Middle Names

It appears that the middle names of Samuel C. Sheffler's sons were the last names of close friends or neighbors, perhaps sponsors at baptism?

Hence his sons whose middle names we know are Israel Truxal Sheffler (after either Henry Truxal - Samuel's godfather - or one of his sons); Henry Foster Sheffler (perhaps after the Henry Foster who lived just 3 homes away from Samuel in 1840 census); and Jerome Hartzel Sheffler (which Hartzel has not been identified - there were many around).

This tradition appears to have continued in a couple of the family lines of Samuel C. Sheffler's sons.

Samuel C. Sheffler

While most of Westmoreland's current Sheffler descendants come from the line of oldest brother John Sheffler, many still are from the youngest, Samuel C. Sheffler. Samuel married Hannah Elizabeth Slife, the daughter of the Shefflers' next door neighbor Frederick Slife (Schleiff). Frederick was, by the way, a sponsor at the baptism of Samuel's older brother Frederick.

Samuel and Elizabeth had a large family, but lost two of their oldest sons in the Civil War.
Samuel and his oldest surviving son Israel Sheffler remained in the same general vicinity their entire lives. Samuel and Elizabeth and some of their children are buried a couple miles east of Greensburg.

As a teaser, I'll note here that there are a couple of published local biographies that mention Samuel, but these two biographies are both lacking to the extent that it would be an easy argument to make that they are discussing two different Samuel C. Shefflers. This however is not the case and I'll get to posting about it in due time.