Johann Jakob STÜTZMANN

As to European origins, there are two separate but potentially related theories. One holds that Jacob Stutzman's family had a small farm, vineyard and tavern in the Rhenish Palatinate, near Bad Dürkheim, Germany. The other claims that the Anabaptist Stutzman families came from the vicinity of Lake Thun in Switzerland. There is considerable evidence that Stutzman families were living near Bad Dürkheim in the early 1700s. For instance, in the Lutheran Church at Kallstadt is a baptismal record of a "Johann Jacob Stuetzmann," who was born on January 1, 1706, on the Weilacher Hof, near Hardenburg, son of a tenant farmer on the Weilacher Hof, Johann Jacob Stuetzmann, and his wife Regina Elisabetha. Kallstadt is a few miles north of Bad Dürkheim. Hardenburg is about a mile to the west of Bad Dürkheim. There is also substantial evidence in Swiss and German parish records that Stutzman families lived near Lake Thun, Switzerland, in the 17th century, and that some of them (Anabaptists) fled from religious persecution to the welcoming Rhenish Palatinate in Germany before 1700. Thus, it is reasonable to speculate that American memories of both Swiss and German origins are compatible.

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