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One "Ullerick Kindlif hberger" with his wife and one daughter arrived in Philadelphia on board the Phoenix on September 15, 1749. While Philadelphia is the port of entry, the family simply passed through the city and proceeded immediately on to Bern Township (north of present day Reading), Berks County, PA.
Ulrich Gindlesperger and his family were Amish-Mennonites. They immigrated to America with other members of the community on the same ship. They settled in the Amish-Mennonite community in Bern Township and later migrated with many members of that community to Quemahoning/Stonycreek Township in Bedford (now Somerset) County, PA. It is reasonable to believe that prior to the immigration to America Ulrich was a member of the same Amish-Mennonite community that to escape religious persecution had migrated down through the Rhein land area from their original homes and persecutors in Canton Bern in Switzerland.
In Bern Township, Berks County, Ulrich and "my Wife" (as he later refers to her in his Last Will and Testament) had three additional children
between 1750 and 1760 who survived and married. The eldest daughter, who immigrated with her parents but whose name is at present unknown, was married to Christian Kauffman. Jacob married a Barbara whose surname is unknown. Catherine was
married to David Hooley. Albrecht, though born in Bern Township, was married later in Quemahoning Township to a woman whose name in unknown.
With the exception of Jacob and his family, Ulrich's entire family and his two sons-in-law migrated to Quemahoning Township, now in Somerset County,
by about 1774. Jacob and his family arrived there at some time between 1792 and 1794, at latest. In Somerset County the family represented part of the northern most contingent of the Amish-Mennonite community and
settled north of the central area occupied by the community that was known as "The Glades". On a current road map the general area appears to have been north of current Route 31 in an area bounded on the west by
Route 160 and on the east by the crest of the Allegheny Mountain.
In Somerset County Ulrich died in 1783 and Jacob died in 1799, both survived by their wives, respectively. Albrecht inherited a portion of Ulrich's
land. He and most of his descendants remained in Somerset County, but over the succeeding generations there was a gradual movement north into Jenner and Paint Townships. Other branches of the family, including
some of Jacob's sons, tended to move to the northwest into Conemaugh Township.
(An addendum that became possible only after the initial draft of this article had been completed: Jacob's son Jacob [Jr.], is recorded
as having died in Stoneycreek Twp. It is interesting that within the past two weeks a chart-like family tree of the descendants of Jonas, Jacob [Jr.]'s son, has been shared under the most fortuitous circumstances.
On that family tree Jonas's last name is spelled "Kindelsperger" and the "K" spelling has continued through the line down to the present. That family tree has identified an additional 95 names and commented that there are an additional sixty persons in two more recent generations.)
By the mid 1790s David Hooley had sold his land to Jacob and migrated to Ontario, Canada. Jacob bequeathed the land to his two sons. Then
various members of this and the next generation(s) migrated to Ontario or into the Northwest Territory (Ohio and Indiana.)
What follows is limited, not by desire or interest, but by the author's present knowledge. It is a general historical sketch of that one line of
descent from Ulrich through Albrecht to Frederick in northeastern Somerset throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to its "extinction" in that location, but its reestablishment throughout the nation. It is offered as
both an example and as an invitation. It is an example of the activities of one line of members of the family in one geographical location within the changing circumstances of the local economy and the nation's
history. It is an invitation for other members of the Gindlesperger family to contribute similar generalized outlines of other lines of descent, whether in Somerset County, the "greater Johnstown, PA" area, Ohio,
Indiana, or wherever else "your line" has deposited you.
Now to continue.
Albrecht's line through Christian, Gabriel, and Peter C. (the line of my descent and the one I know best) seems to represent the general
agrarian economy of 19th century Somerset County, PA. But there are clues that things were beginning to change. Peter C. sold or leased mineral rights for iron ore that might be found under his land. He and his
brother Michael enlisted as Pennsylvania Volunteers and served with the Union forces during the Civil War. Both of these actions by Peter C. represented somewhat of a departure from the historic sense of the land
and the pacifist stance of the Amish-Mennonite community from which he descended. They may also indicate a need for cash in the increasingly money-oriented economy that was replacing the previous method of
exchanging credit vouchers. The fact that, at least at this time, his own religious views are not clear may also tend to represent the decline and disappearance of the Amish-Mennonite community itself from "The
Glades" of Brothers Valley by the mid-1870s.
I have learned within the last several weeks, however, that within the Albrecht-Christian line the first cousin of this very Peter C. (a
son of Gabriel), Samuel (a son of [another] Peter, Gabriel's brother) was a Mennonite minister. Many of his descendants remain in the northwest area of Somerset County and are members of Mennonite and Church of the
Brethren congregations today, thus carrying on some of the earliest religious doctrines, practices, and traditions of the family. The descendants of Samuel have also held a Family Reunion for the last FIFTY
consecutive years and intermittently prior to 1949.
As the line from Albrecht to Peter C.'s death in 1894 represents somewhat of an extended example of the 19th century in northeastern
Somerset County so the line from Peter C.'s son Tobias through Frederick, Theodore, to my generation represents a similar extended example of the 20th century in the same area of Scalp Level/Paint Borough/Windber.
By 1897 the economy of the region was clearly no longer dominated by farming, but by coal mining. The industry was the province of a single major
coal mining company which opened several mines, built "company towns" around them, and organized and incorporated "a model company town."
By this time Tobias was the first male in the Peter C. line to be able to read and write. He was a carpenter/builder. He had married a Lutheran woman whose ancestors had organized Lutheran worship as early as 1844 and incorporated a congregation in 1856. Tobias, with the father-in-law of his son Frederick, did much of the housing construction for the mining company. He was probable one of the builders of Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, a subsequent Deacon, but never an Elder, and had probably had Peter C.'s son, Peter P., baptized before his yearly death at age twenty eight. And he was one of the petitioners for the successful incorporation of the Borough of Paint in 1900.
In spite of this relative prominence, his son Frederick, after his marriage, moved to Bedford County to sharecrop from about 1900 to 1925. At that
time he moved his family back to Paint Borough "to get better jobs in the mines." Frederick, three of his four then-surviving sons, and a grandson all did get jobs in the mines and lived in company houses. One of
those sons served in the Navy during World War II. The other two sons and the grandson moved to Cleveland, OH, by 1941 during World War II "to get out of the mines" and get a better job in a war industry.
The last descendant of Tobias and Frederick still living in Paint Borough, Frederick's son Theodore, died in 1984 and his widow in 1996. By that
time Fredericks grandchildren and great grandchildren were living from Montana, Utah, and Arizona in the West to Long Island, NY, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida in the East as well as numerous locations in between,
representing the mobility and occupational opportunities that arrived with the latter half of the century.
This is offered as a beginning.
With much research related to the earliest generations remaining to be pursued and shared and with additional observations about the activities of
the family in the larger geographical and economic context of the nation's history, your stories, thoughts, suggestions, research, and contributions are most welcome and appreciated.
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