Her name was given as Borliski on her son George’s death certificate and Braskosky on William’s. I don’t recognize either name, it is either one or the other or a name that is similar to both. Take your pick.

To make matters even more confusing, her name is given as “Taraca Usky Brusky” on the death certificate or Rebcca Hoffman, wife of Cyrus and daughter of Philip and Theresa.

There is an attendance record at St Paul’s UCC Church in Summit Hill (Carbon County) that lists Theresa Mertz with the notation died 20 Oct 1885. This is the same church where her daughter Rebecca baptized her son Silas Hoffman with her sister Lizzie Rickert and husband John standing as sponsors.

Philip Mertz appeared in East Penn Township in 1820. This is the area that later became part of Carbon County and I believe this is the area where he then lived out his life though at some point Philip came to call himself John P Mertz. The name of his wife connects Philip and John P. It was Philip and Theresa who baptized children at Weissport Church in the East Penn time period and Theresa was the name of John P’s wife in Carbon County.

But the rock solid evidence of this connection is their son George Mertz (1825-1907). John P and Theresa were living with George in 1870. They baptized him in 1825 and his death certificate and his find-a-grave memorial give the exact same birth date for him as known from that church baptism record. Moreover, his death certificate says his parents were John Philip and Theresa (Borliski) Mertz.

But who was Philip’s father? There are two key points to make:

1. I am actively researching, and have been doing so for years, everyone named Mertz or Martz born in America before 1850 and trying to know each person’s connection back to their immigrant Mertz ancestor. I know of no one that had a son John P or Philip born in or around the late 1790’s that went missing, in other words who would be a candidate to be the Philip who popped up in East Penn in 1820. Nor was there anyone of that name in any record prior to 1820, perhaps in a different place, who might be that guy.
2. There are three persons who were mentioned in the records of East Penn or the Weissport Church just prior to the appearance of Philip in those places: George Martz was mentioned on an 1808 tax list in East Penn and was there in Census in 1800 and 1810. Nicholas Mertz was also on that 1808 tax list and Carl Mertz, who I think was the son of George, baptized a daughter at the Weissport Church with wife Katharine in 1814. Those three, I believe, were all of the Heidelberg Mertz family.

So it has always been my theory that John Philip also was of that family. That doesn’t answer the question of who his father was, but it narrows the list of candidates substantially. But here’s the rub.

DNA. We have an on-going y-chromosone (father-to-son) DNA project at Family Tree DNA for males of the name Mertz or Martz to see what other males of that name have substantially the same DNA — meaning they share a common ancestor, possibly many generations back, of the Mertz or Martz name.

In that project, there has long been a person named Harry Kenneth Mertz, Jr of Easton, PA, now deceased, who was tested. He reported that his most distant male ancestor was John Philip Mertz born 1863 in Packerton, PA. This obviously was the man whose name on his Pennsylvania death certificate was John P Mertz born 1863 who died in Mahoning, Carbon County 1 Nov 1918. His death certificate says he was the son of Charles Mertz and wife Elizabeth Hontz.

I also used Census to work back in time. In the 1940 Census there was a Harry K Mertz born about 1922, son of Martin age 41 living in Mahoning. (That was Harry K, Sr.) And in the 1900 Census, this new-born Martin was present living with John P Mertz age 37 and wife Emma in Packerton, Carbon County. And John P, in turn, I’m certain was John age 15 in 1880 living with his father Charles.

Charles, I believe, was the son of John Philip Mertz, the one born about 1797. Now Charles may be one weak link in the connections as there is a discrepancy regarding his birth date (see my discussion of Charles on this point). But I think we can say that Harry Kenneth descends from the younger John P who likely descends from John Philip; Charles being the only possible break in the chain.

But the point is that for a long time, Harry Kenneth’s DNA matched no one else in our project. It was one thing that always convinced me I was right that the Heidelberg Mertz family were not related to any of the other Mertz lines I knew of and was tracking.

But all that changed in 2018, when a new person joined our DNA project. This new person believes he descends from one of the eight original Mertz or Martz immigrants I track, the one named Theobald Martz (T). I have cross-checked the person’s genealogy and I believe too that he descends from Theobald.

Theobald settled in Frederick County, Maryland in perhaps the 1750’s. He may have lived elsewhere in America before that but there is no evidence he did. He had three sons, two of whom I am quite sure had no children. The third son did have children and he lived in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, just north of Frederick, Maryland. This third son was named Peter Marts. He married in 1785 and his four sons were born in the late 1780’s and 1790’s. So, we might consider that he had a fifth son born in 1797 — except when Peter died, he named all his children in his will, there was no Philip or John Philip. He did have a son John P(eter) but his life is accounted for.

Now if all of our genealogy is right (I think it is) and the DNA is right (I think it is), there are still any number of possible explanations:

• Philip (b.1797) does descend from Theobald, either from one of the sons I (perhaps erroneously) think had no sons or he was an illegitimate child of Peter’s. But that means he picked up and left Frederick or Franklin County and moved quite a bit east to (what would become) Carbon County. In all my tracking of people, this would be about the only person I know of in those days who moved a good distance East.
• Philip (b.1797) does descend from the Heidelberg family as I have long surmised and the Heidelberg family and Theobald share a common ancestor. I don’t know exactly when Theobald was born. There might be a scenario where Theobald could have been the son of George who immigrated in 1732 and was the progenitor of the Heidelberg family, though I think the timing doesn’t work and why wouldn’t he have come to America with George in that case? More likely, I think, if they were related, maybe they were brothers or cousins — but related nonetheless.
• Philip (b.1797) and Theobald were related but Philip was not a descendant of Theobald or of George the 1732 immigrant, instead he (Philip) came to America independently and was himself an immigrant. But he answered in both 1850 and 1870 that he was born in Pennsylvania and his sons said in 1880 that their father had been born in Pennsylvania so the evidence seems to contradict this scenario.
• There is some other unidentified immigrant who Philip descends from, Philip was born in America, and that immigrant was related to Theobald but left scant record of his presence.

Of the four scenarios, I think I like the second one the best but will tuck the fourth one away in the back of my mind if I ever find another immigrant as yet unidentified. One of the intriguing things about the second scenario is that in my database, with many hundreds of male Mertzes and Martzes, I know of just two named Theobald: the Frederick County settler and Theobald (Dewalt) of the Heidelberg family. I always considered it just a coincidence that they had the same, though unusual, name as I thought they were of two different and unrelated lineages. Now DNA suggests there was some connection of the two.

So Which Heidelberg Mertz was His Father? Because of the fact that Philip first appeared in East Penn as a young adult, basically “replacing” George Mertz who had been there previously, I think the most straightforward answer to the question is he was George’s son.

I feel fairly confident that I have correctly identified the sons of William and Dewalt and my conclusions are “confirmed” (well not contradicted) by analysis of Census tick marks for both William and Dewalt. There does not appear to be room in either family for Philip.

While I have pointed out that Census tick marks may argue against the idea that George had three sons born in the 1780’s, they are not at all inconsistent with the idea he might have had a son born in the later 1790’s. (See my discussion of this point in my profile of George —G1a.) So I believe Philip George’s son.

One of the things about my current thinking on this family is that it is only George’s sons who ever went to Carbon County and it is only George’s sons who ever went to Westmoreland County.

On the other hand, it does trouble me that, if George went to Westmoreland when John Philip was only, say, 21 years old, why wouldn’t he have gone too?

Philip was first named in the 1820 Census. He lived in East Penn Township, Northampton County — a part of Northampton that would later become part of Carbon County when it was formed in 1843.

In 1830, he was in Towamensing Township and then in 1840 again in East Penn. I suspect Philip hadn’t moved, rather the township boundaries were being loosely interpreted by the Census takers.

By 1850, Philip did move, presumably, to the next township north, Mahoning Township, Carbon County.

His last appearance in Census was 1870 when he lived with son George. I cannot account for him in 1860.

In one of the most amazing coincidences — and maybe it’s more than that — when I was reviewing Lehigh County land records, I found several deeds dated 1870’s & 1880’s involving Philip and Teresa Mertz, Adam and Magdalena Mertz and Charles and Mary Teresa Wehrle, all of Whitehall Township, Lehigh County. I had already concluded (erroneously it turns out) from Mary Wehrle’s death certificate which said her parents were Philip and Theresa that she was the daughter of John Philip and Teresa of Carbon County, even though it said her parents (and she) were all born in Germany. And the name Adam Mertz rang a bell as someone I had encountered before in connection (I thought) with this family.

It turns out, there was an entirely different Philip Mertz whose wife was, by shear coincidence, Theresa, and who had several children including Adam, Mary Teresa and Rebecca (who had been mentioned in a church record with Adam) who came to America from Germany perhaps in the 1840-1860 period and settled in Catasauqua, Lehigh County.

But the interesting thing is that baptism record where I had noted that Adam and Rebecca were sponsors for a grandchild of Dewalt Mertz and I had wondered the connection. I still do. Was this John Philip of Catasauqua actually related to the Heidelberg family and sought them out when he came to America in the mid-1800’s?

This “other” Philip and Teresa and Adam and his wife are all memorialized on find-a-grave and in all cases their memorials say they were born in Bavaria.

Philip is not on find-a-grave. I don’t know when he died but it must have been sometime in the 1870’s. In 1870, he and Theresa lived with their son George. In 1880, there is no sign of Philip and Theresa was living with a daughter.