For a long time, I believed, but could not prove, that John David’s father was named Peter. The case I made was that from Burgert we know David and Peter Mertz were both from Hangviller (also spelled Hangenweiller) and/or nearby Bust. We also know that Peter was the father of Anna Margaretha who married Abraham Votrin. David, age 44, and his wife and children and Anna Margaretha, age 32, and her husband and children all came to America on the same ship. So, I believed that most likely David and Anna Margaretha were brother and sister.

From Burgert and the ship’s lists, I knew that Peter’s daughter Anna Margaretha was born about 1701. She married in 1723 and I believe from her marriage citation in church records that Peter was still alive at the time. David was born about 1689.

In 2014, though, my Alsacian friend/cousin, Fredy, heard from another Frenchman named Robert Mertz. Robert had found in the departmental archives a notarial act dated 8 Nov 1728 that was done about 3 weeks after the death of Peter (thus in Oct 1728).

That act listed Peter’s heirs:

1) children from his first wedding with Anna Barbara ZIMMERMANN, daughter of Benedict ZIMMERMANN from Schoenbourg, these represented by Johann ZIMMERMANN
  - David inhabitant of Hangviller
  - Hans Jacob inhabitant of Siewiller
  - Anna Barbara married with Ulrich BURCKHALTER inhabitant of Hangviller
  - Anna Margaretha married with Abraham VAUTRIN miller in Hirschland
  - Johann Peter 22 years Soldier in the Swiss Regiment

2) children from his second wedding with Susanna BRACONNIER living assisted by Heinrich DIFFORT from Schoenbourg, these were represented by Martin MERTZ from Bust (Fredy’s ancestor, brother of Peter).
  - Anna Catharina 17 years
  - Hans Nickel 15 years
  - Johann 12 years
  - Anna Magdalena 9 years
 
This fabulous find confirms everything I had come to believe, that David was the son of Peter and brother of Anna Margaretha.

We do not know exactly when David was born, no baptism record has been found. Upon his arrival, his ship’s captain gave David’s age as 44. That cannot be considered exact but presumably reasonably close. But we have found record of his parents’ marriage 1 May 1689, So I am using abt 1690 as David’s birth. And most certainly Peter was living in Alsace at the time.

IMMIGRANT. On Strassburger's lists of immigrants to Philadelphia, we find as passengers on the Ship Richard & Elizabeth arrived Philadelphia 28 Sep 1733 from Rotterdam last from Plymouth: David Mertz 44, Veronica 40, Johan Nicholas (Hans Nickel) 18, Johan Peter 13 3/4 and Christina 3 3/4.

David apparently could not read and write and so on the loyalty oaths all adult males had to sign when arriving Philadelphia, David made his mark -- a clear printed M. This same mark appears as well on the notarial act naming David as one of Peter’s heirs. There was always sufficient evidence that David of Longswamp was certainly David of Hangviller -- but the M mark just is icing on the cake.

Burgert documents: Ship Richard and Elizabeth 1733: David Mertz, age 44, with Veronica, 40, and Joh. Nicholas 18, Joh. Peter 13 3/4 and Christina 3 3/4. Diedendorf Reformed Kirchenbuch (Church Book): David Mertz from Hangviller and wife Frena (Veronica) nee Schneider had a son Johannes, baptized 20 Sep 1722. Longswamp Reformed: David Mertz, Nicholas and Peter listed as Deacons of this church and contributors to the original building fund in 1748.

M L Kueker found the original warrant granted “David March” 12 Oct 1738 for 150 acres on Longswamp Creek.

Fredy Mertz gave me this geography lesson. Today France is divided in Departments and Regions. The Region Alsace has 2 Departments: BAS-RHIN (lower Rhine) and HAUT-RHIN (upper Rhine). The Region LORRAINE has 4 Departments: MOSELLE, MEUSE, VOSGES and MEURTHE-ET-MOSELLE.

The village of Hangviller is in the MOSELLE and Bust is in the BAS-RHIN. Bas-Rhin has all people records since the revolution (1793) available on the Internet as well as church records from before the revolution. Moselle is not yet there and thus you need to go to the specific places to find data.

The importance of this is that while we may find many records we need of this family -- the ones from Bas-Rhin, it may well be that we will be missing those from Moselle.

THE EARLY MERTZES OF BERKS AND NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTIES

Between about 1785 and 1790, men named Mertz with given names: Peter, Jacob (two of them), Conrad, David, Nicholas and Philip -- appeared in Northumberland County. Many genealogists have researched one or more of these Northumberland County pioneer Mertzes. And most of that research is simply wrong. Until I came along, barely anyone recognized that any of these men were descendants of John David Mertz and came from Longswamp Township, let alone that all of them were.

It all began, I think, with “Genealogical and Biographical Annals of Northumberland County” by J L Floyd publishers which appeared in 1913. Biographies were given for several different Mertz families alive then and in every case something was said about their Berks County roots. Yet the existence of John David Mertz and his two sons was never mentioned in Floyd.

Then came “The Martzes of Maryland” by Ralph Fraley Martz in 1973 (which also covered the Mertzes of Pennsylvania) and “Mertz/Martz Genealogy: A Northumberland County Pioneer Family” by Joseph A Meiser and Richard J Martz in 1990. Meiser, at least, said that Peter Mertz who appeared in Northumberland County by 1790 was of the Longswamp Mertzes but failed to comprehend that all the rest were too.

It was while researching the ancestry of Philip Mertz, my direct ancestor, that I discovered and came to comprehend this huge error. The first place anyone searched was the records of Mertz Church in Berks County. In those records, there was indeed a man named Philip, son of John Henry Mertz who founded that church, and so it was assumed he was the man of that name who came early to Northumberland County. But after awhile I came to understand that Philip of Longswamp must have been a different man, and, with more research, it became clear it was Philip of Longswamp who had come to Northumberland.

And at some point it dawned on me that maybe similar erroneous assumptions had been made about other early Mertzes of Northumberland County. So over time, I found myself constantly wanting to know something about everyone named Mertz who lived in either Berks or Northumberland County before, say, 1830. And I came to realize that much of what had been published about these people was not only wrong but in some cases laughable. So in contrast to my work on our other ancestral families, where I concentrated almost exclusively on our direct ancestors, my work on the Mertz family has been far more extensive.

In my opinion and based on many years of research, I believe there were four distinct families of the surname Mertz who appeared in Berks County, Pennsylvania before 1750. The four immigrants who were the progenitors of these lines were:

1. John David Mertz (my ancestor) who arrived America in 1733 and settled in Longswamp Township (where the village of Mertztown honors he and his family). The early lives of his descendants are documented in the records of the Longswamp Reformed Church.

2. John Henry (Johann Heinrich) Mertz who came in 1737 and settled in Rockland Township and gave the land for and was the namesake of Mertz Church of that township.

3. Johann Jost Mertz who came in 1747 and, like John Henry, settled first in Rockland Township and attended Mertz Church.

4. Johannes Mertz, who I believe came in 1748 (though some say he was the Hans Martz who arrived in 1751), and who also attended Mertz Church. Later, he apparently moved to Maxatawny Township (as did some of the John Henry line). The church record of his marriage to Rosina Haffa clearly states he was the son of Johannes Mertz of Wurttemberg, Germany.

Many people, apparently based on that marriage citation, claim that John Henry Mertz was the son of Johannes of Wurttemberg. I think most of those who say that copied it from each other, but whoever originally said it either misread the Johannes citation (or thought perhaps that Johannes was another way of referring to Johann Heinrich, which only demonstrates their ignorance of German names) or else they simply assumed Johannes and John Henry were brothers since when Johannes arrived in America he beat a path to John Henry’s church.

But we now know the truth of things, from DNA testing and by coming to know the Mertz family of Frankenhausen, Germany. Johannes and John Henry were not brothers and John Henry was not the son of Johannes of Wurttemberg.

It turns out that John Henry and Jost were brothers. We have their baptism records and we are in contact with descendants of their ancestral family who still live in Frankenhausen where John Henry and Jost were born and departed from (separately) to come to America. Their father was also named Johann Henirch and while he had quite a few sons, none were named Johannes.

DNA testing also confirms, scientifically, that John Henry and Jost were closely related. John David, on the other hand, was totally unrelated to John Henry and Jost; his is a unique DNA line. This seems obvious since John David and his family were of the Reformed religion, while Mertz Church and those other Mertzes were Lutheran and once in America the John David family stayed quite separate from the others, albeit in Berks County. John David and his sons settled in Longswamp Township and eventually almost all of the third and fourth generation families found their way to Northumberland County and from there to many other places.

Which brings me back to Johannes. While it is clear Johannes was not another brother, still, based on his Mertz Church association, there may have been some more distant relationship between Johannes and Jost/John Henry. The jury is still out on Johannes until we find a proven descendant of his to submit his DNA.

I have analyzed extensively every church, land, tax, will and estate records of Berks County to find every citation of anyone named Mertz. My analysis of the Longswamp family started with an intensive study of all Longswamp Church records where either a Mertz was baptized or appeared as a sponsor. I also studied all early Berks County wills, Orphan’s Court records and tax records that named Longswamp Mertzes. And I looked at those kinds of records involving the early Mertzes of Northumberland County too. I identified not only the males but also came to know the females by their married names.

The result was a list of over 50 male and female Longswamp Mertzes, born before 1800, organized into families. I then began to systematically compare these Mertz families, almost all of whom disappeared from Longswamp before 1800, to the Mertzes that appeared in Northumberland County by 1800. [Once in Northumberland County, family members settled on both sides of the Susquehanna and the Martz spelling became the de facto spelling for those who settled on the east side.]

As an example, take Peter Martz who was in Northumberland County in time for the 1790 Census, died there in 1813 and whose son Jonathan was an executor of his estate. Can there be any doubt he was Peter Jr. of Longswamp who baptized a son Jonathan there in 1776? Jonathan is such an unusual name for an early Mertz (many were named Johannes or given a first – biblical – name of Johann – both John in English – but there was no other Jonathan). Obviously this is the same family, and that is why Meiser got this one right.

A similar case can be made for most of the other early Northumberland Mertz/Martz families. By comparing the names of their wives and children in Northumberland County records (such as wills) to the names of their wives and of the children they baptized at Longswamp, one by one, the conclusion becomes obvious. Moreover, the name of every Mertz head of household present in Northumberland County by 1800 was a known name of a Longswamp Mertz -- to wit: Peter, Jacob, Conrad, David, Nicholas and Philip. And all had disappeared from the Longswamp records by then. By 1800, when an age bracket was given in the Census to each head of household, the names not only line up but so do the ages.

My conclusion, in fact, is that every single Mertz male present in Northumberland County by as late as 1830, and perhaps even later, was of Longswamp. Almost all of the Longswamp names that disappear from there appear in Northumberland and there are no extraneous names that appear in Northumberland that cannot be traced to Longswamp. It is a near perfect fit.

The whole migration may have begun with Jacob, son of Nicholas, he may already have been a landowner in Northumberland by 1785. And one or two of Peter’s sons may have come by 1785 or so, too, but then when Peter died in 1787 in Berks County, his estate was sold at auction, and I think almost all of his remaining sons and grandsons packed up and followed their cousin and their other brothers to the Susquehanna River.

l think the reason for the mistaken identities comes from the fact that John Henry had sons named Jacob and Philip and John David had grandsons of those names and this has caused much confusion among their various descendants as to which line they descend from. A man named Philip Mertz died in Northumberland County in 1803, a man named John Philip, son of John Henry, was born in 1738 in Rockland Township. A man named Jacob appeared in the Northumberland County Census in 1790 and a man named John Jacob, son of John Henry, was born in Rockland Township in 1741. [Jacob's brother, David, also appeared in Northumberland County in 1790 and some have stated that he must have been John Henry's son Henry -- since John Henry did not have a son David. So to justify this assertion, they go so far as to call the man Henry David (though I know of no evidence to suggest that was the case) and say he was called Henry while in Berks County and then later called David upon his arrival in Northumberland County.]

Finally, I have tracked all of the early Rockland Township Mertzes over the same period. Those three families branched out from Rockland -- to other townships of Berks County and to nearby Northampton County, but I can find no documented evidence that any of them ever moved to Northumberland County.

The most important source documenting the life of John David Mertz and his family is the Annette K Burgert book which documents David in Alsace church records, on ship passenger lists arriving in 1733 and mention of he and his sons in the records of the Longswamp Reformed Church in Berks County.

I have verified all of these sources:

◆ David Mertz was named in the Kirchenbuch (Church book) of the Diedendorf Reformed Church and his hometown was listed as Hangviller (which Burgert says is a town in the Canton of Phalsbourg). Hangviller is near Bust which is another town associated with Peter Mertz.

◆ David was listed as an early contributor and his two sons Peter and Nicholas as elders of the Longswamp Reformed Church. The three were not named often in church records (which didn't really begin until the mid-1760's), but there is no doubt from probate records of both Nicholas and Peter that it is their children who were named often.

Everything that Burgert cites is indeed well documented. In addition, early tax lists of Longswamp also verify the presence of these immigrant Mertzes in that part of Berks County. It would be nice if we had annual tax records of Berks/Longswamp for that period of time, but what has survived are hit or miss. But the tax records for Longswamp do exist for 1767 and they are most informative. Listed were Peter (Sr.), Margaret (wife of Nicholas, deceased) and Jacob (oldest son of Nicholas). Also single men: John, Peter and Philip. This was a seemingly complete list of the Longswamp Mertzes and there was presumably a close relationship among all of them. I am not sure at what age a person was considered eligible to be so listed, but I have been told it was 21. Thus the three single men would have been born no later than 1746.

However, the list is also noteworthy for who was not listed. John David was not listed, I am certain he had died well before 1767. And both Peter and Nicholas had other sons, who must have been too young to be included.

I have a pretty good idea of the birth year of John David as he was 44 upon arrival in America in 1733. What I don’t know is when he died. He contributed to the building fund in 1748 and that may be his last mention in official records. He was not listed as a taxable on the 1752 records of Longswamp Township. Peter and Nicholas were, as were Henry and Yost (both really of Rockland at the time). There was a David mentioned as a baptismal sponsor at Longswamp Reformed in 1764, but this could have been a grandson of John David. So, for now, I am stating his date of death as before 1752.

A final note on John David. In actual American records and even the European records found by Burgert, he was always David, never John David. Yet, the Martz/Mertz chapter in Meiser's “Northumberland County Pioneers” gave his name as John David.

Now it was common practice among early German families to give their sons a Christian or baptismal first name – and it was almost always Johann (John). So John Jacob, John Henry, John Philip and John David are a few examples of early German names. The first name was John but it was not used in conversation or for other purposes. Thus John Jacob was generally called Jacob and so forth. [Another common name was Johannes in which case these men did not have an additional Christian name – they were called Johannes or in English, John.]

For that reason, I always chose to call this most important of our Mertz ancestors, John David -- as it made it easy to then be clear when I was referring to him versus several of his descendants named David. But it turns out there is one Alsace church record where he was named Hans David — the 28 December 1717 baptism for Peter, son of Hans David and Verena. (This is the only mention we have ever found indicating David indeed was John David). But John David it is.

Many descendants of John David Mertz eventually settled on the alternate spelling Martz (perhaps because the German pronunciation sounds like Mairtz) and so it is interesting to observe that it was uniformly spelled M-E-R-T-Z in the Diedendorf and other Alsace records. Also, when passengers landed in Philadelphia, adult males were required to sign two separate oaths of allegiance: John David made his mark but the person who signed for him clearly thought it was M-E-R-T-Z, Nicholas (Hans Nickel) actually signed his name though his signature is hard to decipher.

David came to America with his two surviving sons: Nicholas and Hans Peter.

It is Nicholas and Peter who I treat as “original Mærtz ancestors” in the Mærtz Hierarchical Project. Nicholas is given the single-letter designation N and Peter the single-letter designation P.

This is not to dismiss David, in fact I consider him my immigrant Mertz ancestor. Had I instead given David the single-letter designation D, Nicholas would then have been D1 and Peter D2. That would have made perfect sense but it is simply that the coding becomes cumbersome down five more generations. The person now designated P4a4d (my great-great grandfather) would instead have been D2d1d4. So it was for the sake of not being overly cumbersome with the codes as well as the fact that, indeed, Nicholas and Peter really were immigrants, albeit teenage immigrants, that is the reason I did what I did.

The Burgert book on Alsace immigrants specifically identifies Veronica as the daughter of Joseph Schneider and wife of David Mertz -- all based on church and other public records found in Alsace. Burgert also cites the 1764 county records of Saarwarden (Alsace) pertaining to Joseph Schneider which state that his daughter Veronica and her family including their three named children had emigrated to America.

I know nothing more about Veronica's father Joseph, nor the name of her mother, so other than noting his name, nothing more on this surname will be reported. I do find probably that the Mertzes may well have come from Switzerland among a whole group of associated families.

Burgert writes this concerning the emigration of the family of David Mertz: “Verification of this emigration supplied by Dr. Bernd Golzer, from the county records dated 18 Oct 1764 of Nassau-Saarwerden for Kirberg, compiled by Dr. Gerhard Hein -- contemporary table of descendants of Joseph Schneider of Diedendorf originally from Melchnau, Bern, Switzerland. David Mertz of Hangweiler and wife Veronica have moved to the new land with three chlldren Hans Nickel, Hans Peter and Christina.”

Burgert also documents that two men named Johannes Schneider emigrated to America. One arrived in 1738 and he was a brother of Veronica. He appears in the American records of the Egypt Reformed Church. Another Johanes arrived in 1741 and was a nephew of Veronica, son of her brother Ulrich. This younger Johannes went on to marry Anna Margaretha Votrin daughter of Abraham Votrin and wife Anna Margaretha Mertz (sister of Veronica's husband).

I do not know the exact marriage date of David and Veronica but the oldest child I am aware of was Nicholas who was 18 upon his arrival in America in 1733, thus born about 1715, and so I have assumed the marriage date was about 1714 when Veronica would have been 21 and David 25.

In addition to the three children who arrived on the same ship as David and Veronica, there was also a son Johannes whose birth was recorded in the Diedendorf Reformed KirchenBuch in Alsace. It says: ”1722, 20 September — [two unreadable words] David Mertz von Hangeviller frau Frena Schneiderin. Infant Johannes.” But then this couple also baptized a son Johannes in Wintersbourg in 1725 so I assume the Johannes 1722 died before that and then this Johannes II then died in 1730.