Our Schankweiler Connection
Schankweiler is a municipality in the district of Bitburg-Prüm, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany. It is located inside a protected park area, specifically the Südeifel Nature Park (Naturpark Südeifel). Current population is approximatley 200 residence.
The Fletcher - Schankweiler Connection
Our family history contains two independent connections to the Shankweiler/Shonkwiler lineage—one paternal and one maternal—each arising from entirely separate geographic, historical, and genealogical circumstances. On our paternal side, Y‑DNA evidence shows that the Fletcher surname line actually descends biologically from a Schankweiler/Shonkwiler male in the early to mid 1600s, likely in Yorkshire, England.
Our maternal connection to the Shonkwiler family is entirely separate and occurs much later, in the American Midwest. Our maternal line includes Ora Shonkwiler (born 1896), who is the likely biological mother of Helen Marie Smith (1912-1967). This branch descends from the American Shonkwilers who originated from the same broader Schankweiler immigrant family that settled in Pennsylvania in the 1700s and later spread westward. Unlike the paternal Y‑DNA connection, this maternal link is documented through historical records, family placements, and autosomal DNA matches.
The result is that we descend from the Shankweiler/Shonkwiler family twice—once through a deep paternal Y‑line event in England, and again through a completely unrelated maternal line in the United States—two distinct genealogical paths converging on the same ancestral family.