age when, in 1812, he lost his mother Mary Catharina. His youth thereafter unfolded against the backdrop of a young republic at war with Britain and a frontier steadily opening to the west. Like so many of his generation of Pennsylvania-born sons, David in time joined the great migration across the Ohio country into the new state of Indiana, where land was abundant and communities of like faith and kin were taking root.
He was united in marriage to Jane Nichols, and of that union came at least one recorded son, Jeremiah Nicholas Stutsman (1830–1901), whose middle name preserved the memory of David's own father and reflected the customary practice of the era, in which family names were carefully threaded forward across the generations.
David lived to the considerable age of eighty-seven years, having seen the nation pass through the era of westward expansion, the upheaval of the Civil War, and the swift industrial transformations of the postbellum decades. He died on the eleventh of December, 1886, at Danville in Hendricks County, Indiana — a county whose Quaker and migrant settlers had built quiet farming communities of the sort in which the elder Stutsmans found their later home.
David Stutsman was a fourth great-grandfather of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.
Additional research
Subsequent research has clarified several points in David Stutsman's middle and later life that the primary archive entry left in outline. The union of David Stutsman and Jane Nichols, previously noted only by name, may now be dated and placed: the two were married on the seventh of February, 1825, in Hendricks County, Indiana (per the Nichols family history at genealogysimplegifts.blogspot.com). That David and Jane were already in Hendricks County by 1825 confirms that his westward migration from Pennsylvania occurred while he was still a young man in his mid-twenties.
Of Jane Nichols herself, new particulars have come to light. She was born on the twenty-first of April, 1808, in Nelson County, Kentucky, and survived her husband by some two years, dying in 1888 in Hendricks County (per the same Nichols family history). Husband and wife alike were laid to rest at the South Cemetery in Danville, Hendricks County, Indiana — the burial ground now commonly styled Danville South Cemetery.
David's place in the civic life of his adopted county is further attested by his appearance on the October 1847 voter list for Center Township, Hendricks County, where his name is plainly recorded among the qualified electors (per the Hendricks County Genealogical Society's transcribed voter rolls at hendcogen.org). The Stutsman family's deep rooting in Center Township is further evidenced by a Nichols–Stutsman family cemetery in section 7 of that township, catalogued by the Indiana State Library (per link.library.in.gov), the joined surnames bearing witness to the close alliance of the two families. Danville itself, where David died, served as the county seat of Hendricks County (per the Indiana State Library's county research guide at in.gov). It is worth noting that the 1885 History of Hendricks County contains no dedicated biographical sketch of David Stutsman (per hendcogen.org), so that the foregoing fragments must serve in lieu of a contemporary memorial.
David Stutsman was a fourth great-grandfather of the compiler, Jacob Hyten, on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.
Family
Parents
Sources
Source citations and original documents will appear here as research progresses. Currently sourced from Ancestry tree hints — to be verified.