Open Questions and Further Research on the Schlappachs and Eckells

First, if you haven't seen it, start with the History of the Slabaugh and Eckell Families for what we do know. The items following are what we think we could know, but don't yet.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the extra information we have on this family thanks to surviving copies of early nineteenth-century letters within the Eckell family, there are a number of open questions we haven't been able to resolve about the immediate families of Maria Eckell and Johannes Schlappach.

1. There is a Benjamin Eckell swearing US citizenship in September, 1840, in Stark County, Ohio. Is this Maria's brother Johann Benjamin or some other Eckell?
2. Benjamin might be in Ohio, but where is brother Fritz?
3. In 1873, Anna Albertina (Tena), Mary Adaline (Adaline), and Johanna Benjamina (Hannah) Slabaugh, all now married, each receive an inheritance of $384, administered by the Brothers Pfeiffer of Cassel, Germany, transferred via the Exchange Office of C.F. Adae in Cincinnati, and mediated by Reverend Henry Kurtz, an in-law (he's married to a Shively, as are two of the sisters) of Columbiana County, Ohio. Why do the three Slabaugh nieces receive an inheritance, if that is what the money actually is--is their portion a third of the whole or a third of a third split between their two uncles and themselves?
4. Underlying the speculation of an inheritance, Johannes Eckell, Maria's eldest brother, establishes himself in Kassel according to the letters we have. In 1810, he wants to know the status of his parents so he can marry a woman described but unnamed in his letter. Did he marry her? Did they have children? Likely not, or at least not surviving children, if the money received by the Slabaugh sisters is indeed an inheritance from uncle Johannes. And when did he die?

We don't know the name of Maria Eckell's mother, when or where she was born, or whether Johann Benjamin Eckell married her before or after relocating to Switzerland. All we really know is that she was no longer living in 1810, because Johannes Eckell's letter implies that.

Hans Johannes Eckell was from Frankenberg, according to his marriage record. We have not yet looked into the Frankenberg records to try to trace the Eckell family further.

Johannes Schlappach is listed in his marriage record as being from Oberlangenegg, and there are plenty of Schlappachs in the area. However, we never identified his specific birth record to tie him into the broader family.