Valerie is another email cousin, actually in her case the wife of a cousin, who deserves a lot of credit for pushing this work forward. Her husband Bradd descends from Jacob Mertz, son of Nicholas who came to Middleburg before 1790. But she didn't know that when we started and neither did I. She really only knew for sure Bradd's father and grandfather's name and together we traced the line back generation by generation.

Valerie has been extremely helpful to this research because of the fact that she resides in Milton, PA and has been very actively going around to the cemeteries and courthouses and historical societies in that area and sending me photos and write-ups and copies of documents (wills, obituaries) that have been very helpful in extending the Nicholas Mertz line down in many cases to the present.