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Research into the Castle Family Name is sure to cause raised eyebrows upon any individual within the Castle Line from Southwest Virginia. There has always been a fued in the family over the spelling of the name, whether Castle, Cassell, Cassel, etc. Well, EVERYONE is right! This Castle Line came from Germany in 1686 aboard the ship "Jeffries", with William Pitt, and left Germany due to religious persecution with promises of land and freedom in the colonies. The ship landed in Philadelphia and our patriarch used the German name Kassel. He and his wife signed the forms for incorporation of the Germantown part of Philadelphia and were strict Mennonites. His four children anglicanized the name to Cassel. Their children used both Cassel and Castle, and so it goes down through the generations. In research, the enumerator for census would sometimes spell the name by the way it sounded to him as many of the ancestors were only able to place their mark for a signature. It was written in a story of a family from England who were coming to the colonies in search of freedom of the press, "Take a stand and make a mark!" That's exactly what the Castle's, Cassell's, Cassel's, etc. contribution to the American has been, and is: A stand and a mark.!
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