The wife of Adam Zehner who started out in Longswamp Township and ended up in Schuylkill County was Maria (or Mary) Mertz. This couple can be found on various family trees posted on Ancestry.com and I think many are seriously and uniformly wrong in terms of their identification of Maria.

Many researchers over the years who would go looking for a Maria Mertz of Berks County would look, of course, as Mertz researchers typically did, at the records of Mertz Church. And so when researchers found in the records of that church the baptism of Maria Catharina Mertz daughter of John Henry born 20 August 1743 and she is often identified as Adam Zehner’s wife.

They are wrong in three ways.

1. Adam Zehner’s wife was Maria or Mary. Not Maria Catharina. The problem is that a girl named Maria Catherina would likely then have gone through life being called Catharina or Catherine -- in old German naming patterns, the first name was a "church" or "baptism" name and that person just wouldn't have been called by that name. So typically a man's daughters might well have been Maria Catharina, Maria Elisabetha, Maria Magdalena, etc. -- and all would have gone by those middle names. Now if a daughter was named Anna Maria, or just Maria -- then she would have been called Maria or Mary all her life.

2. We don’t know Maria’s exact birth date but it was not 20 August 1743, that was Maria Catharina.

3. She wasn’t the daughter of John Henry Mertz, the founder of the Lutheran church that bear his name. She likely was raised in the Reformed religion and was likely the daughter of Hans Peter Mertz of the Longswamp Reformed Church.

Let’s start with Maria Catharina, daughter of John Henry. One way the whole theory can be debunked is to go find out whatever happened to Maria Catherina.

John Henry wrote his will in 1788 and specifically named his daughter Catherine Rorig (Rarick might be a better spelling), wife of Conrad. That was Maria Catharine. We actually know the names of all of Henry’s daughters and their husbands names from his will and Adam Zehner and Maria were not on that list.

So who was Maria’s father? To start, if she was born in Berks County in the early 1740's, then there are only four possibilities to be her father, one of which was John Henry -- but as I say I think he can be ruled out. The other three possibilities were all Mertzes of Longswamp Township, David Mertz who emigrated in 1733 with his two teenage sons: Nicholas and Peter.

I can also rule out Nicholas because, though he did have a daughter Maria, she died young in 1776, single, and wrote a will naming her brothers and sisters. So, we're down to David and Peter.

When I first started in genealogy, once I realized my ancestry too traced to Longswamp Reformed and not to Mertz Church as I had been told, I did a complete and exhaustive review of the records of Longswamp Reformed looking for any one named Mertz including wives who I came to recognize by their married names and studying each and every such baptism trying to identify each and every Mertz therein named. (That transcription is elsewhere on my website.) But it turns out, Maria was named twice (well one of those was only as Adam Zehner and “wife”), but it never had crystallized in my brain until I was puzzling over who Maria (Mertz) Zehner might have been.

Here are the two mentions.

12 Sep 1758. At the baptism of Maria Eva Litweiler, two of the sponsors of that baptism were Adam Zehman and Maria Mertz. It turns out this is Maria’s only mention by name in the records of Longswamp Reformed (because she moved away soon after her marriage), so when I made my first review of those records I didn’t think too much about who she was, I just thought she must have been either the other Maria Mertz of the day or someone whose name had been corrupted.

But as soon as I became aware of Mary Mertz, wife of Adam Zehner, I immediately realized — this was them! I have observed in many instances in those church records and in other churches too, when two people are listed as single at a baptism -- they end up married in a year or two. Not always, but often. I call that my baptisms as singles bar of the time theory. I now believe this Mary was a person never named in those records other than this one time.

But now consider this baptism:

8 Apr 1764. Adam Hener and unnamed wife baptize son David. I think this was Adam Zehner and I think the birth date matches what people say is true about David Zehner, his son. The sponsors were David Mertz and Catharina Sassaman.

David may have been the 1733 immigrant but there is no other evidence that he lived that long and I think he died years before. More likely it was Maria’s brother David, who was named several times in those years as a sponsor, always with a different single woman until finally he married Barbara Miller.

From this analysis, I came to the conclusion that if Maria was single in 1758 and then married by 1764, that perhaps she was born in the early 1740’s. I think David the immigrant was too old then to be having children (all his children had been born in Alsace before he emigrated) and so Maria’s father must have been Peter, by process of elimination, he was the last man standing. I had also by that time seen mention that Adam and Maria's first son was named Peter and therefore was likely named for her father.

Now as soon as I became aware that Adam Zehner’s wife was Mary Mertz, I immediately knew why that name rang a bell. I had been in contact with William Zehner, a professional genealogist, long ago when I was first exploring the “two Philips” theory (since proven). William had helped me by getting Hans Peter’s will for me and giving me the idea that studying the sponsors at church baptisms can be quite rewarding as often the siblings of one or the other (sometimes both) parents often were named.

So I contacted William Zehner and asked him what he thought about who Maria was and my idea that Maria was the daughter of Peter. He wrote back:

“I have published a book called Johann Adam and Anna Maria (Mertz) Zehner Family of Berks and Schuylkill Counties, Pennsylvania, back in 2009. In it are several pages dealing with Maria (Mertz) Zehner, a strong lady apparently, having born 15 children. Be advised however, that the tombstone marking her grave with Adam was posted by their grandson (or great grandson), and while very expensive and well constructed, is seriously in error. It states "Adam Zehner, born 1726 Died 1809, Aged 83 years / Mary, wife of Adam Zehner, born Mertz, aged 77 years." Every single number on this tombstone is incorrect by several years. He arrived in Philadelphia on November 7, 1754, and married about 1758 or early 1759. He died in July 1814, as shown by the letters of administration of his estate. If he was 21 when he arrived, the likely birth date would be about 1733. His wife was still living in 1810, but she predeceased him before 1814.

Peter was their first born child, and would normally have been named for Adam's father, except there was apparently some problem between them. So Peter may have been named for his mother's father. You can read a little about the book on my Web site here: http://www.northwestfloridagenealogy.com/zehnerbook/index.html.”;

More from William Zehner’s book is cited on Maria’s find-a-grave memorial.

Somewhere in my research, I also came across an intriguing story I'm trying to learn more about that Adam was employed by Mr. Mertz upon his immigration -- and then married his daughter. You'd think his employer would have been the older David but by 1754, Peter was approaching 40 years of age so it could well have been him. (If I have her dob wrong and she was born closer to 1733, then David could possibly have been her father).