Jaymes Origins
In 1851, John Jaymes (Jean Jayme) immigrated with wife Margarete Lantelme from Rohrbach, Germany, with sons Jacob and Johanes Wilhelm, and settled near Shade Gap in Dublin Twp, Huntingdon County, PA.(Son John [Johanes Wilhelm] later settled in Kansas.)Ethnically French, the family originated in the Western Alps (then part of the French Dauphiné, now part of Italy) in the hamlet of Laval near Pragelato, west of Turin.They were Waldensians, a heterodox Catholic sect founded in Lyon, France, in the 12th century.In the 16th century the Waldensians merged with the Calvinists.In 1685, when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in the persecution of protestants in France, the Waldensians fled the Alps.In 1699, with 17 other Waldensian families, they founded a colony and settled in Rohrbach (near Darmstadt), Germany.