On the same ship that I believe brought Maria and her young family to America was Bernhardt Furer who had married Babeli Zuppinger who had been born in 1697. I suspect Babeli and Maria were sisters.

The date of her marriage to Caspar is given in the Swiss Emigrants book, presumably based on local church records.

Their four children were: Hans Jacob born 1723, Caspar born 1724, Rudolph born 1728, Margeth born 1734 and Anna born 1738.

If you believe everything you find on the Internet (which I highly recommend not doing), you would think you could trace Caspar’s ancestry a few generations back. The line supposedly starts with Ulrich who was born about 1630 and died in Zurich, Switzerland about 1700. He married Susanna Schuepp. They had a son John Jacob.

John Jacob was born in 1661 in Zurich. He married Maria Adelheit Nusseli in Germany on 30 May 1685. I have one source that says they both died in Switzerland, another that says that John Jacob, at least, came to America and died here and yet another that they left for America in 1739 and John Jacob died en-route, his widow and sons completing the journey. (This sounds amazingly similar to the family tradition about our Hummel ancestors.) But where’s the proof of any of these three versions?

In any event, John Jacob had any number of sons with names including Casper, Henry, William, Jacob, and Rudolph. And they all had sons of those names as well. Casper is reasonably consistently characterized. He married Maria Zuppinger 17 Jul 1722 in Switzerland and they left for America in 1739 and Casper died en-route, his widow and sons completing the journey. (Obviously, no single source is saying both Casper and Jacob died en-route, it just demonstrates how confused these cut-and-paste genealogies can get.)

Our Jacob, depending on which version of things you want to believe, was either the son of Casper and Maria Zuppinger or he was the son of one of Casper’s brothers, with birth dates ranging from 1723 to 1736.

It turns out there are some actual facts in there. My research, based on actual source documents, indicates that Caspar and wife Maria Zuppinger did come to America in 1739, he did die en route, and his family including his son, our ancestor, Jacob born in 1723, completed the journey.

Moreover, Caspar was apparently born in 1698 and so I don’t think he was the son of Maria Nusseli who would have been 13 years old. So I’m skeptical of the rest of the myths out there, but I hedge a little, the line may trace one way or another to an earlier Ulrich Peter of Zurich, I just don’t claim to know exactly how.

It just may be true that Caspar Peter died at sea en-route with his family to America. It is a story oft-told in family traditions that often has no basis in fact. It is a story that I am generally skeptical of when I read it. In Caspar’s case, there is no document saying that directly. As I have said elsewhere, sometimes a ships’ captain, on the list he was required to make of passengers aboard his ship, would indicate that someone had died en route. The captain of the Jamaica made no such notations.

Also, whereas captains in the earlier years, listed not just males over the age of 16 but all persons on-board, the captain of the Jamaica in 1739 didn’t do that either -- only males over 16 were named. If we knew that a woman of a certain name and young children of the same name came on a particular ship with no older male, a reasonable speculation would be that perhaps the father died at sea.

But here’s what I do know. There is a book I found written by Albert Bernhard Faust in 1920 entitled “Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies” where Faust simply compiled and presented various Swiss records he found in various places of Swiss Emigrants. Apparently the Swiss were concerned by the volume of emigration, tried strongly to discourage it, and made an attempt at least to list departing persons.

And so, from the village of Zell (in the Canton of Zurich), somewhere a list of emigrants was made, Faust found it, printed it in his book, and I was fortunate enough to find that. The Zell list starts with a few people who left in 1734 and other people who have found this book have thought that departure date applied to Caspar Peter too.

But it didn’t, they weren’t careful in their review of the book. Because the book shows the names of four children for Caspar and Maria (Zuppinger) Peter and the youngest of those children was born 19 Jan 1738. It does also seem apparent that the names on the list just before and just after Caspar left at the same time. Those names were Bernhardt Furer and Hans Ulrich Muller. Dates, from Swiss records, associated with those persons were as late as 1737.

Turning now to Strassburger who compiled lists of arriving passengers in Philadelphia. On the ship Jamaica arrived 7 Feb 1738/39 (one of the few ships that arrived in winter) were listed Leonard (though Strassburger translated the name Linhart) Furer age 40 (Faust shows him as having been born in 1697) and right beside him Hans Ulrich Muller age 24 (Faust shows he was born in 1715). So the names are right and the ages close enough -- these are the same men listed by Faust who left Zell apparently accompanied by Caspar Peter and his family. Caspar didn’t arrive, but persons with names matching his three known sons started to crop up in American records as early as the 1740’s.

Therefore, logic says he must have died at sea. None of Caspar’s sons (Jacob, Caspar and Rudolph), who I believe were aboard, would have been old enough to be listed, as they were born in 1723, 1724 and 1728 respectively. There was a Hendrick Beter, age 26, aboard. His name could well have been Hendrick Peter. Faust makes no mention of him. So he may have nothing to do with this story. Or, he could have been Caspar’s, say brother, from another town, or just omitted by whoever did the list, or any of a number of other explanations. But no one named Henry Peter comes up with any relationship to this family, once in America, so it really doesn’t matter who he was.