The transcription I have always used of Mertz Church baptism records lists Christina as a daughter of Philip and Catharina Mertz and says she was born 16 Jun 1776 and baptized 26 Jun (presumably 1776). But it also lists another daughter of Philip and Catharina named Esther who was born 31 Jul 1776 and baptized 16 Mar 1777. Clearly these two daughters were not born 45 days apart as implied by these records.

Since I never knew what happened to Christina or Esther, I never bothered to try to investigate the discrepancy.

But then in 2020, I stumbled upon the Ancestry Family Tree of “lilysu54” who I believe is Susan (Lesher) Hendricks who descends from Jacob Lesher. Susan had found the Berks County marriage record of Christina Maerzin to Jacob Lesher. They married 13 Aug 1799. She believes this couple can be found in the 1800 Census we find Jacob Lesher age 26-45 living in Maxatawny Township (where Phil Merz also lived). The male head of household is 26-45 as is his wife and they have a boy under 10 who she identifies as son Gideon who, per his burial record was born 10 Feb 1800, and they also have two young females who Susan does not attempt to identify.

She has found, apparently in some old local histories, that a John Lesher operated an inn near Philip Mertz’s farm in Maxatawny and that by 1800 it was operated by John’s younger brother Jacob. And i the 1800 Pennsylvania Census, Jacob was listed as an innkeeper.

So all logic suggests that Christina, later called Christiana, may have been the daughter of Philip Mertz. Susan comes to that same conclusion and she cites my website, apparently she made a pretty thorough search of it, as not providing any evidence of any other Christina who might possibly have been Jacob Lesher’s wife.

I totally agree with her. And what I learned from her work only strengthened that conclusion.

1. There is a burial record for Christiana Lesher (and she is on find-a-grave) that says she was born 15 Jul 1774 and died 12 Jun 1833 and is buried in Dauphin County.

2. The Dauphin County connection is quite interesting. Jacob seemed to have lived in Dauphin County prior to coming to Maxatawny (per Susan Hendricks) and clearly lived there later. This may well explain how it was that Daniel Mertz, Christina’s brother, decided to move to Dauphin County.

There is also the fact that Philip’s son, Philip Heinrich Mertz, married Sarah Lescher who Susan identifies as the sister of Jacob Lesher. This would make a lot of sense and be another confirming piece of evidence — siblings often married siblings in those days — but unfortunately the evidence is that Sarah was the daughter of Nicholas and Barbara Lescher. Susan Hendricks identifies a Nicholas Lesher whose wife was Barbara but shows him as a distant cousin to Jacob. (Nicholas though had a son Jacob raising the question of whether Susan has idenitifed the right Jacob as Christina’s husband.)

But back to the birth date discrepancy. We have a supposed baptism record saying 16 Jun 1776 and a burial record saying 15 Jul 1774. Sometime in the last few years, LDS opened up access to the Mertz Church manuscript records on-line. So I went to the source record.

Curiously, the baptisms of Christina and Ester are listed one after the other in those records. And they are among the baptisms for 1777 sequentially. The record before Christina was a 23 Feb 1777 baptism and the one after Esther (who was baptized 16 Mar 1777) was an additional 16 Mar 1777 baptism.

And the pattern in this baptism record book was that in a case like Esther’s, where the birth was the year previous, such a notation was made. No such notation appeared on Esther’s record though clearly she wasn’t born in Jul 1777 if she was baptized in February 1777. But there was a notation on Christina’s record and it might say 1776 but it might say 1775.

So this is still somewhat a discrepancy but not one all that unusual. I think clearly Esther’s baptism occurred in early 1777 and Christina’s baptism was entered at the same time as some sort of “catch-up” baptism — as if they then realized it had not been recorded at the time it occurred. So of the two sources, her burial record saying she was born 15 Jul 1774 and her birth record saying 16 Jun 1777x, I go with the burial record. I have certainly seen other instances where a clear baptism record is inconsistent with a tombstone date and in this case we have a baptism record which clearly is suspect.