"Anyone who has taken German in school will remember that it
was, and still is common to abbreviate by placing a line over the letter, which signifies doubling that letter.
I surmize that along the way the line just got dropped.
"[T]he
City directories for Philadelphia, which my brother Leo researched in the
early 1980's at the main branch of the Philadelphia library, for the years
1849-1877 show the same people (including your ancestor Franz Anton) living
at the very same address with it spelled "Stemler" one year, "Stimmler", the
next and "Stimler" the following year. So I think part of this problem was
city census workers (many of whom were likely illiterate) doing convenient
phonetics.
"Lastly our great grandfather John (1829-1906),
Franz Anton's brother, always
used 2 "m"s throughout his life, but on his naturalization papers the city
clerk spelled the name "Stemler". This was in 1844 when there was a lot of
anti-Catholic sentiment in Philadelphia with churches being burned by the
so-called"No-Nothings".* It may well have been deemed by him to use
discretion with a clerk who was about to make citizenship a reality!"
From an email written by Paul Stimmler on April 16, 2001
"Stimler was a result of my
Grandfather Anthony 'Tony' Valentine . . . .
The rationale of the change, as the story was told to me, was that he was determined to adopt his new country, of which
he was very proud, and changed the spelling. He also refused to speak German, which became a source of friction between
him and his brothers who all retained the double m spelling."
From an email written by Joe Hall on January 31, 2001:
*People of the time who were anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-immigrant,
anti-Fugitive Slave Law and anti-alcohol.
People of the time who were anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-immigrant,
anti-Fugitive Slave Law and anti-alcohol.
