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The Stubblebine Name
The name Stubblebine was a variant of the original name of the two brothers, Valintin and Jacob Stoppelbein, who emigrated to the United States on the St. Mark, sailing out of Rotterdam, Holland, in 1741. They were originally from Laubenheim, Germany. The original spelling of the names on the ship register was 'Stoppelbein'. The term 'Stoppel' is unknown, although one might venture to guess that it could have been some conjugation of 'Stoppen', which, in german, means "to stop". The term "bein" means leg in German. Typically, names were given to someone because of an occupation (i.e. Smith), a term of endearment, or because some characteristic lends itself nicely to a name.
Although it has been rumored in my family that Stubblebine was meant to mean "short-legged", no specific correlation of the word "stoppel" or "stubble" indicates such meaning. However, the word "stummel" means "butt" or "stubb” in German. Perhaps in translations, the "mm" was interchanged with "pp"? This would have meant that Stubblebine would translate indirectly to "stubb-legs", which could indeed be a term for short-legged.
The challenge of researching this family is twofold. First, the Stubblebine name has been spelled and miss-spelled in ways that only a Stubblebine can imagine. A few of these variations are 'Stubbelbine', Stubbelbein', Stoppelbein', Stuffelbine, Stuffelbeen, Stufflebeam, Stobbelbine, and several others. Stubblebine, as we all know, is challenging to spell, but when historians convert documents manually that were written over two hundred years ago, errors and omissions are created that make documentation and compilation difficult. Secondly, the Stubblebines seem to delight in having many children. Many Stubblebines had 4-10 children each, and so during a 5 year period, there may be 10 Jacob Stubblebines, all living at the same time period within a 3 state span, making tracking difficult and confusing. Additionally, the practice of naming a later child the same name as a former deceased child in the same family can make identification difficult.
In Chester County, for a period of time, the Stubblebine name was blackened, as the North Coventry Stubblebines were identified with lewdness and fornication due to unscrupulous activities. Although this was a big headliner in Chester County in February 1843 with onlookers “sleighing into West Chester by the hundreds” [for the court hearings] acording to a judge alive at the time, a few Stubblebine families left the area to avoid the "un-Christian" reputation that came as a result of the Battle-Axe scandal. This scandal earned North Coventry Township it’s old nickname of “Free Love Valley”. William Stubblebine (on the front page of this site) died in this faith.
The Stubblebines originally were Lutheran, but have since splintered into many different Christian denominations. There are Methodists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Reformed, and Catholic Stubblebines.
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