Jacob E Martz existed and I can give a reasonably complete profile of him. He was listed in Sunbury in the 1860 and 1870 Census, age 46 and 53 respectively. We can only surmise relationships from those Census listings but the presumption would be that Rebecca, age 26 then age 34, was his wife and they had a daughter named Mary (I think it was May) age 4 in 1860 and then named Debilla May (said to be adopted) age 15 in 1870.

He is buried at Penns Cemetery in Sunbury. I had always been curious about a find-a-grave memorial for Jacob Martz in that cemetery which had no dates, had a photo of what appeared to be an unreadable tombstone and had a larger photo that showed a Revolutionary War marker by his tombstone and that his tombstone was next to Rebecca Martz (1835-1900). The Revolutionary War marker was clearly intended for Jacob Martz (1755-1803 designated P6) who quite possibly is buried in that cemetery but I couldn’t understand who Rebecca was.

So I went to that cemetery and found his grave. With a little effort, I was able to re-position the tombstone enough that I could make out the name Jacob E Martz and that he died 6 Sep [year very hard to read]. I also knew that Heber Gearhart who transcribed Penns Cemetery tombstones many years before I went there, when tombstones may have been more readable, had listed a Jacob E Martz there who died in 1870. Clearly, that tombstone was not the Jacob Martz who deserved the Revolutionary War marker and just as clearly he was the Jacob Martz I knew from Census, last seen in 1870, with the presumed wife named Rebecca. (I have also found a newspaper article dated 9 Sep 1870 saying that Jacob Martz died in Sunbury on 6 September.)

But who was he? I really didn’t know. I know all the Martzes of the Sunbury area from that period in time and I had no real idea who he was. There was a Jacob Martz (1800-1838 designated P6a2) who had a son Jacob I couldn’t account for but this Jacob in Penns was born to early to have been P6a2’s son.

Then I got a major clue to his identity when I found a newspaper article in the Northumberland County Democrat dated 7 Jul 1871. It reported that a petition had been filed at the Orphans Court of 25 Mar 1871 that Jacob E Martz had lately died intestate with no heirs, that he owned a town lot in Sunbury and it named his siblings as his rightful heirs. They were: the petitioner Rebecca, Eliza Martz and Amos Martz who resided in Mifflin County, Susan Martz who had been last heard of twelve years previous and was living at the time in Indiana and finally the three children of Solomon Martz who had moved to Arkansas and died there soon thereafter.

I knew Amos of Mifflin County. I also sort of suspected he had a brother named Solomon. I also after much work on this whole family had concluded that even though many persons in the family often had their name spelled Martz and one of them was even known as Mertz — the name in my opinion really was Moritz. I have not been able to identify the name of the father of these siblings so he is in my database as Unidentified Moritz (U2a) and so Jacob is designated U2a3.

One area of discrepancy comes from Joseph A Meiser’s coverage of Jacob and Rebecca in his Mertz/Martz book as one place compared to his cemetery transcriptions as the other place.

On the cemetery transcription, he listed Rebecca Martz (1835-1900) at Penns Cemetery and he annotated that she was the daughter of Jacob and Mary (Malick) Martz. Mary’s name was actually Mary Magdalena Keefer, Meiser had that wrong, but he was referring to Jacob P6a2 mentioned above. He also included Jacob E Martz who died 6 Sep 1870 on his cemetery listing but did not indicate any known relationship of this Jacob to anyone else.

But in his book, he shows no daughter Rebecca for this couple, instead he shows a son Jacob E (1830-1870) who, in the book, he says was married to Rebecca with those same cemetery dates.  He says further the Jacob and Rebecca had a daughter Devilla who married Joseph Eisley. And in his book he says that Gearhart says that this Jacob was Jacob E and he lived in Sunbury and he and wife Rebecca are buried in Sunbury.

So the first question is was Rebecca his wife or his sister? I think the Orphans Court petition answers that question definitively. Had Jacob had both a wife and a sister named Rebecca, his wife too would have been an heir.

The second question relates to May. Who were her parents? We can track May in Census. I think she was the girl whose name was written as Mary age 4 in 1860. Then she was Debilla May (adopted) age 15 in 1870. In 1880 she lived with Rebecca, who claimed to be a widow, her name simply May. And in 1900, Rebecca lived with May Ersely and her husband, said to be his mother-in-law. Finally there is a death certificate for May Debella Eisely, widow of Cameron, that says she was the daughter of Jacob Martz, mother’s name unknown.

I suspect the story may be that May was Rebecca’s daughter by a man she never married, and that Rebecca and May came to live with Jacob after that event.