Jacob Heltzel

"JACOB HELTZEL. The ancestors of our subject - citizens of the Palatinate - shipped on board the “William and Sarah” with 400 other Palatines in the year 1727, and came to this country to find a retreat from religious persecution. These early progenitors of the Heltzel family settled in the county of York, Penn., on a large tract of land, and were the parents of four sons: Nicholas, Stephen, Philip and one whose name is not known; the last son and two uncles on the maternal side were slain in the Revolutionary war; the two latter in the battle of Long Island. The old gentleman, prior to his shipping for America, being somewhat prominent in the Palatinate, was, on account of the persecutions, deputized to petition the Crown for protection. Nicholas Heltzel was married to Catharine Hershinger, and with the grandfather of our subject moved to Adams County in 1822, settling in Mountpleasant Township. Five children were born to this union, viz.: Christina Greenawalt; Jacob, a bachelor; Daniel, a farmer and hatter, who, after a retired life of twenty-five years, died July 26, 1879, at the age of eighty years; Catherine McMaster; and Nicholas, a printer the former part of his life, and during the latter part an extensive farmer; he represented Adams County in the Legislature during the years 1877-78, and filled other important places of trust.

Daniel, our subject’s father, married Elizabeth Voglesong (whose ancestry came from Germany), January 10, 1824. To this couple eleven children were born, viz.: Lucy Ann Marks; Rufus, deceased; Nicholas, a soldier in the regular army, who lost his life on the frontier; Caroline, deceased; Daniel, who served three years in the infantry service of the United States during the late war, and who was captured at Winchester and taken to Danville, where he died the miserable death of starvation; Franklin, a carpenter and tradesman; Alfred, a car inspector on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and who gave four years of his life in the defense of his country; Martin, a confectioner, who served in the emergency of eastern Pennsylvania; William, a carpenter and soldier for three years; John (deceased), a printer and telegraph operator, and who was employed as proof- reader on the new constitution of Pennsylvania, and Jacob. The latter was born September 23, 1843, and was married to Miriam Diehl (youngest daughter of a family of twenty-one children) June 4, 1871. His life was made up of clerking, teaching, justice of the peace, census enumerator, in 1880, and of filling the different offices of the district in which he resides. He is at present engaged in manufacturing infants’ and children’s shoes for the wholesale trade. The family are strict adherents to the faith of the Reformation. "