In his biography of my ancestor, Philip Mertz of Freeburg, (now) Snyder County, PA, Charles A Fisher (a noted local genealogist) says that Philip was the son of John Henry and Anna Maria (Rossman) Mertz and that Anna Maria was the daughter of Jacob and Anna Magdalena (Scheur) Rossman. But there are two huge errors in that one sentence!

1. Philip Mertz of Freeburg was NOT the son of John Henry Mertz of Rockland Township, Berks County, he was in fact the son of Peter Mertz of Longswamp Township, Berks County. John Henry did have a son named Philip, but he never lived anywhere but Berks County. I have known for a long time that the two Philip’s had been confused by many early genealogists. I was actually one of the first people to document how it could be known which was which.
2. And it turns out Anna Maria Rossman (or Rosemann) was not the daughter of Jacob and Magdalena, though I mistakenly believed she was for a long time.

It also turns out I had assembled the right facts but I made a bad assumption along the way — in part, I think, because what Charles Fisher said about Anna Maria’s parents seemed to fit the facts.

The facts show that Anna Maria was not the only Rosemann to be named in the records of Mertz Church or to be named in other records which suggest an association with John Henry Mertz. Consider:

• A man named Jacob Rosemann arrived America on the same ship as John Henry in 1737.
• Jacob Rosemann was a named sponsor at Mertz Church in 1741 at the baptism of Johann Jacob Mertz, son of John Henry and Anna Maria. The other sponsor at this baptism was Magdalena Scheur(in).
• At Oley Church in 1755, Jacob Rosemann and Anna Appolonia baptized daughter Anna Elisabetha Margaretha. She was born 7 Dec 1755 and baptized 16 Apr 1756.
• The will of Jacob Roseman of Berks County was written 9 Sep 1756 and proved 12 Oct 1756. He mentioned son Jacob, wife Annapolia and brother-in-law Henry Mertz. [So, Jacob who died in 1756 was the brother of Anna Maria (Rosemann) Mertz.]
• Jacob Rosemann with wife, Sybilla, baptized several children at Mertz Church starting in 1767.

So I always believed that there was evidence of three men named Jacob Rosemann — father, son, grandson — known by the names of their three wives: Magdalena Scheur, Anna Appolonia and Sybilla, respectively. I believed the elder Jacob was the ship passenger in 1737 and that he came with his wife Magdalena and children including son Jacob and daughter Anna Maria who would marry John Henry Mertz.

Dan Goebel has convinced me, though, there were only two (relevant) men named Jacob Rosemann, that the ship passenger was in fact Anna Maria’s brother. It caused me to re-examine the records of Mertz Church and I realized my mistake.

• Often in those records, the parents of a child were named in the form husband’s name, wife’s maiden name. So we find the names Johan Henrich Mertz and Ana Maria Rossman(in) quite often as a married couple as they baptized their many children.
• But not so the names of sponsors. In the case of sponsors, the format was, for example, Johan Henrich Mertz and wife Anna Maria. And if it was two single people, then the names would be given, as they were in one instance, Jacob Rosemann and Magdalena Scheur(in).
• The point is that Jacob Rosemann (Anna Maria’s brother) never married Magdalena Scheur, he only was once listed as a baptism sponsor with her. He did marry Anna Appolonia.

Dan Goebel’s research shows that both Jacob and Anna Maria were children of Johann Georg Roßmann (1674-1744) and Anna Sabina Winterstein (1685-1744). Jacob was born in 1702, Anna Maria in 1715. When Dan told me that, I realized I already knew George Rosemann as the father of Anna Catharina Rosemann who married Johan Nicholas Mertz and the great-grandfather of Anna Benigna Rosemann who married Johan Adam Mertz. I had learned about all these other people from my work on John Henry’s ancestral family of Frankenhausen, Germany.

What is clear is that the Rosemann family of Mertz Church came from the exact same area of Germany as the Mertz family of Mertz Church and the two families obviously knew each other well. In fact, I now think we can rule out that John Henry and Anna Maria just happened to meet on the ship — they most certainly all knew each other back in Frankenhausen. And now the question is: Did they marry in Germany prior to their departure, or did they leave Germany with the intent to marry upon arrival in America and travelled together for that reason?

Dan Goebel believes they married once in America but likely had every intent to do so when they left Germany. I have no argument with that belief.

On 28 Sep 1747, Joh Heinrich Mertz ux Ana Maria sponsored the baptism of Johan Heinrich Bossler at Moselem Church. This seems a little far afield for them, so it is curious.

Evelyn Guldner points out that the last mention of Anna Maria was 5 Nov 1780 at the baptism of her granddaughter Anna Maria, daughter of Jacob and Catharina. She was not mentioned in her husband’s 1786 will so we can bracket her date of death as between 1780 and 1786.

There is a memorial for her on find-a-grave.

Johan Heinrich Mertz (hereinafter John Henry) was an important man. We know a lot about him from American records. He arrived America in 1737, settled in Rockland Township, Berks County and founded, gave the land for and was the namesake of Mertz Church. He had many descendants, now widespread across America, but including some of whom to this day still live in Berks County.

But now, after much work and assistance from many different persons, I am convinced that we can definitively say where he came from in Germany and that we know a good deal about his German family and ancestors. John Henry Mertz, founder of Mertz Church, was the son of Johan Henrich Mertz of Frankenhausen, Germany. Frankenhausen can be considered John Henry’s ancestral home. Descendants of his father still live there today. The evidence for all of this started out as circumstantial but has been solidified over time piece by piece.

A large, modern cenotaph that honors John Henry Mertz can be found at Mertz Church. It says he was born in 1708, though I have never seen any basis for how anyone could know that from American records. Perhaps there was some document someone once found that I’m not aware of that stated his age at some point in time.

From the time I first began to research the life of John Henry Mertz in about 2001, I have always wondered whether he was possibly related to Jost Mertz and/or Johannes Mertz, two other Berks County immigrants with the same surname. Those two came to America a decade or so later than John Henry but fairly quickly made their way directly to Mertz Church. Jost in particular died young and soon after it seemed that his surviving family and John Henry and his sons became quite close. From American ship passenger lists, Jost came in 1748.

But that was nothing but speculation on my part, until, in 2009, I heard from a German woman named Christiane Mertz who told me that Jost Mertz was a long lost family member of the large Mertz family that now lives in Frankenhausen and a key thing the German family knew about him was that he emigrated to America in 1748. It sure seemed that their long lost Jost must indeed be Jost of Mertz Church.

Additional circumstantial evidence was that Jost, according to those same German records, had an older brother named Johan Heinrich, born in 1709. The German records said nothing more about him. For some of his brothers, they knew who they married and when and could track their children as they lived their life in Germany, for Jost they knew only he went to America and about John Henry, nothing. It was easy to guess therefore that John Henry and Jost were brothers.

DNA has now provided even more evidence of this speculation. The y-chromosone DNA (which passes from father to son) of known descendants of John Henry matches that of a known descendant of Jost. The match is close enough that, scientifically, there is a high probability they these modern persons shared a common male Mertz ancestor within less than, say, 10 generations.

In other words, the DNA strongly suggests that John Henry and Jost were closely related and combined with the American evidence and the German evidence of what we know about these two men, the conclusion that they were brothers is inescapable.

And then final proof of all of this came in 2017 when a man named Dan Goebel wrote me to say he had found the baptism records of both Johan Heinrich and Johan Jost Mertz — both sons of Johan Heinrich Merz (or Mertz) — in the records of the Ober-Ramstadt church that served Frankenhausen at the time. Johan Jost was baptized the same day he was born. That may or may not be true of Johan Henrich but all we really know is he was baptized 3 Dec 1709. But I strongly suspect he was born not very long at all before that date.

John Henry was an original American ancestor of many people and he is designated H. This “book” is devoted to his descendants. A separate book is devoted to his brother Jost (designated Y) and his descendants.

For more information on the ancestors of John Henry and Jost, see either my full database or a white paper on the Frankenhausen family — both on my website:

https://www.mertzgenealogy.com/mertz_origins.html

John Henry and his male descendants to 1850 are covered in the Mærtz Hierarchical Project:

https://www.mertzgenealogy.com/names/john_henry_mertz_family_h.pdf

Because of the totally erroneous research of early genealogists about the origins of their Mertz or Martz ancestors who came from Berks County to Northumberland County in the late 1780’s, many people believe ERRONEOUSLY that they descend from John Henry. If their ancestry traces to a Mertz or Martz present in Northumberland County before about 1830, they absolutely do not.

The fact that so many people erroneously believe they descend from him even though they in fact descend from John David Mertz was not John Henry’s fault. So it is appropriate that he was honored with the large monument erected at Mertz Church naming him as the founder and identifying the names of his wife and children.

My only question is: who paid for that monument, who was the driving force behind it? I truly believe it was some of the Northumberland Mertzes, perhaps my line, none of whom were actually descendants of John Henry. They had the mistaken belief that they were his descendants and were quite active in genealogy. I think they erected that big monument for him.

In any event, everything on the monument is accurate. His sons are named but there is no indication that they mistakenly believed several had gone to Northumberland County.

IMMIGRANT. John Henry Mertz arrived America on the ship St Andrew Galley 26 Sep 1737.

He died just a little before the 1790 Census. He was mentioned on Berks County tax records in Rockland Township. On a 1773 deed, though, whereby he passed his land, including that reserved for Mertz Church and its cemetery, to son Jacob, he said he was a resident of Salisbury Township, Northampton County.

When he wrote his will in 1786, he said he was a resident of Rockland Township, Berks County but then when he died his will was probated in Northampton County. He seemed to have been moving back and forth between those two places. Several of his sons, as well as several of Jost’s, were also in Northampton County by the 1780’s.

The will of Henry Mertz, dated 20 Jun 1786 proved 31 Mar 1788 in Northampton County, says at the time of writing it he was a resident of Rockland Township, Berks County. He mentioned son Henry who was to only get 20 shillings and then, as transcribed in the registrar’s book, it says his estate was to be divided among his nine other children: “Philip, William, J George, George Henry, John Jacob and Catharina intermarried to Conrad Repp and Maria intermarried to Peter Fink.” That’s seven named children not nine.

Patty Mertz wrote the Registrar of Northampton Wills and got the actual will. That sentence actually reads "Remainder of estate shall be equally divided to and among my children hereinafter named in equal shares to wit:  Philip Mertz, William Mertz, John Jacob Mertz, Catharina Roerig Widdow, Rosina Intermarried to Jacob Seib, Eva Catharina Intermarried to Conrad Repp, J. George Mertz, George Henry Mertz, and Maria Intermarried to Peter Fink. In nine equal shares and portions share and share alike”.

That explains everything.

There is a memorial for John Henry on find-a-grave. It is not totally accurate but nothing too egregious is said there.