A Baton, Passed Hand to Hand
The record has always been kept by people who cared enough to keep it.
It started with a physician in St. Louis. Dr. Noah Miller Glatfelter (1837–1911 and 5th generation direct descendant through Casper’s son John) spent years writing letters and cross-referencing ship manifests, church records, and muster rolls. By 1901 he had documented 861 families. He could not have known it would set off a reunion, an Association, and more than a century of gathering.
When Dr. Noah died, Samuel Glatfelter took up the work, corresponding with contacts in Switzerland to deepen the family’s understanding of where it came from. After him came Dr. Charles H. Glatfelter (1924–2013 and 6th generation direct descendant through Casper’s son John) — a Gettysburg College historian who served the Association for decades and expanded the record dramatically. And alongside him, Jutta Creager has spent years quietly building and maintaining the family’s GEDCOM database, the backbone of everything we know today.
“When family members come to the reunion for the first time, they are returning home, to the home woods.” — Dr. Charles H. Glatfelter
Between them, these few people grew the record from 861 families to more than 600,000 individuals — including roughly 110,000 direct descendants of Casper Glattfelder and his brother John Peter. That work was never finished. It was handed forward. Now it’s our turn to pick it up.