Sommer Originals

As the end of the year approaches, I realize I am still sorting through all the information garnered from the flurry of my Sommer research this year. So it's a good time to belatedly report on a highlight of my research adventures in 2015, and that was a visit to the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware in late July.

In case you're wondering how I ended up in Delaware, I suppose I have google to thank. Awhile ago, I found a partial index on google books, you know the snippets that tantalizingly don't show you the whole book but just a sentence or two?  The book in question gave hints about Jacob Sommer, but said book can no longer be found, no library within a 1000 miles has it, etc., etc.  So it took some research on that source alone to find that the material being referenced in it currently resides at the Hagley.  It took nearly a year of me writing emails and finding a local researcher (a friend) to go there and make a copy of some things from that collection. What he sent me was enough for me to add the Hagley to my travel list. And boy, was it worth it! First of all, the Hagley is located on the most beautiful grounds in the most beautiful old yet modernized building I've ever worked in. What an absolute pleasure. Second, the box that got delivered to me in the research room was full of original documents written in the 1775 era, most of which had everything to do with our Sommer family of Moreland. This might be one of the few times I can recall having a swooning sensation while doing genealogy research.

While the images I now have of those precious documents cannot be reproduced or otherwise published until I get proper permissions from the Hagley, I can probably share the catalog description of the documents I viewed. I can say that to hold these original documents, which ranged across four generations from 1775 to 1899, to experience the close-to-crumbling paper, some of it appearing to have been scorched, to read the fading ink in the old handwriting, and take in the first-hand words of ancestors who lived through the birth of a new nation, was to be very personally moved. The document that stays with me most was this one:

On 18 Jun 1823, the Democratic Committee of Arrangement wrote a letter to Jacob Sommer Esq. informing him that he had been unanimously appointed to read the Declaration of Independence at the celebration of the 47th anniversary of the national independence. In 1823, Jacob Sommer was himself 65 years old. His parents had been German immigrants who had resisted the British through the days of the Philadelphia Campaign. Jacob, having joined the PA militia, had been captured by the British and held prisoner on Long Island for four years, and then returned home to become a PA state senator and later an associate judge. He had written and delivered addresses that expressed the passion of his belief in national freedom, and he continued to stay active in politics until the end of his life. Jacob Sommer had defined himself as an American Patriot.

Given that the family line of Jacob Sommer ended with his grandchildren, there has been nobody to remember this part of our Freistett family history. But now, thanks to technology and spirit of preservation held in places like the Hagley, we can know and appreciate a legacy that is now ours to proudly pass along.

Matthias Sommer - Oldest Freistett Brother

I don't think it's very often in family histories that the oldest sibling gets lost, but that might well have almost been the case for the oldest brother of our Sommer family from Freistett. We have known all along about Matthias, the oldest brother, born in 1715 in Freistett, but we (I) skipped over him because:

• The inheritance customs in Germany at that time were for the oldest son to inherit, leaving all younger siblings to make their own way. I therefore assumed that Matthias Sommer had inherited whatever there was to inherit, he stayed in Germany, and the younger brothers subsequently left for America.
• The list of names on the ship Brothers, which arrived in PHL on 22 Sep. 1752, did indeed include only the three younger brothers - no Matthias - thus supporting my probably-wrong assumption.

But all the research this year into the lives of the younger Sommer brothers in early PA has inadvertently lead me to the possibility that Matthias also came to PHL. Here was the trail of clues:

• Georg and Barbara Sommer's first child born in America in 1753 was sponsored by Matthias Sommer, Margareta Haas(in), and Christina Sommer(in). So right out of the gate, there is the name of Matthias in direct relation to our family, and whom we have not previously accounted for. Second is the appearance of the surname HAAS. The progenitor of all these Sommer brothers was Matthias Sommer 1690-1732 who married Anna Barbara Huebscher (surname spellings vary). Anna Barbara remarried to one Mathaus Haas in Freistett in 1733. Whether there were any more children from this second marriage is unknown, but you can see why we should have an interest in the HAAS name.
• Then came the catalyst for looking more closely, the will of Jacob-Moreland written in 1823. The very first item in his will mentioned, ever so briefly, the name of Martin Sommer, and naturally without stating a relationship. For over a year, I have been shaking out all the records I can find trying to identify the mysterious Martin Sommer mentioned in Jacob-Moreland's will, the details of which you can read about here. The highlights of that research to date are:
• I thought it reasonable to assume that the Martin Sommer mentioned in Jacob-Moreland's will was related in some way to Jacob and to the Freistett clan. This assumption COULD BE INCORRECT, but I decided to start with the idea that was true. So if the mentioned-Martin was indeed related to Jacob-Moreland, how is it that I can find no Martin Sommer of the Freistett clan who was alive in 1823 when Jacob-Moreland wrote his will?
• I finally remembered the oldest Freistett Sommer brother, Matthias, and when I looked at the known children he had in Freistett, I found that his oldest child was named - wait for it - Martin, born 1737! So if the oldest brother, Matthias, did come to PHL before the other brothers and he brought his German-born children with him, then....? Indeed, the StM&Z church records did show a number of records for a Martin Sommer and wife, Maria, who were having a number of children starting in the mid-1760s. And lo, the last record I find among the American-born children was Martin Sommer, born 1772.
• All of which leads to a Martin Sommers who recently bubbled to the surface in my recent records search. He showed up in censuses, in Orphan's Court records, and even in the book by G. Byron Summers. This Martin Sommers lived in Oxford Twp., PA and died in 1824. If indeed the Martin Sommer noted in the previous bullet as having been born in 1772 in PHL was the same person as Martin Sommers of Oxford, then he was the grandson of Matthias Sommer of Freistett, and he was both related to Jacob-Moreland and alive in 1823 when Jacob wrote his will.

There are a number of details both to tell and to learn about Martin-Oxford, but at the moment, I consider this scenario to be one well worth considering. And such a scenario would open up our Freistett story in a whole new light, presenting, of course, all kinds of new questions:

1. When did Matthias Sommer come to PHL? Was he married? Did he bring his German-born children? When and where did he die?
2. Who was Matthias' son Martin, born 1737 in Freistett? Who was the Maria he apparently married? What happened to the other children from that marriage? When and where did this Martin die?
3. Then there is Martin-Oxford. According to G. Byron Summers, this Martin married Sarah Copart, and a number of descendants are listed. Was it really Sarah he married? And what of all the descendants?

See what I mean about the Freistett story just got much bigger? We Freistett descendants should all be going back to look over any DNA matches again. There could well be many, many more Freistett Sommer relations in America than we have realized.

Martin Sommer - Youngest Freistett Brother

As we know, I have been interested in rounding out the story of the Sommer family of Freistett, Germany who arrived in PHL in the 1750s. The youngest brother to arrive was Martin Sommer, born 1729 in Freistett, which means he was about 23 years old when he arrived in PHL. Based on Communion records at StM&Z, it appears that this Martin remained unmarried until the early 1760s when baptism records begin to appear for Martin Sommer and his wife, Maria Margaretha. Unfortunately, we still don't know who Margaretha was, but according to the church records, a couple named Martin and Margaretha, presumably this couple, had 10 children between 1764-1784. Among those children were two sons, one named Martin and one named George, who, it appears, both worked as blacksmiths in Philadelphia - but more about the sons later. In this post, I want to focus on Martin Sr. and some interesting details that emerged recently about him.

First, after all my recent research on Jacob Sommer of Moreland, and his father, John (Johannes, one of the three brothers to emigrate from Freistett), I am inclined to associate Sommer/Summers surnames in Moreland with the Freistett clan. Indeed, we find there was a Martin Sommer on Moreland Twp. tax lists for J. Northrop's estate between 1767 and 1780. There was also a Martin Sommer in Northern Liberties tax lists for George Bender's estate between 1779-1787. In the 1780 tax list, Martin was noted as "Smith". I take this to mean our Martin Sr. was, himself, a blacksmith. Interesting!

But where was this Martin Sommer in 1790? The only one I found was in downtown PHL, and there I made a discovery. This 1790 census of PHL listed the address of each person enumerated, and for Martin, it was #46 N. 7th St. For some reason, both familysearch and ancestry indexed this as an enumeration of Water St. East, but if you look at the previous page of this enumeration, it says 7th St. from Market to Race Sts. East. Sure enough, in the PHL city directories for 1791, 1793, and 1794, we find a Martin Summers at that address with occupation as laborer or carter. In the 1800 directory, there is no longer a Summers listed at that address.

So why is this significant? The 1799 burial record of Martin Sommer from StM&Z recorded not only his age at death to the year and month, matching the baptism record we have for this Martin in Freistett, but also that he was living at 7th and Arch Sts. when he died, which is pretty much the address we see in the 1790 census. In fact, this location is also close to the U.S. Mint, and I would almost worry that we have some how mixed up Freistett Martin with H-W Martin, 1740-1804, who is the one we've associated as having worked at the U.S. Mint. But H-W Martin left a will that mentioned both his wife, Anna Barbara, and his Mint job. It can also be noted that the 1806 and 1807 PHL City Directories listed Mrs. Summers, widow of Martin, at 131 Cherry St., which would have been after the death of H-W Martin, and was also very close to the Mint. So the proximity of the Mint to the address in this 1790 census is seemingly a coincidence.

But now we get to the really good part. Thanks to another Sommer researcher whose knowledge of old PHL is fantabulous, I learned that "On the corner of 7th lived the famous David Rittenhouse in his mansion. Next is Martin apparently renting from Rittenhouse (so says the 1798 Direct Tax List). The next person up the street is Eliza Sergeant who is a widowed daughter of the Rittenhouses. The modern day analogy here is that Martin living in Rittenhouse's back yard would be like living at the back of Stephen Hawking's house!"

Here are some notes from my research about all this:

• The 1798 tax list actually shows Martin was renting from the Rittenhouse widow, David's second wife, Hannah Jacobs, which rang a bell. During my recent research trip to SLC, I had looked up the will of Catharina Wolff Menge (wife of our Ernst Menge's brother, John), who died in 1795. Her will mentioned that she (??) had purchased a plot of ground from John JACOBS situated in Kensington, Northern Liberties. Was this the same John Jacobs, a brother of Hannah Jacobs Rittenhouse? 

"John was the last speaker of the assembly before the revolution, and of him Benjamin Rush reported that he has been in favor of a Republican form of government for twenty years before that time." (from "Bebber’s Township and the Dutch Patroons” page 4). 

• The other name that jumps out is SERGEANT. We have a letter written from a John Sergeant in PHL to our Jacob Sommer, the PA state senator, and indeed this John Sergeant would himself later become a US Congressman. This John Sergeant was the son of Jonathan Sergeant and Margaret Spencer. After Margaret died in 1787, Jonathan Sergeant remarried to Elizabeth Rittenhouse, the daughter of David Rittenhouse, the mathematician!  

My goodness, look at all the almost-connections! I have looked and looked for some connection between any of the known daughters of Martin Sommer and Rittenhouse, Jacobs, or Sergeant, but so far, nothing. Who knows, maybe the connection was through Martin's wife, Margaretha?  Otherwise, the best I can figure at this point is that Martin Sommer Sr. was somehow acquainted with these PHL families via his nephew, Jacob-Moreland, and was being employed in some capacity. But to be honest, I'm sure the Rittenhouse family had any number of employees, and yet the name of Martin Sommer appears on its own. Curious, eh?

Salute to Sommer Revolutionary Pats

Of the three Sommer brothers who hailed from Freistett, Georg, John, and Martin, here is what I know of each brother during Revolutionary times:

• Georg Sommer, the elder, lived in Oxford, NJ and has long been credited as being the Ensign in Capt. Mackey's company (First Regiment, Sussex). I never questioned this until I realized our understanding of Georg's obituary had been incorrect (click here for more info), and that Georg had suffered from cataracts for 11 years at the end of his life, leaving him blind. This would mean in 1776, he was 54 years old and having sight problems. For this reason, I tend to think that the man from Oxford who served as the Ensign for the New Jersey militia in 1777 was instead the son, George Summers, 1747-1825, who later moved to Bucks, PA.
• However, if indeed George, the younger, served for New Jersey, maybe it was not he who served as a drummer in the 6th PA Regiment? This article about the fife, drum, and bugle during the Revolution is interesting. What's notable for our discussion is that if drummers were either boys or old men, George, the younger, was neither in 1777 - he was 30 years old. And, we must remember to consider there were likely other men of the name George Summers in Pennsylvania during the Revolution....
• John Sommer of Moreland did not serve in the military, that we know of, but we do now know two related things about his involvement in the Revolution:
• John buried his deeds when the British took over Philadelphia, and when he later dug them up, they were so damaged, he had to address the PA Assembly to have his lands recognized again. 
• John's only surviving son, Jacob, an Ensign in the PA militia, was taken prisoner and held on Long Island for four years; Jacob would later become a PA State Senator. 
• I have not yet found any indication that Martin Sommer served in the Revolution, and his sons were too young at that time to have served in the military; research is ongoing. 

There's good news and bad news here.

The bad news is that the various approved DAR/SAR applications that claim either George Summers, 1722-1785, or George Summers, 1747-1825, as Revolutionary ancestors are probably incorrect (see my article here) because:

1. George Summers Sr. was older and going blind at the time of the Revolution - so he likely never served in any military unit, though this point could still use more study and discussion. 
2. George Sr.'s son, George Jr., had only one son, John, who died in 1791 - so even though we know that George Jr. did serve militarily, we also know he did not have descendants to survive him. 

The good news, in my opinion, is that it's not our association to Revolutionary Patriots that really matters. I consider all these Sommer ancestors Patriots because one and all, women and children included, they participated in a collective desire for freedom which changed history, and continues to influence some of our deepest-felt values today. So thank you to all veterans of military service and their families for embodying the struggle of so many to lead better lives. On Veteran's Day and every day, thank you. 

I dedicate this post to the memory of my father, Major Richard C. Schaefer, USAF, 1933-2009. He did love history.

Philly Sommers

One of the early themes of my Sommer research was to differentiate Sommer families in early PHL, which has lead to the identification of two family groups: the Freistett clan, arriving 1752, and the Hoch-Weisel (H-W) clan arriving 1754. So now all one has to do is go through subsequent records coming foreward from that point, and apply the records we have to each clan. Oh my, where DO I get these ideas?

So to make it "simple," I decided to look ONLY for people (ok, men) with the name George and Martin. Why? Because I would like to know more about the line of Johann Martin Sommer, 1729-1799, the one line from the Freistett immigrants who we know the least about. This Martin Sommer had two sons born in PHL, George and Martin, who apparently survived to adulthood. So, theoretically, I should be able to sit down and find those of the next generation in censuses and other record groups.

With that in mind, I went about creating tables that combine all the characters named George or Martin from both the Freistett and H-W clans, adding a couple more tables to associate ages and locations. The result? It looks to me like a great big mess.

Let's just take one example. To my knowing, of the two Sommer clans, there would be a total of three Martin Summers in the 1800 PHL area who were of the age to be enumerated. But I count four Martin's enumerated, so ????. As for occupations, there was a Martin and a George who were both blacksmiths, George a carpenter, one or more Martin and George farmers, and of course, the Martin who worked at the U.S. Mint. It should be easy to pick out which George's and which Martin's belong to which Sommer clan, but no, a thousand times Nein. Why am I surprised?

At this point, I have the following observations:

Observation one: I believe the data that both Freistett and H-W family researchers have been working with could well be incomplete, and by that I mean there could well have been some additional Sommer/Summers children, sons particularly, who were born along the way to these families for whom no baptism record has been found. I think this problem has impacted the genealogy efforts of researchers of both Freistett and H-W clans. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think, especially during the time period in question, that the list of family members for each clan is necessarily complete.

Observation two: Moreover, there is no reason at all to think that other people with the Sommer surname, i.e., those NOT from Freistett or H-W, could not have arrived from other places and settled in the PHL area. William Penn's offers for land were likely appealing to many, and one didn't have to be a German getting off the boat to apply.

Observation three: It's time to share the collective Sommer/Summers genealogy brain. It doesn't matter whether your roots are with the Freistett clan or the H-W clan, or whether you're unsure or don't know. If you are looking for the Sommer/Summers name in PHL between 1750 and 1830, you have a good reason to participate in this discussion. If you have the time and interest in helping to untangle Sommer family groups, I'll be happy to share research I've done to this point, and coordinate the sharing of whatever additional observations bubble to the top of all our Sommer searching.

William Summers of Conshohocken

Ever heard of this guy? Born 1833, died 1921, notable all around Montgomery County, PA for his dedication to Summers genealogy? He was a member and librarian for the Montgomery County Historical Society. He subscribed with the Lewis publishing company and ended up having his genealogy published in three local history books. He personally replaced the falling-down grave of Philip Summers at St. John's Lutheran Churchyard, and donated a memorial plaque for George Summers to the Upper Dublin Lutheran Church. He is the guy who inspired A history of George Summers of Douglass and Lower Dublin townships, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania by G. Byron Summers, and probably inspired the Summers Family Association that used to hold reunions in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. (I've only heard bits about this latter part from very old message board posts, but have not been able to find any further information about this group, or who organized it, and when.) There's probably even more to be said about this William Summers that I still have no idea about. My gosh, where have I been?

And yet.....

I've just spent an afternoon writing a genealogical proof that aims to correct William Summers' published genealogy: click here. In essence, William had most of his ancestry right, especially the generations closest in time to himself. But he got the original immigrant to his line wrong: William thought his progenitor was "my" Georg Sommer 1722-1785 of Freistett who arrived in PHL in 1752, when evidence exists to show the progenitor of William's line was Hermann Sommer 1699-1767 of Hoch-Weisel who arrived in 1754. For reasons I don't really understand, Hermann Sommer, who had five sons, at least two of whom served in the Revolution, was all but forgotten in name even though the accomplishments of his descendants were well-remembered. And on the other hand, while the name of Georg Sommer was extolled as being the progenitor of Hermann's five sons, in reality, Georg had moved to New Jersey where he raised his family of two sons (one named George, who also served in the Revolution and later died in Warrington, PA) and five daughters. By the 1830s, the majority of Georg's descendants were on their way west.

What it comes down to lately is me arriving at different conclusions from what has been previously published (see my growing list of misTaken sources), and why is that? It's this thing called the internet, I suppose. Somebody like William Summers probably could have chased the Hoch-Weisel clan back several more generations if he had electronics. He could have had instant access to lots of other family trees and other people researching the same family and satellite maps and spreadsheets and evernote and google and webinars and omg, RootsTech. Maybe he even would have become certified and published in genealogical journals, just to be sure his genealogy was really, truly, officially official. But I would tell William to never mind that stuff. All this genea-hubbub is really just about remembering connections and the stories they create. Our job, to the best of our knowing, is to overcome forgetting, which comes much, much too easily and much, much too soon.

With that said, I think I'm going to adopt William Summers, even though he is not a blood relative of my Freistett Sommer family. I'm going to remember him as well as his example to commemorate those who came before. Sadly though, I see only a partial entry for William Summers and his family on findagrave, Montgomery Cemetery, Norristown, PA. Seems like a situation that could rightly be corrected....

1765 Ernest Mange Deed

This blog continues to be the source of unexpected but delightful contact with other researchers. Last week I heard from a Sommer/Summers researcher in Vermont. This person, who has access to a Philadelphia database of deeds (yes, I will be subscribing to that myself sooner than later), decided spontaneously, in the true genealogy spirit, to look up the surname Mange, and then to email the resulting deeds to me!

In a nutshell, we now have a 1765 deed from John Penn to Ernest Mange of the Northern Liberties, "German," who paid around 88 pounds for just under 5 acres in, I believe, the Northern Liberties. If anybody can tell me what 88 pounds would be worth in today's dollars, I'd love to know, but meanwhile, I tend to think it was alot of money. Where did Ernest get that kind of money? The one thing I can think of is that his first wife, Catharina Klockner, was a widow who had previously been married to Georg Ernst, who had been a Philadelphia tavern-keeper. Given that Ernest later applied for a tavern license in New Jersey (1776), citing his experience running a tavern in Philadelphia, perhaps we can assume that the tavern-keeping business was lucrative for him.

We've also discovered a subsequent deed written in 1771 from Ernest Mange and Mary his wife of the Northern Liberties to William Will of the same place and recorded in 1774. The details of this one will have to wait until a future snow day when I have more time and, hopefully, patience to attempt transcription of a hard-to-read document.

And finally, there is also, apparently, a 1770s deed from Ernest Mange to John Mange, who was Ernest's brother. That one would be interesting to find - still looking on that one.

So wow. In 1765, our Ernest Mange was 33 years old, had been in America just over 10 years, and was married to a widow who had children from her previous marriage. It would be less than a year later when his wife would die weeks after childbirth, and Ernest would shortly thereafter marry a 17-year-old young woman named Maria Magdalena Sommer.  And so would begin a new family whose descendant would find herself writing this blog.

Thank you many times over for the generosity of those who share insights and resources associated with discovering and telling these kinds of stories. And may somebody else out there find this story, in turn, of some personal use.