My 5th great-grandfather, Jacob Burkholder (b 1747), and his brothers, were born in the Elmenthal Valley, outside Bern, Switzerland but their family moved to Germany to escape religious persecution (they were Mennonite). Jacob & two brothers came to America on the ship Myrtilla, landing at Philadelphia on 21 September 1765. Jacob & brother John settled in Lancaster Co., PA.

Aboard the ship, sailing from Germany, Jacob fell in love with a French Huegenot refugee, Sophia de Roche. They were married after arriving in Pennsylvania. IT appears they were Loyalists because after the Revolutionary War they moved their family up to Ontario, Canada.

Not long after moving to Canada with them, their 2nd daughter, Magdalena (b 1781), married John Neff, son of Abraham and Catherine (Stover) Neff

John & Magdalena's daughter, Catherine (b 1808), married John Aikman (son of James Alexander Aikman) in Ontario, Canada in 1831. The family moved down to Iowa by 1840.

I descend from their oldest child, daughter Harriet Aikman (b 1832) , who married Michael Albright (son of Emanuel & Catherine (Watts) Albright) in 1848 in Clinton, Co. Iowa.