The Abplanalp Family Legend

 Hundreds of years ago, the little village of Planalp formed, just a few miles from the town of Brienz, up high in the alps below Rothorn. It's a very pleasant area; affording excellent (and strategic) views of the peaks above, and down to the Brienz Lake below. The land converges in this place to form a gentle plateau before the slope gets steeper towards the water. Brienz lies not quite directly below.

One particular spring in the early 12th century, after an especially heavy winter, the snow that had accumulated hung precariously on the mountainside above Planalp. Crack! The snow could not hold onto the mountainside, and a huge avalanche broke out above Planalp, and swooped towards the hapless little village, engulfing it completely. Within moments, Planalp and its people were wiped from the face of the earth!

Fortunately, the people of Brienz were spared this tragedy, but they certainly learned of their neighbors' fate when the debris of Planalp washed into the lake. Not people to let anything go to waste, they scavenged what useful pieces they could find, including a nice sturdy-looking trunk of a log. Only it wasn't a log; it was a hewn-out cradle, and therein slept a live baby, the only survivor of Planalp.

The people of Brienz named the boy "dän ab der Planalp" (stranger (?) from Planalp), which later got shortened to just Abplanalp. And thus the family line began.

How true is the story? No one knows. Family records only go back to about the 16th century, so we can't trace it all the way back to the first man. David's link to this is his mother's mother's mother, who was an Applenap (which is what Abplanalp turned into when a typical 19th century immigration clerk got hold of it).