[

                    THE STERNERS

     For years my notes on the Disbrows and the Sterners 
have been accumulating but I postponed throwing them to-
gether into final shape, hoping that further information
would come to light - and much did.  But, after all, I am
now all too swiftly approaching the Biblical three score
years and ten (actually as I type these rescripts I am
eighty one) and, while we are on the whole a long-lived
lot, nevertheless the odds against my continuing survival
keep increasing as each year passes.  So I am now freez-
ing these first two volumes into their final form.  If
any of you who follow me are interested, you will at
least have some sort of foundation upon which to build.

     The record of the Sterners will be much scantier
and more vague than that of the Disbrows - slim as that 
is - for when I first took up the task of discovering
just who my father's people were, I had almost nothing
to go on.  In the case of the Disbrows, thanks to family 
legend, actual letters, and the voluminous spade-work of
Willie Bamford, I had a comparative wealth of material
to start with; here my task was largely one of tying it
together into a coherent whole and sifting the true from
the merely conjectural, the probable from the improbable.

     Not so with the Sterners.  Here my only sources were
some letters of Uncle Henry's (my father's brother) which
you will see in the Appendix, the knowledge that his peo-
ple were of German descent, and a multigraphed brochure
that turned up among father's papers entitled Historical
and Biographical Sketch of the Sterner Family, which
interesting document sounds off as follows -

     "The distinguished name of Sterner is believed to be
of German origin.  Some authorities claim the name was
taken from some parish in Germany bearing that name; while
other experts on heraldry claim the name is a nick-name
or an abbreviation of another surname.  During the early

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                    THE STERNERS

periods surnames often derived their origins from some
township, while others derived from parishes or hamlets.
We believe the surname Sterner is a locality name......"

     "According to `Reistap's Armorial General', the Coat
of Arms belonging to the Sterner family is as follows -

     `AZURE, A SIX POINTED STAR IN CENTER OF SHIELD
GULES; IN CENTER OF STAR A MAN'S HEAD BUT FACE PPR. AND
HAIR OR.'"

     All of which pompous verbosity sounds like nothing
but the usual stuff handed out to those with no pedigree
but who are willing to pay for one.

     Uncle Henry's genealogical information was little
better; actually it was more misleading than helpful, as
we shall soon see.

     As to the early German settlers, I knew that many of
them had come over in the early 18th Century under con-
tract to the Royal Navy to cut masts and produce pitch in
the forests of New York.  When their time was up, they
rafted their possessions and their families down the Del-
aware or the Susquehanna Rivers and settled along their
banks in Pennsylvania, building a log cabin from the tim-
bers of their raft at whatever spot struck their fancy.
Others came at Penn's solicitation for religious reasons
or merely for the land he offered them.  All this world
was new and theirs for the taking.  The Penn Settlers
came directly to the Port of Philadelphia, whence they
journeyed up the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Lehigh.

     Actually it was the brochure that gave me the first
real lead.  In the first place it was so silly that it
roused my ire.  In the second it gave a list of all the
Sterners appearing on the muster rolls of the Continen-
tal Army and Militia Attest, which shows the following -

1 - Jacob Sterner:  Capt. Baldy's Company.

2 & 3 - Pts. Christian & Henry Sterner:  Berks Co. Militia.

4 & 5 - Pts. Dan'l & Michael Sterner:  Berks Co. Militia.

                         2


                    THE STERNERS

6 - Drummer & Piper Michael Sterner in the Muster Roll
    of 7th Class 1st Bn. Northampton Co. Militia.

7 & 8 - Pts. Abraham & Nicholas Sterner:  1st Bn. County
    of Northampton.

9 - Pte. Christopher Sterner:  Capt. Jos. Siegfried's Co.

10 - John Sterner:  Capt. Jacob Clader's Company, 2nd
     Class, 3rd Battalion, Northampton Co. Militia.

11 - Sgt. Casper Sterner - Capt. John Roudebush's Co.

12 - Christopher Sterner - Capt. John Wagner's Co.

13 - George Sterner enlisted Jan. 13th 1776 in Capt.
     Thos. Craig's Company.


     So there we have at least thirteen Sterners who were
on the Militia Rolls during the War.  Who were they and
whence did they come?

     In his letter of August 12th, 1926, Uncle Henry
tells us that the neighbors used to tease him by saying -
"Du bist 'n schwope" - translation - "you are a Swabian."
When Caesar wrote that famous opening sentence of his
Gallic Wars the first part of the Gaul he mentioned was the
land of the Suevi - later to be known as Swabia in the
English tongue.  In the Middle Ages this area was known
as the "Palatinate" or, more correctly, the "Upper
Rhenish Palatinate," and Uncle Henry accepts that we did
originally hail from there and I see no reason to doubt
it.  His only other contribution is a confusing state-
ment in another letter in which he apparently forgets
that his grandfather's name was Abraham and says it was
John and that this John's father was also named John.
However, the Northampton County records do say that a
certain Theobald Sterner left his property to his three
sons John, Casper, and Nicholas and that this oldest son
also had a son John, Jr.  It is unlikely that someone
else, also named Sterner, had a son and grandson named
John so it seems reasonable to suppose that Theobald is

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                    THE STERNERS

the father and grandfather of Uncle Henry's two Johns.

     So now let us get on with it and detail what little
we know of the first American Sterner,

                    Theobald.

                         4

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