I have spent a fair amount of time trying to identify the parents of Samuel Martz who was born in 1836 and who married Catharine Ann Hilbush, simply because I am descended from the Hilbish family as well as the Mertz family. Meiser’s Martz/Mertz says that Samuel, with these birth and death dates and that wife, was the son of William and Elizabeth. He offered no compelling evidence of how that was known, so I don’t put a lot of stock in it.

Then there is the genealogical research of Dorothy Shuck Amerman (wife of my high school history teacher George Amerman) whose son Yank (a classmate of my sister at Sunbury High School) shares my Mertz, Hummel and Hilbish ancestry and so has always been of interest to me due to the totally different ways Yank connects to our shared ancestor.

I found a copy of Dorothy’s research at the Northumberland County Historical Society. She traces her husband’s ancestry back to Samuel Martz who she says was the son of William born 1792 and that William in turn was the son of David and Magdalena Shissler.

I have two issues with that ancestry. It is not at all clear, certainly there is no proof, that William was the son of David and Magdalena. This is discussed at length in my analysis of William's possible parentage. And to the point at hand here, I can find no evidence that William had a son named Samuel. Samuel clearly existed and all of Dorothy husband’s ancestry from him forward checks out, but I am unable to prove who Samuel’s father was. All of this just adds to the confusion surrounding William. Nonetheless, I have no better idea on who William’s father was and who Samuel’s father was and I show things in my database the way Dorothy says it until better information comes along to clarify things.

The main problem I have with just accepting that Samuel was William’s son is that we know when Samuel was born and he should have been living with William in the 1850 Census when Samuel would have been 14, if indeed William was his father. He was not -- but Samuel too is a mystery man as I am unable to find him anywhere else. He also just “pops up” -- in his case in 1860, married, living next door to his father-in-law.

Now by the time boys were 16, 17 or 18, I have seen instances where they no longer lived at home but instead with “random” people for whom they appeared to be working, helping them on their farm. But 14 seems a little young for that. Moreover, even in such cases, the boy was listed in the appropriate Census as a member of the “random” household.

So I did a very thorough search of the 1850 Census using all my tricks to find people even though the spelling of their name might have been totally corrupted. Immediately, someone popped up as the obvious candidate. There was a 13 year old Samuel Martz living in Coal Township with Benjamin Martz age 51 and with wife Lydia 47.

The problem is that Samuel was still living in Coal Township in 1860 and Meiser accounts for this other Samuel Martz (1837-1/19/1889) and says that he was buried in Shamokin Cemetery. So, he was not the Samuel Martz who married Catherine Hilbush.

There is one small piece of evidence that I can interpret as possibly suggesting the father-son relationship between William and Samuel. The 1936 death certificate of Minnie Simonson said her father was William Martz and her mother Kathy Hilbush. The informant was her brother Eben. No I know that Minnie was the daughter of Samuel and Catherine (Hilbush) Martz, she was their daughter in the 1880 Census and her 1895 marriage record to Thomas Simonsson said they were her parents. So did Eben have a senior moment? Where could he have come up with William as her father’s name, might it imply William was Samuel’s father and momentarily Eben mixed them up in his mind?

Samuel is designated P6a1e.

1860. The newlyweds, Samuel and Catharine, lived next door to her father Daniel Hilbush in Shamokin Township.

1870. Samuel and wife Catharine had a 10 year-old daughter, Sara E. A neighbor was Benjamin Hilbush.

Now another way of trying to find Samuel is to analyze the 1840 Census, when Samuel should have been a tick mark, a boy age 0-4. The possibilities from Census tick marks are:

Magdalena, widow of 1800 Jacob, had a son of the right age, but I think it was Henry who was still living with her, age 13, in 1850.

1810 John had a son of the right age but he moved to Ohio by 1850 and that son was no doubt Charles.

1774 David. All the rest of his children were born before 1817, so this must be a grandson of some kind. Still it could be Samuel.

Note that William is conspicuously absent from this list, his youngest son was age 5-9.

LDS Film 961017 has death records from the time before death certificates were required. The point of ordering this film was to see what it said for Samuel Martz who died Dec 1903. He was there. But like everyone else on the film, parents were supposed to be named only if the deceased was a minor. There were exceptions to this rule, but Samuel was not one of them. No parents were named; what a bummer. He died 24 Dec 1903 of paralysis at age 67y, 4m, 21d. He was buried in Snydertown.

I also found an obituary in a Pottsville newspaper dated Monday, 28 Dec 1903 that said Samuel Martz age 67 died Saturday at Schuylkill Haven. Saturday would have been 26 Dec, a slight discrepancy from his find-a-grave memorial bu the age is right so this has to be this Samuel. But what was he doing in Schuylkill Haven? The article adds that he had been wounded at the Petersburg Crater and had been a member of the 50th Regiment. I have seen mention to other Schuylkill County Mertzes (or Martzes) who were of that regiment. Could Samuel have some Schuylkill County roots I have yet to figure out?

He is on find-a-grave.

George Amerman descends from Samuel’s daughter Sara Elizabeth who married Nelson Dunkelberger Van Horn; their daughter Cornetta Belle Van Horn married George Washington Amerman and their son George Monroe Amerman was Dorothy Schuck’s husband.

Catherine Ann Hilbush was the daughter of Daniel F Hilbush. Daniel was a descendant of my immigrant ancestor Peter Hülpüsch some of whose descendants (my line) adopted the Hilbish spelling when they moved to Freeburg while other of his descendants adopted the Hilbush spelling when they moved first to Berks County and later to Jackson Township, Northumberland County.