While cruising on Ancestry, I found a reference to a book in which Hans Peter Cassel is mentioned. Oh, my. This is beyond interesting! The book can be found on Ancestry. I continue to look at my many ancestors who are found in Lancaster County, PA in the years in which the Scotch-Irish, German, and Quaker families were flocking into this very new frontier.
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/48457/images/DutchQuakerPA-002145-i?pId=355407
Hans Peter Cassel is said to have resided at Germantown and have been the town crier for several years. Where is Germantown? It was located just northwest of Philadelphia. When Hans Peter moved his family there the frontier area had not opened up yet.. Perhaps Germantown was indeed the Frontier. I know from research on my Moore family that in the mid to late 1600 NO ONE wanted to live as far west as the Schuylkill River. Commerce was centered around the Delaware River. But that by the second generation the children of these original immigrants had begun to move to the "suburbs". However, it is my understanding that these Dutch/German immigrants moved directly to Germantown. The original 34 settlers drew lots for their land in 1683. My Cassel family is not among them. But it is possible that the wife of Hans Peter Cassel had relatives among them: Abraham and Herman op Den Graeff. If some of the Ancestry trees are correct, Hans Peter Cassel's mother had maiden name of op Den Graeff.
Ok. At this point I am having trouble sorting out these family members from Kriesheim. Does my Jacob really connect to this family and how do they all fit together? I believe I have found a man with last name Castle who is willing to do yDNA testing for me and has a good paper trail to our mutual Jacob Castle who founded Castlewoods. Plus he is an Ancestry DNA match to me. Now I am looking for a male with Castle/Cassel surname who descends from a branch of the family that did not leave PA with Jacob.
My plan today is to cruise Ancestry for the above goal. I will be adding "stuff" from this exercise to this post as I find it. There is no organization to this post. Hopefully the organization will happen after I get yDNA results. This is more like a brainstorm event.
This next (below) is from above book
The below is taken from this book that I am reading on Ancestry. The pronoun He in the beginning of ths excerpt refers to Willam Penn on his visit to Kreisheim.
As I reread my post in December with the goal of doing some editing and of also refreshing my brain with what I know, I remember having thought about the possibility that our Cassel family were French Huguenots who had relocated at Kreishiem. I have recently listened to a webinar about the Huguenots and it was stated that during the time of the massacres and persecutions in France these people moved everywhere! The fact that one of the sons of Johannes Cassel (Arnold) married a woman of Huguenot ancestry could be a clue if I ever want to follow up on this thought. Again remember I am brainstorming.
The next is from a post made by Brenda Reed at genealogy.com This article is worth rereading.
Circa 1632 Yelles married a woman we know only as Mary and by her had five known children born between c1632 and 1650:HEINRICH (a Mennonite minister, possibly a bishop, settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania); JOHANNES, a weaver who converted to Quaker and settled at Germantown in 1681;YELLES, a Mennonite minister who remained in Kreisheim his whole life;ARNOLD, a Mennonite minister who settled in Germantown; and ABRAHAM who remained in Kreisheim.Due to religious persecution for their Mennonite beliefs, Yelles and his family lived in hiding, moving from town to town, though YELLES's main residence was Kriesheim and Worm, in the Palatinate. Yelles was a man of abiding faith who withstood tremendous hardships and came through his struggle with tremendous grace. His descendantsvariously spell their surname as Cassell, Cassel, Kasel, Kassel, and Castle and can be found living all across America. Yelles died in Kreishem around 1681.
Below is a map from a Google search for the Palatinate
I found a site on Rootsweb that gives a name for the wife of Yelles. This is definitely not the Yelles described above, but it is possibly the son of Yelles above if he was one of the older children. However, this does not fit with the idea that too Yelles remained in Kreisham.
Oh, wow....this is getting confusing. But this whether near truth or not does establish that at least someone found connection between Cassell family and op den Graeff family. I am also thinking about what I learned about the French Huguenots last night. I noticed that Calvin was mentioned in something that I read this morning and he seems to be connect to Hueguenots.
And, below is a map showing the location of Worms. Brenda Reed's blog post on genealogy.com says:
Kresheim came to be called Kriegsheim in 1794, and today is Monsheim Kriegsheim
located seven miles west of the City of Worms on the west bank of the Rhine River in the heart of the German Lower (Rhenish) Palitinate in between the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mainz
The red marker below shows where google shows Monsheim Kreigsheim to be today.
Hmm....thinking right now that while looking for a second yDNA participant I should give some thought of if there is a proven son of the Yelles Cassel of Kreisham? Or perhaps someone who seems very solid in this family. I will give this some thought.
Some of the information that have typed into the Reunion data base for Castle comes from the following site:
The above screen shot also comes from that site and is a list of sources used by author who posted on Rootsweb
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