Recently I wrote a four-part narrative titled “Ancestral Families of Sarah Adaline “Addie” (Grove) Garber (1872-1950)….” The legendary Hans Herr was one of her ancestors.

Part II of the narrative covered the Herr family. I noted there the long-standing tradition that he was from Canton Zurich in Switzerland, but that one record of 1671 refugees named a Hans Herr, reportedly from Canton Bern, who could have been the legendary immigrant. His age in the 1671 record would have fit well with the estimated date of birth of his oldest child.^[1]

Not long before Part II appeared in print, the July 2019 issue of Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage included an article by Hanspeter Jecker, titled “The Swiss Origins of Pioneer Settler Hans Herr in Pennsylvania: Myths, Legends, and New Insights.”^[2]

Jecker is a Mennonite scholar, teacher, and researcher in Switzerland. His expansive article merits a review and modification of misleading traditions that have been promulgated in print, online sources, and memorial markers.

In these few paragraphs, I cite primarily the documented lineage of Hans Herr and his wife Elizabeth Lötscher. Spellings of given names and surnames vary from source to source, and some of the variations also appear here.

A Hans Herr “about 20” and his wife Elsbet Lötscher, age 22, were named in a list of 1671 refugees in the Palatinate and Kraichgau who were being helped financially by Dutch Mennonites. Early in 1672, a list for Mannheim, Germany, included them, with the notation that they had no children and could feed themselves “from their linen weaving.”^[3]

A Christian Herr and his wife Grietgen Lötscher were also named in that list. Might the Lötscher women be sisters, related to a well known so-named family from Latterbach in the Bernese Oberland? And might the Herr men be brothers, also from Canton Bern?

Jecker’s thorough and careful research confirmed the Lötscher connection before proceeding to Herr family research. He found documentation to show both families were actually from Canton Bern.^[4]

The Herr Family

In records of the Reformed Church of Blumenstein, Switzerland, located about six miles west of the city of Thun, Switzerland, Jecker discovered a record of the baptism of one Hans Herr. His parents, Hans Herr and Elsbeth Bürcky, had been married at that church on February 13, 1643. The church records show them as parents in baptismal entries for five children:^[5]

1. Christian Herr, b. May 5, 1644
2. Barbara Herr, b. Oct. 31, 1647
3. Hans Herr, b. Jan. 27, 1650
4. Madlen Herr, b. Dec. 25, 1653
5. Ueli Herr, b. Jan. 27, 1656

The Anabaptist movement appeared in Blumenstein in the early 1660s. Whether the elder Hans Herr converted to Anabaptism is not clear. On March 3, 1666, the pastor of the Reformed congregation in Blumenstein questioned why Hans Herr who was a member of the “church morals court” allowed his wife, Elsbeth Bürky “who is devoted to Anabaptism, to draw her son and the son’s wife into the same sect,” Hans replied that “he was not her [his wife’s] master.”

That son was probably eldest son Christian, married to Grietgen Lötscher. This couple was named with Hans Herr and Elsbeth Lötscher among the 1671 refugees.

Brothers Hans and Christian Herr had married sisters, daughters in the prominent Lötscher Anabaptist family of Latterbach in the Simmenthal, in the Bernese Oberland.^[6]

The Lötscher Family

Reformed Church records of Erlenbach,^[7] a few miles southwest of the city of Thun, document the January 21, 1633, marriage of Hans Lötscher and Anna Kammer, daughter of Marti Kammerer. Hans Lötscher was a pious man and apparently a well educated farmer for his time, because he is known to have written songs, even a very long one, intended to encourage religious faith and practice. At its end, this song indicates that Hans Lötscher was born about 1601.

The baptismal dates recorded for the Lötcher children were:

1. Hans Lötcher, bapt. June 29, 1634
2. Melchior Lötcher, bapt. Feb. 16, 1640
3. Anna Lötcher, bapt. May 7, 1643
4. Margaretha “Grietgen” Lötcher, bapt. May 31, 1646
5. Elsbet “Elsi” Lötcher, bapt. Oct. 21, 1649
6. Salome Lötcher, bapt. Oct. 16, 1653
7. Abraham Lötcher, bapt. Aug. 30, 1657

The three oldest Lötscher children—Hans, Melchior, and Anna—were imprisoned in 1666 because of their Anabaptist faith. Subsequent records document escape, recapture, and sentencing to the galleys for the brothers. However, later records suggest that the brothers were able to choose exile instead. They and Lötscher sisters Grietgen and Elsbet, married to Herr brothers Christian and Hans, became refugees who moved to the Palatinate in Germany.^[8]

These few paragraphs give names and dates and places. I encourage all readers to discover the “whys” and “hows” this document overrides tradition by reading Hanspeter Jecker’s wide-view article about the Herr and Lötcher families, “The Swiss Origins of Pioneer Settler Hans Herr in Pennsylvania: Myths, Legends, and New Insights,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, July 2019, pp. 70-81, translated by Anne Augspurger Schmidt-Lange.

1. Hope Kauffman Lind, “A Grove of Family Trees: Ancestral Families of Sarah Adaline “Addie” (Grove) Garber (1872-1950), Part II, Paternal Affiliated Families: Kendig, Miller, & Herr,” Mennonite Family History, Oct. 2019, pp. 185-97, esp. p. 194, footnote #47; “. . ., Part I, Grove Families,” appeared in MFH, July 2019, pp. 136-51, with Parts III in this Jan. 2020 MFH, and Part IV to follow. ↑

2. Hanspeter Jecker, “The Swiss Origins of Pioneer Settler Hans Herr in Pennsylvania: Myths, Legends, and New Insights,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, July 2019, pp. 70-81, hereinafter Jecker. Translated by Anne Augspurger Schmidt-Lange. ↑

3. Jecker, p. 73; C. Henry Smith, Smith’s Story of the Mennonites, 5^th ed., revised and enlarged by Cornelius Krahn (Newton, Kans., Faith and Life Press, 1981), pp. 78-80. ↑

4. Jecker. ↑

5. Jecker, pp. 77-78. ↑

6. Jecker, pp. 73, 81. ↑

7. Erlenbach Reformed Church is the same congregation where Jakob Ammann was baptized as an infant on Feb. 12, 1644, to Michael and Anna (née Rupp) Ammann. This Jakob Ammann is from whom the Amish received their name. ↑

8. Jecker, pp. 73-74; Adlof Fluri, The Lötchers of Latterbach,” translation and commentary by Eunice Latshaw Ross, Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, July 2003, hereinafter Fluri. pp. 2, 5, 12; Jecker uses the “Kammer” spelling, Flurry the Kammerer spelling. ↑