I do not know her maiden name let alone the names of her parents. I really know very little about her.

Hans Niclaus, son of David and Verena Mertz, was baptized 8 Sep 1715 in Alsace. He arrived America in 1733, at age 18, on the same ship as his parents, sister Christina and brother Peter. He was later listed with David and Peter as a founder of the Longswamp Church.

I consider David Mertz to be my immigrant Mertz ancestor. When I was developing my system of using a hierarchical designation code to structurally link every Mertz or Martz back to their “original American Mærtz ancestor”, I initially thought I would start this line with David who I would designate “D” and then his sons would be numbered D1 and D2 and I would build out from there.

But to be sure, his teenage sons Nicholas and Peter, his only sons who survived to adulthood, came with him, and were also immigrants. So I have chosen instead to denote Nicholas with the single letter code “N” and Peter with the single letter code “P”. It is justified since the sons were also immigrants but it is justified also because it better aligns their descendants — those with three character or four character designations — by the timeframe in which they lived. Therefore, Nicholas is designated N. (The “D” code is not necessary and is not used.)

We don’t know a lot about Nicholas, but we know all the key facts, from his baptism to his arrival in Philadelphia which confirmed his age. He did not leave a will but several Orphans Court petitions exist from which we learn the name of his widow and all of his children and a little more about many of them.

The naming of all of his children is key because the records for his younger brother Peter are not nearly so complete. However, I am relying on this simple logic -- any Mertz named in the earliest Longswamp Reformed Church records were descendants of either Nicholas or Peter and if they were of the right age to be of the next generation, then if they were not a child of Nicholas, they must have been a child of Peter.

It seems simple now when I lay out all the pertinent facts, but they came together piece by piece over a time period of several years. But the simple truth that I recognize now is that the Longswamp church records can be used to identify generation three Mertzes (John David being generation one in America and his sons Nicholas and Peter being generation two). These Gen III children were all born from the late 1730’s to the mid 1750’s and they had their children in the 1760’s and 1770’s. It’s the timing that tells the story.

The sons of Nicholas were Jacob, Henry, Conrad and Nicholas. John, Peter and yet another Nicholas were known sons of Peter and it seems totally conclusive that Philip was one of their brothers. David, the other Jacob and Abraham must also have been sons of Peter.

Nicholas and his male descendants to 1850 are covered in the Mærtz Hierarchical Project:
https://www.mertzgenealogy.com/names/nicholas_mertz_family_n.pdf

Nicholas died before any Pennsylvania Septennial Census was taken and well before the first U. S. Census. He was listed as a land-holder in Longswamp on all tax lists 1754-1760 and then in 1765 and thereafter it was his widow Margaret.

Joseph A Meiser in Northumberland County Pioneers lists all the children of Nicholas Mertz and purports to have approximate birth dates for each of them. But I believe all he did was list them in the order they were named in Orphans Court records and give them birth years two years apart, paying attention also to who was said to be a minor at the time of Nicholas’ death.

The Berks County Orphans Court dealt with the estate of Nicholas Mertz over a period of several years.

The earliest petition was 15 May 1761, when Margaret Mertz, widow and administratrix and Jacob Mertz, administrator of Nicholas Mertz, late of Berks County, deceased, requested that guardians be appointed for the minor children. Guardians then were appointed dividing the children into three groups from which I think I can sense their respective ages.

• Henry Krist was appointed for both Elizabeth and Henry. I think they were the two oldest of the minor children nearing the age of 18.
• Peter Mertz was appointed for Conrad, I think he may have been over 14.
• And two guardians were appointed for the four remaining children: Maria Elizabeth, Magdalena, Maria and Nicholas. I believe they were all under the age of 14.

Then, on 11 May 1762 in a petition filed by Jacob Mertz, eldest son of Nicholas Mertz, it was stated that his father died intestate eighteen months ago leaving a widow and ten children which he then named and requested that the court determine how to divide Nicholas’ land in Longswamp. The named children were: the petitioner, Margaretta (since married to Nicholas Jacobi), Eve (wife of Frederick Braun) –- all of whom were of age — and Elizabeth, Conrad, Henry, Maria Elizabeth, Magdalena, Maria and Nicholas — all minors. He also mentioned Bernard Kline, son of Nicholas’ deceased daughter Catherine who had married Lorentz Kline.

Finally, when the estate accounting was approved on 13 Aug 1763, the same eleven children were named but by then Elizabeth had married Lawrence Schollenberger.

Nicholas is not on find-a-grave. He no doubt was buried at Longswamp Reformed or on his own farm.