Considering Johann

 

If Johann were to find a place in the family of my husband's third great-grandfather, it would be close to that slot designated for the baby of the family. As large families go, though, there were still a few who followed him—if, that is, we can even find records to demonstrate his connection to Michael and Apollonia Metzger of Perry County, Ohio.

I wouldn't have known about Johann if it weren't for DNA matches showing up on my husband's ThruLines readout. I certainly wouldn't have known about Johann through his proximity to his supposed parents' home—his Find A Grave memorial shows him buried in Dubois County, Indiana, over three hundred miles away from Michael Metzger's last residence.

What first gave me pause, besides the distance, was the foreign-sounding given name. True, Michael Metzger himself was an immigrant, as were the oldest of his children. Yet I had not seen anything but Americanized names for any of the others among his nine children. After five other children, why would Johann's parents decide to revert to Old World customs and insist on such a name? After all, Johann—and the two Metzger children before him—would have been born in the United States.

Yet, Johann it was, if we believe the headstone in the Saint Ferdinand Catholic Cemetery. Not only was his name decidedly German, but the dates of birth and death on his memorial were preceded not by the typical English "born" and "died" but "geb." and "gest."

Perhaps there was a reason for this. As it turns out—and you know I always dig through the history of a place when beginning research on a new area—the town where "Johann" was buried was founded by a Catholic priest and settled by mostly German-speaking people from central Europe.

That town—Ferdinand, in Dubois County, Indiana—may have hosted a German-speaking parish, but the other records were decidedly drawn up in English. As I looked elsewhere to locate records on "Johann" and the rest of the Metzger family there, I found document after document referring to the man as John Metzger.

Did I ever find any records to connect John to Michael? While I haven't yet found any such obvious connection—remember, I still haven't been able to locate Metzger family wills—there was one supporting discovery as I pushed back through John Metzger's life history. In a barely legible marriage record transcribed on Ancestry.com, John's August 24, 1852, marriage to Mary Ann "Weast" was noted to have occurred in Perry County, Ohio. Why Perry County? In fact, why any place in Ohio, if John had settled in Indiana?

Yet again, a helpful subscriber at Ancestry shared an item to fill in some of the blanks. While this obituary doesn't come out and overtly state any connection between John and Michael Metzger, it once again zeroes in on the fact that there was a connection to Perry County, Ohio—a connection at least long enough for John to get to know and propose to another resident of that county before whisking her away to an unknown wilderness.

Published in the Ferdinand News on January 26, 1917, the article about "one of our aged pioneers," Mrs. John Metzger, detailed her early life. The former Mary Anna Wiest came with her parents to America when she was six years of age. The Wiest family settled in Somerset, part of Perry County, Ohio, which is where John later met his intended before their 1852 wedding.

Where John Metzger was during the 1850 enumeration, I can't yet determine. Perhaps he was already in the process of securing his land and new home in Indiana. What I do have—fortunately—are seven DNA matches with descendants of four sons of John and Mary Ann, according to Ancestry's ThruLines calculations. I'm still in the process of examining documentation for each of those matches.

While I'm out of time for this month's research problem, we did make some progress. We were able to identify two of the women living in another Metzger household contiguous to our Michael's son's property as sisters—and then link one of them through a Pennsylvania baptismal record to yet another missing child of Michael and Apollonia. Though we've been introduced to two possible additional sons of Michael—Joseph in Knox County, Ohio, and this "Johann"—their places of death did not lead me any closer to the missing death records for those two Metzger sisters. Nor was I ever able to ascertain where the Metzger family originated in Europe.

These are all loose ends I'll need to tie together sometime in the future. As for tomorrow, we'll move on to explore yet another of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestors.  

Pausing to Remember

 

Today, in the United States, is a day set aside to remember. Memorial Day: its express purpose is to honor those who gave their lives while serving our country, but even that calls to mind all the families of military people who have shared in that sacrifice. Also coming to mind are all those who set aside this day to honor these many others by taking the time to decorate the graves of those military personnel who paid that ultimate price—or to photograph the sight to share with the rest of us. I can think right now of some among readers here who are doing that very task today.

While today is unofficially considered the first day of summer vacation by many—and I wish you a happy and safe time today—I hope your day will also include a silent remembrance based on the reason this day was originally designated a federal holiday. As family history is in our very roots, there are many here who can reach back in time to share stories of relatives and ancestors in that very position, a way to keep their memory alive not only for one holiday, but as an ongoing memorial. 

Welcoming a New Branch

 

It's always celebration-worthy to confirm a formerly missing branch of the family tree. Almost like finding an already-resolved brick wall we never knew we had, a newly-discovered family member calls for not only celebration, but lots of work. 

In this week's case, I found enough evidence to convince me to add another son to the Perry County, Ohio, family of Michael and Apollonia Metzger. Granted, others had already been saying that Joseph belonged in that Metzger family tree, but no one had offered any documentation to convince me that was the right move. Now that I'm convinced, it's time to add Joseph—and all his descendants.

Remember, my goal is to add all the branches I find, including their descendants, so that I can easily place DNA matches from my husband's family onto his tree (and likewise do the same to my tree). Every two weeks, I check this progress. And today's result of that biweekly check shows an increase of 289 individuals in that tree, which now totals 28,186 individuals.

Of course, not all those extra 289 people are on account of Joseph's addition to the tree—but close. After all, Joseph would be brother to my husband's second great-grandfather and, just like his Catholic sibling, Joseph's was a family of many sons. Tracing each of these sons—and their multiple children—down to the present generation has added quite a few to this tree. Besides pursuing the documentation to confirm these additions, I also have the benefit of guidance with DNA matches, of which there are several to examine.

Even though my research focus this month has been on my mother-in-law's Metzger lines, I've managed to add a few details to my own tree, using this same process. In the past two weeks, I've added fifty four names to my mother's side of the family, simply by answering a message I received on Ancestry.com. That brings my own tree up to 28,493 people without even having a research focus on that side of the family this month. Developing a habit of adding changes to the tree when they happen—or when we discover them—can grow a tree quickly, too.

Despite nearly running out of month for resolving my research challenge for May, I'll still have a few more days to tackle yet one more missing son in the Michael Metzger tree. Hopefully, by the end of this month, discovery of more supporting documentation will allow me to add in yet another branch for this tree as well.

And Then, the Next Step

 

There is an ebb and flow to the pursuit of family history. Those brick walls put us off, then keep us at arm's distance while we swing vainly at our target with all our might. Then, suddenly—sometimes when we aren't yet aware of what is about to happen—something breaks loose from that impenetrable wall and just the right fact falls into place. Time to pause for the traditional genealogy happy dance—and then, prepare for the avalanche of work which falls into place.

That's pretty much what is happening right now. Discovery of evidence—at least, a copy of that original evidence—linking Joseph John Metzger and Michael Metzger as son to father reveals the reason why my husband has DNA matches reaching back to a man whom we hadn't even realized was part of the family. Now comes the slog to connect matches from among Joseph's descendants with Michael's third great-grandson, my husband.

There are quite a few matches to check, it turns out. Just this weekend, my husband's ThruLines connection to Michael Metzger increased by two matches to total sixty five. Of that number, six specifically claim Joseph as their direct line. Of course, with a most recent common ancestor for this group being at least as far removed as third great-grandfather, it is not surprising to see the centiMorgan count plummeting to the lower levels of not-quite-yet identical by state.

The closest of Joseph's DNA matching descendants squeaks by with twenty one centiMorgans, and the least of those matches clocks in at a fleeting ten centiMorgans. That entire range is considered a risky assumption, if basing relationship solely upon such a connection. However, I'll be confirming those tenuous matches with the traditional effort of piecing together a paper trail—and of course, those matches who have still managed to hold on to that patriline's surname Metzger have yet another promising token of relationship.

But it's all grunt work from here, at least on Joseph's line. Next week, we'll wrap up what can be found on the other tentative son of Michael Metzger and see whether we can find tidbits from the paper trail to support or reject yet another missing son hypothesis.

Considering Cambria

 

Following the genealogy of a hypothetical connection to one's family history can take on unexpected turns. The trail may have started with a tip, and each subsequent step of the way may be well documented to the other steps in that internal process, but the key is whether we can link up the whole mess with the original inquiry.

Right now, that link we're looking for is the connection between my husband's third great-grandparents Michael and Apollonia Metzger and a man by the name of Joseph John Metzger, possibly their son.

We explored some of the details of Joseph's life yesterday, when we followed him through records in Knox County, Ohio, leading up to his burial there in 1885. The detail shouting out to me the loudest was the fact that Joseph's place of birth was consistently reported to be Pennsylvania. Thanks to the potential DNA link between my husband and a Joseph Metzger descendant, I discovered that at least one other Ancestry subscriber noted—albeit without documentation—that the specific location of Joseph's birth was in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

So, what about Cambria? When I know absolutely nothing about the research direction I'm about to take, I delve first into learning the background details. Along this journey, I learned some interesting but useless details, such as the fact that Cambria was the Latin name for the country of Wales.

It didn't take long, in familiarizing myself with the history and geography of Cambria County to get that deja vu feeling of having been down this research path before—like a long time ago, in the early days of Internet genealogy. I vaguely recalled that there was a treasured list of Catholic baptisms associated with the Cambria County borough of Loretto, a list shared on those ages-old genealogy forums of that decade.

Of course, now I didn't have the slightest notion of how to access such a list. That's where the hunt began afresh. I usually look first for material to cover the broad basics of the area, and the FamilySearch wiki usually provides ample resources, but not so much for this case in Cambria County. I knew I needed to see Catholic baptismal records if I was ever going to confirm Joseph's birth there, but the wiki on the county level didn't provide what I was looking for. I needed to zoom in to the specifics at the parish level, not the county level.

First step was to see what I could learn about Loretto. Sure enough, Loretto was a settlement founded by a Catholic priest—Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin—in 1799. But where were any microfilms of the church's baptismal records?

I noticed on the FamilySearch wiki that there was a mention of a book called Benedictine Fathers in Cambria County, Pennsylvania transcribed in the US GenWeb archives, so I took a look. While the history provided was informative, the time frame for any mention of Metzgers far post-dated our Michael's exodus for Ohio.

I moved on next to the FamilySearch catalog, where I found mention of a promising collection of baptisms and burials in a book compiled in 1986 by Barbara Brady O'Keefe. Once again, a tantalizing lead which led nowhere—unless I wanted to hop on a flight to Salt Lake City. I looked at the catalog entry closer to see the option to "view this catalog record in WorldCat." For me in my little outpost in California, the options were even farther than Salt Lake City. 

But I scrolled down that entry a bit farther, too, to the "Details" section, which noted that the 1986 book was excerpted from a different book published in 1899. Given the title, I was off to check whether Internet Archive might have a digitized version.

It did.

The Internet Archive noted, however, that the version acquired was copied helter-skelter, with text extending off pages, and some pages copied upside down. Nevertheless, I persevered. The search engine, normally a go-to tool for me at Internet Archive, let me down: no entries for Metzger. No entries for Metzgar, either. In fact, just checking, I ran the word "baptism" and the result came back, "no entries" for that, either.

Having come so far, I decided to give this check one more try. After all, the entry which got me started on this search was the claim that the book would include "baptisms and burials." I wanted to hold these annotators to their word.

Thus I began the grunt method of reading through the volume, page by page. I did discover a section which seemed to be a listing of marriages, and scrolled to a nearby section in hopes of finding baptisms. Reorienting myself as I read along, I realized every entry was jumbled together, but was sorted in alphabetical order. Quick: to the Ms!

I was elated to see, after scrolling past pages of sideways entries for "Mc" families, that among those continuing the section was a transcription which noted simply:

Metzger Michael and Apollonia——.

Joseph, Mary Ann. (1819-1821.)

Granted, this is not the original entry. It is only a transcription of the original baptismal record from Saint Michael's Catholic Church in Loretto, Pennsylvania, according to the 1899 publication, Souvenir of Loretto Centenary.

After the Centenary's publication, the Saint Michael's parish which was founded in 1799 by Prince Gallitzin was rebuilt with gifts both modest and magnificent—including major funding by none other than steel magnate Charles Schwab, who spent his younger years in Loretto, and Andrew Carnegie, who donated the pipe organ—and eventually was designated as a Basilica.

As for our Metzger family, by that point, they had long since moved on to Perry County, Ohio—and, in the case of their now-documented son Joseph, further on to Knox County, Ohio. Granted, what I really need is to acquire a record of the actual baptisms, in case the transcription was made in error. Additional confirmation of the family's presence in Cambria County would be helpful as well, in case there was another family by the same name.

For now, considering the DNA matches with descendants of Joseph Metzger as well as this transcription of the Loretto parish records, I think it is safe to say Joseph was part of our Michael's Metzger family. Added bonus: confirmation that Mary Ann was part of the family as well.

Image above: Baptismal transcription from digitized copy of 1899 publication, Souvenir of Loretto Centenary, as obtained online from Internet Archive.

A Person of Interest

 

Let's just say that Joseph John Metzger of Knox County, Ohio, is simply a "suspect" in the lineup of possible missing children of Michael and Apollonia Metzger. I don't yet have any documentation to link Joseph as a son of Michael, but I do have one enticing discovery: Joseph's descendants' DNA matches up with my husband's DNA test results, and I know, at least, that my husband's line leads back to Michael as his third great-grandfather.

Now that Joseph has become a person of interest in my quest to discover all I can about the family of Michael Metzger, we need to tease out what documentation we can find on this "suspect." So, what can be found so far?

Starting with the 1850 census, we can see that Joseph was a family man, married and living on his farm in Mount Vernon, Ohio. Along with his wife Mary Ann, the census entry included five children, arrayed on the enumeration in stair step fashion: six year old John, five year old Henry, three year old Charles, two year old Mary, and baby Catherine, born just two months before the census worker came knocking at their door on July 24.

At that point, Joseph had declared his age as thirty, putting his birth at approximately 1820. He was off to a good start—but not for long. Before the family saw the next enumerator at their door, Joseph's wife Mary Ann had died, and he had quickly married a local widow, Rachel Walker Houck, and acquired a step-daughter, along with several more children with his second wife by 1871.

What is interesting in tracing the documents associated with this hypothetical son of Michael Metzger is to see the significant points in Joseph's own life trajectory. Of course, the hope is to move backward in time to where we can connect him on paper with his parents or known siblings. Yet, so far, the only hopeful sign I've been able to locate is the documentation for Joseph's first marriage to Mary Ann Bechtol. That 1842 document was drawn up in Muskingum County—a county neighboring Michael's home in Perry County, but yet another county removed from Joseph's home in Knox County. Could that proximity have been an indicator of Joseph's possible residence with Michael in Perry County before moving to Knox County?

More interesting than that discovery was considering Joseph's consistently-reported place of birth. Census records gave that location as the state of Pennsylvania. True, a broad category—try driving through that state, east to west, if you aren't sure what I mean here—so we'll need to narrow that report to something more specific. Once again, I'm going to play with the hypothetical on this instance. It so happens that another Ancestry subscriber gave Joseph's actual place of birth—though without any documentation—as Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

If that is indeed correct—and you know we'll need to ferret that out for ourselves—learning a bit more about that location may advance our quest successfully. Or at least rule out that report. It's worth a little exploration to see if we can pinpoint a correct place of birth for Joseph, which will then mean identifying the stopping place in the Metzger family's emigration from their original homeland in Europe to Michael Metzger's family settlement in Ohio. 

Exploring Details on a Possible Son

 

It seems so counter-intuitive, when pommeled for years with the mantra, "document, document, document," to simply reach out and pluck a son from hypothetical thin air. After all, we're talking children of my husband's third great-grandfather Michael Metzger, which means stretching to the early 1800s with a paper trail. Still, though the connection bridges multiple generations, we now have a tool which the genealogists of previous eras couldn't yet access.

Paper trail or no, my husband's DNA matches suggest he has a connection to descendants of someone named Joseph John Metzger. Presumably—at least according to Ancestry's ThruLines—Joseph was one of the two additional children of Michael Metzger whom I haven't yet been able to identify. We'll take some time this week to explore what can be found about this Joseph.

Besides the DNA connection, one reason I wanted to inspect records regarding Joseph Metzger was that he lived in Knox County, Ohio. Keep in mind, all the other Metzger family members I've found so far have spent a significant portion of their lives in Perry County, Ohio. There are several records affirming that case.

There are also, as we discovered last week, Metzger family events which I presumed occurred in Perry County which may have happened elsewhere—like the deaths of potential children Gregory, Joanna, and Mary Ann. While the two Metzger sisters were buried in Perry County, there is no record there of the death of any of those three.

My guess was that they died while visiting a nearby relative. And Joseph provides the most likely explanation. Joseph, from the time of the 1850 census until his 1885 death, lived in Knox County. For those unfamiliar with their Ohio geography—I had to look it up myself—Knox County is basically a straight shot northward from Perry County, on the other side of Licking County. In today's travel vernacular, it would be a little over an hour's commute to drive from the one county to the other.

Though folks from that time period wouldn't have the benefit of paved highways and fast-moving cars, it is quite likely that a move from Perry County to Knox County wouldn't be quite as cataclysmic a rending of family ties as, say, the decision to move out west. But there's another reason why I want to learn more about this particular Metzger son: unlike for his older, foreign-born siblings, census records consistently gave his birthplace as Pennsylvania. And at least one Ancestry subscriber—though without the requisite available paper trail—has pinpointed that Pennsylvania location to a specific place availing us of Catholic birth records. You can be sure I'll follow up on that possibility.

Next step in this process: get to know a little bit more about what we can document of the life of Joseph John Metzger of Knox County, Ohio.