Leonard and Reuben

Leonard "Levi" Sheffler was the second son of John and Elizabeth Sheffler but died near the age of 16, and is buried in Central Cemetery in Hempfield Township. Although his baptism record lists him as Leonhart (Leonard), his headstone lists him as Levi, son of John and Elizabeth Sheffler. His age and date of death match precisely the birthdate for Leonard, son of John and Elizabeth Sheffler, in the baptism record. Levi would appear to be his middle name, and what he was called in youth.

Since Leonard/Levi's death was around 1838 or 1839, I am assuming that my own great great grandfather Levi Sheffler is named after him. My Levi was born to Frederick and Catharina Sheffler in 1841, after the death of John and Elizabeth's son just a couple years previous. They also lived in the Sheffler Farm area. (Not only were John and Frederick brothers, their wives Elizabeth and Catharina were sisters.)

Reuben Sheffler (Rubin in the baptism record) died as a 3-month old and is buried in Central Cemetery too.

John and Elizabeth Sheffler, in other Sheffler records relating to New Alexandria PA, are shown as being from Elderton, but they do not appear to have moved there until at least after the 1840 census, as they are living in Hempfield, where these two boys are buried.

Johannes Sheffler 1802-1853

It looks like John had 11 kids, two of whom died before adulthood and are buried near Greensburg, near where John was born. He was a blacksmith and by some accounts moved to Elderton before 1853, where he died fairly young. His descendants have for the most part been New Alexandria - Westmoreland County - people (blacksmiths), and also Indiana County people (blacksmiths).

In my records of George Sheffler's descendants, John Sheffler by far is the most heavily represented.

John's first son Phillip has a number of heavily researched lines and in each particular line I will cite the varied sources from which I derived the details. First, though, I would like to thank Ed Sheffler of California for information on the line from Phillip's grandson Jasper/Joseph E. Sheffler, and for information on Indiana County PA Shefflers in general. If and when Ed has a family research site online I will provide a link to it on these pages.
UPDATE: Ed has a site, now listed under "*Researchers*" on the right sidebar.

Also, Phillip's daughter Hannah Martha "Mattie" Sheffler has a large line of HILL descendants and most of her information was emailed to me by Scott Gendron after seeing a post of his on Rootsweb.

John's son Jacob Alexander Sheffler had a vast family, which blossomed and spread through the New Alexandria area, and much of which remains in Westmoreland County today. This family has been quite extensively vetted by Douglas C. Hull of Pennsylvania. Doug and I have traded a bit of information but as it stands he has graciously contributed far more to the collaboration than I. His research site is HERE (this link seems to be down as of 24 Jan 2005 but it may be temporary; I'll keep checking back). Down the family lines and into the nitty gritty details there are a small few discrepancies but I will point those out specifically once I've had the chance to upload those parts of the tree.

Another personal project of mine has been researching the fascinating family of John's son Uriah Sheffler, some of whose line still live in Indiana County today. Uriah's story will stand as a great example of including the bad with the good, as no family is perfect and we do ourselves a great injustice by glossing up the surface of our history while avoiding its guts.

While John and Elizabeth Sheffler's first six children were boys, the last five were girls, none of whom I've been able to track. Obviously, looking for information on the descendancies of Catherine, Christina, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Lucetta!