End of the Month Metzgers: Still a Mess

 

It's the end of the month, and what do I know better than I did thirty days ago? Hard to tell with this Metzger goal.

Last winter when I selected my Twelve Most Wanted for 2024, one of the three ancestors of my mother-in-law I chose to work on—again!—was Michael Metzger, her second great-grandfather. Since he had died in 1843, of course she had never met him. I doubt she even had any recollections of older relatives talking about his memory. All I knew what that he and his wife Apollonia had arrived in this country before 1819, when they welcomed their first American-born son, Joseph.

Where the family came from, I had no idea, thought some census records—and even an editorially-riddled history book entry on one of their sons—stated this immigrant family's homeland was Germany. Still, others asserted—with no documentation, mind you—that the Metzger family was really from Switzerland. Were they? I haven't been able to find any records of that, either, and until I do find documentation, I can't really say anything for sure, other than that other people seem to know something I don't know...yet.

In the meantime, I did learn much more about the many descendants of Michael and Apollonia, mostly for DNA purposes. At least eighty one of those descendants have tested at Ancestry.com along with my own husband, according to Ancestry's ThruLines tool. Who knows how many more are yet to be discovered as matches at the other four DNA companies where he has also tested. I am almost through checking each of those first eighty one at Ancestry, but still have a long way to go to confirm the rest of those Metzger matches.

With the close of this month's research project, I'll compose my to-do list for a future year's revisit of this Metzger question. As we move on to July, we'll shift from examining research questions concerning my mother-in-law's ancestors to delving into my father-in-law's equally mystifying Irish immigrant ancestors. Beginning tomorrow, our focus will turn to a relative who popped up on my research radar long enough to assure me he had arrived in America, then disappeared completely. For one last time, I'm going to try my best to see if anything else can be found on the man this July.