The
Chappelle
surname has been spelled so many different ways it is hard to keep track
of it, though we have a lot of history which we feel is quite accurate. I
doubt if any one is 100 percent when they go back 300 years or so.
My great grandfather moved here, where I now live in Ohio, in the year 1832.
His grave is about 7 miles from my home. These
stone
carvings are now in a stone wall around a cemetery, they once were in
a church wall. I was to this cemetery last August. The top name Eberhard
is my ggg grandfather, the bottom right is his brother's, even then they
didn't spell their name the same way.
The Chappelle surname is found among surnames of
Waldenians. A religious
group founded by a wealthy merchant in Lyons, France by the name of Valdes
in 1170.
Re: Friedrich Wollmershauser, member of the genealogical and Heraldic Society of Wurttemberg and Baden, Inc. of Southwest Germany. Dated Nov. 27, 1977.
Reply to: Mrs. Phyllis Schappell, Hamburg,PA.
The name was originally Chapelle, and the families belonged to the
group of the Waldenser, which was a religious sect founded in 1176 by a rich
merchant of Lyon with the name of Walds (sic). The members of this sect were
oppressed by the catholic church since 1184 and lived in the underground.
In 1699, many members of this group have been driven out of France and came
to Wurttemberg, where they had their own church until 1820. Some of them
emigrated to America in the 1700s and 1800s. I have found the churchbook-entries for the Chapelle family as follows:
Charles Solomon CHAPELLE and Madeleine SIMON had the following children:
