ELSBETH Zu Der Mule

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Elsbeth zu der Mule (1604–1627), a 10× great-grandmother of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her German-Swiss origins, parentage, brief marriage to Hans Jacob Stutzman, motherhood, early death, and the Reformation-era context of the Rhine and Zurich regions. Notable: an early matriarch of the Stutzman line bridging Bavaria and Switzerland.

Elsbeth zu der Mule (1604–1627) entered the Hyten family register as one of its earliest documented foremothers, a daughter of the German-Swiss Rhine borderlands whose short life nevertheless carried forward a line of considerable consequence. She was born in 1604 in Erlenbach, in the district of Aschaffenburg in Bayern, the daughter of Leonhardt Mule (also rendered Mühle), who survived her by some seven years and died in 1634, and of Waldburga Frey, sometimes recorded as Freyin, who preceded her in death in 1613. Elsbeth was thus a child of nine when her mother died, growing into womanhood under her father's care.

The early seventeenth century into which she was born was a turbulent age in the German-speaking lands. The Reformation had reshaped religious life across the Rhine valley and the Swiss cantons, and confessional tensions ran high; the Thirty Years' War, begun in 1618, would consume central Europe throughout her brief adult life. Families of the small towns along the Main and within reach of Zurich frequently moved between Bavarian and Swiss communities, and the Mule family was evidently of such circulation, for Elsbeth's death is recorded in 1627 at Erlenbach in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland — a place name shared with her Bavarian birthplace but a wholly different jurisdiction.

Elsbeth was married to Hans Jacob Stutzman, and of that union came at least one recorded son, Hans Jacob Stutzmann, born in 1625, who lived until 1696 and through whom her descent passed into the broader Stutzman lineage long associated with the Anabaptist and Mennonite communities of the Swiss-German borderlands. Elsbeth herself did not live to see her son grown; she died in 1627 at the age of only twenty-three, two years after his birth.

Elsbeth zu der Mule stands in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line as a 10× great-grandmother, among the earliest named women of the family record.