circa 1820 Map of Reading, Pennsylvania with lot numbers [8]
Research Notes:
We are researching Mary Catharine Haffner, wife of Michael Rittner. We suspect that she was a daughter of Frederic Haffner, married to Catharine, of Berks County. We suspect that Frederic Haffner, married to Catharine, of Berks County, was also the father of the other children named here. Perhaps he was related to Friedrich Haffner of Cumru Twp, Berks County. [1], father of Anna Maria Haffner, wife of Jacob Wise. We seek further evidence to clarify these possibilities. Records from both the Catholic Church in Reading, Berks County and the Tohickon Reformed Church in Bucks County are cited in the notes below as plausibly related to this family.
1771 Daughter Margaret had a child: "Fricker, John Frederic, [son] of Antony Fricker and his wife Margaret, born on Good Friday, April 29, 1771 [sic], baptized at Reading, April 14; sponsors, Frederic Haffner and his wife, Catharine." [2]
1774 Daughter Margaret had a child: "Fricker, Thomas, [son] of Anthony Fricker and his wife Margaret, born on his patron saint's day [i. e. December 21], 1773, baptized January 9, in Anthony Fricker's house; sponsors, Frederic Haffner and M. Theresa Fricker." [3]
1775 Son Frederick was married on April 25: "Haffner - Stahl [marriage]: at the same time and place, Frederick Haffner to Barbara Stahl, both single; witnesses, George Kientz, George and M. Ermann. [Signed] Jo'es Bapt'a Ritter." [4]
1776 [Granddaughter] Catharine Haffner, daughter of Frederick and Barbara Haffner, was born on November 5. She was baptized on December 1 at Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania with sponsors Frederick and Catharine Haffner, grandparents of the child. [5] [6]
1777 Widow Elizabeth Schauer sold lot 310 (dimension 60 by 230 feet) on the west side of Duke Street, Reading, Pennsylvania, to Frederick Haffner, shoemaker, on May 6. Elizabeth Schauer had purchased the lot from Michal and Anna Maria Algeir on September 2, 1775. [7] An 1805 deed records the sale of this lot by Barbara Felix, widow of son Frederick. This 1777 sale could have been made to either the father or the son Frederick Haffner.
1777 Peter Fiderer, son of Stephen Fiderer, was born on November 30, 1777. He was baptized at Reading, Pennsylvania with sponsors Peter Rüttner and Susanna Haffner. [9] Perhaps Susanna was a daughter. Perhaps the sponsors Peter and Susanna were siblings of Michael Ritner and Mary Catherine Haffner.
1778 A grandson was born. "Haffner, John Michael, of Frederick Haffner and his wife Barbara, born during Mass and a little before he was baptized, baptized February 10, at his father's house at Reading; sponsors, John Michael Rüttner and his wife Catharine." [10]
1778 Martin Felix, single, and Elizabeth Haffner, widow, were married on May 24. [11]
1778 Sebastian Altgayer and Catharine Rüttner, both single, were married on July 2, in John Michael Sigfried's house among the Oley Hills. [12]
1805 Sebastian Allgaier purchased lot number 310 on the west side of Duke Street, from Martin and Barbara Felix (late Barbara Haffner, widow and administrator of the estate of Frederick Haffner) on January 23. The lot was sold to pay debts and to pay for the education of minor children of Frederick Haffner, deceased. [13]
Research Notes:
The Goshenhoppen records cited above included records from eastern Berks County, Pennsylvania. These records cover several counties in Pennsylvania (Bucks, Berks, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Northampton and the area that became Lehigh County, and Hunterdon County, New Jersey. [14]
Located south of Allentown along Rt. 100, in eastern Berks County, Goshenhoppen, now called Bally, has a distinguished place in early Pennsylvania history. Some say that its name comes from an American Indian expression for "meeting place." Others trace "Goshenhoppen" to German roots. The Land of Goshen, of course, refers to the Egyptian region in the Bible where the Israelites lived for four centuries before Moses.
The community dates from German Pietist settlers who came into the region as part of the great European migration of the early eighteenth century. By 1731, Ulrich Beidler had erected a Mennonite Meeting House where Anabaptist agriculturalists gathered for worship and fellowship. Educational instruction, such as it was, was conducted in the home and the church.
A decade later, Catholic missionaries traveled the area as part of a circuit that included western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. In 1741, Father Theodore Schneider, a German Jesuit from Philadelphia's Old St. Joseph's Church, established a mission church in Goshenhoppen on land purchased from his Anabaptist neighbors. Within two years he had built St. Paul's Chapel, a frontier outpost for Roman Catholicism in the largely Reformed Protestant area. A parish school soon followed.
At Goshenhoppen, Protestants and Catholics lived in harmony, and the former seemed to offer a welcoming spirit that ran against the deep religious divisions that sometimes flared up in the British colonies. This spirit of ecumenism and mutuality would characterize the community for generations to come.
Tohickon (Bedminster Twp, Bucks County, Pennsylvania) and Goshenhoppen were served by the same pastor, Jacob Reis, for several years. [15]
1772 Frederick Haffner and wife Catherine were sponsors at the baptism of Catherine Walter, daughter of Henry and Anna Barbara Walter, baptized on November 22, at Tohickon Reformed Church. [16]
1774 Maria Margaret Haffner, a child, was present, for the first time, at the Lord's Supper on Sunday before Easter, at Tohickon Reformed Church. [17]
1775 Catharine Haffner was present at the Lord's Supper on Sunday before Easter, at Tohickon Reformed Church. [18]
Johannes Heffner was named as a parent in the index of the Brickerville Lutheran Congregation in Lancaster County. [19]
There was a Haffner family of Maryland:
1749 Frederick Haffner and Michael Haffner, of Frederick County, Maryland, were naturalized in April. [20]
1795 There was a court case involving heirs of Frederick Haffner and land in Maryland. [21]
[1] Janet and Robert Wolfe, Genealogy Page for Frederic Haffner of Cumru Twp, Berks, [JRWolfeGenealogy].
[2] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 319, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[3] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 327, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[4] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 384, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[5] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 338, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[6] St. Paul's Mission, Church of the most blessed sacrament, The Goshenhoppen Registers, Baptisms, 1741-1818 [Abstracts], [Reading Berks Website].
[7] Berks County, Pennsylvania, Deed b3-37, [FamilySearchImage], [FHLCatalog].
[8] H[enry] M. Richards, C.F. Engelman, Engraver, Ground Plan of Reading. Map of Berks County Surveyed By H.M. Richards, Image courtesy of Boston Rare Maps, Southampton, Mass. (Reading, Pennsylvania?: ca. 1825-1828), [Boston_Rare_Maps].
[9] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 342, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[10] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 343, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[11] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 386, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[12] Thomas C. Middleton, "The Goshenhoppen Registers, (Second Series) 1765-1785," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia: 1891), 295-398, at 386, [HathiTrust], [GoogleBooks].
[13] Berks County, Pennsylvania, Deed 21-84, [FamilySearchImage], [FHLCatalog].
[14] Goshenhoppen Historical Marker, [URL].
[15] William John Hinke, A History of the Goshenhoppen Reformed Charge, Montgomery County, 206, [GoogleBooks].
[16] William J Hinke, translater, "A History of the Tohickon Union Church, Bedminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania German Society, Vol 31 (Ephrata, Pennsylvania: 1920), 127, [HathiTrust].
[17] William J Hinke, translater, "A History of the Tohickon Union Church, Bedminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania German Society, Vol 31 (Ephrata, Pennsylvania: 1920), 314, [HathiTrust].
[18] William J Hinke, translater, "A History of the Tohickon Union Church, Bedminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania German Society, Vol 31 (Ephrata, Pennsylvania: 1920), 314, [HathiTrust].
[19] J. H. Schantz, "History of the Brickerville Congregation in Lancaster County," Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society 3 (1899), 57-99, at 94, [InternetArchive], [GoogleBooks].
[20] M. S. Giuseppi, ed., Naturalizations of foreign Protestants in the American and West Indian colonies, (1921), 11, [HathiTrust].
[21] Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Court of Appeals of Maryland, [URL].