Anna Diller

Anna (née Tschantz) Diller was married to Francis Diller/Tuëller before she and her husband moved from Biglen, Switzerland, to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, where they resided for eleven years (1743-1754) and started raising her young family.

According to the record of her tombstone, which is known from documentary evidence to be at least in part erroneous, Anna was born in June 1707. Her maiden name has not yet been discovered, but the fact that among the Peter Diller papers—Peter, a son, was named as the executor of the will of his father, Francis Diller—there is a church certificate from Germany dated 1753 for a Maria Dorothea Wollhausen, which indicates that a person of that name came over with the Francis Diller family and may have been Anna's sister.

The first definite information we have concerning Anna is contained in her husband's will made in 1782. After the death of her husband, Francis, Anna lived with her youngest son Abraham Diller and moved with him about 1790 from Lancaster county to the "old fort" farm in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania.

The "old fort" stood on a point of land having a steep back overlooking the Conodoguinet Creek, three miles north east of Newville, PA. The log-fort house has disappeared, but a pear tree planted by the Dillers was still standing in 1906. It is said by J. D. Burkhart to have been the place where our great-great-grandmother Anna used to sit and watch the bees about swarming time. This pear tree is the only living thing which we can certainly associate with our great ancestor.

Every year from 1784 to 1807 inclusive, Anna Diller receipted to her son Abraham for all and every article given her by the will of her husband as her annual income. The original receipts are in the Peter Diller papers now [i.e., 1910] in the possession of John Diller of Decatur, Illinois. The lack of further receipts suggests that she died soon after, though she may have lived several years. John Bear was scrivener for Peter Diller, and among the John Bear papers J.S. Diller found a number of legal documents showing that Anna's death occurred between 1809 and 1811.

[Extracted from J.S. Diller, "The Francis Diller Family," The Pennsylvania-German 11.5 (May 1910): 285.]

++++++++++

Wife of Francis Diller; emigrant from La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1754; see bio for Francis for more complete details and a series of photos of the granite monument. Sons: Francis, Peter and Abraham Diller.