Abraham Stauffer's Will

One thing that continually amazes me among home-grown genealogists is their generosity with one another. Nothing seems too sacred to share. One fellow descendant sent me an "ear mark" related to the cattle of our common Connecticut ancestor shortly after the Revolutionary War. And a fellow Stauffer descendant has shared with me a copy of the 1823 will of Abraham Stauffer (1748-1823). At the time of his will and apparently his death, he was 75 and had been in Canada 18 years.

What one can learn from a will, especially an old-fashioned one in the days before lawyers and Internet forms, can be most interesting. 

Since multiple records indicate that Abraham's wife Elizabeth died in childbirth in 1802, at least three years before he went to Canada, the Elizabeth he refers to as his "beloved wife" in his will must have been a second wife by the same name. I am impressed by the care and provision that he made sure was given her. I smile when I read that the first thing he bequeathed was to her "one bed, one chest, my stove" (his stove?), as well as one third of his remaining property. He gave a detailed list of the food, cash, and other provisions that were to be made to her each year, and she was to have use of the pump and the garden. Though the will called for son Daniel to inherit the property, Elizabeth was to have the use of the house as long as she wanted it.

All this provision was to apply as long as she remained Abraham's widow, but "if it should be her pleasure to marry again," Daniel was to make her a cash settlement in place of the "dowry and provisions." I'd like to give Abraham a high five for the words "if it should be her pleasure."

We gain two important pieces of information from his will. One is that he names all nine of his children, including the three who had remained in Pennsylvania. This suggests there had been communication with those three and that Abraham knew they were still alive. The other weighty piece is that he says Elizabeth remained in Pennsylvania, with the married name of Helmuth, and Susannah was the one who married Christian Bomberger. How the records got mixed up on these two sisters is hard to guess unless it was simply that the one in Canada left no descendants for Ezra Eby to gather information from at the end of that century.

Since Abraham had four sons with him in Canada, I've wondered why he chose to leave his property to the third of those four and next to youngest of his children. Well, let's crunch some numbers. The year Abraham died, son Samuel was 41. He already had ten of his eleven children and would have been well established on his own property. About the same for his son Abraham, then 35, with at least five of his six children already born. The youngest son, Joseph, had just turned 21 and was newly married with his first child born the year Abraham died.

That leaves Daniel at age 27. He may have been married as few as four years, and he had just two children at that point, but he was clearly into adulthood. While the two older brothers were established on their own lands and Joseph was just beginning his life as an adult, Daniel was a nice solid age in between.

Another interesting fact is who Abraham chose as his executors--his son-in-law George Clemens and his son Abraham. In leaving his property to Daniel, he delineates the exact dates and from whom he bought the two sections in 1806 and 1811, all helpful information from a genealogical standpoint..

I now know more about this progenitor than I do about his grandson two generations closer to me. I wish I could know as much about many more of them.