Jacob Summers, the PHL Judge - Sources

There's been a good deal of confusion about a Summers relation in Philadelphia who we might never have known about except for repeated references in histories recorded in Macomb county, Michigan!  Enter Jacob Summers, judge of records in Philadelphia. Here are the sources that seem to pertain to him:

Martin's bench and bar of Philadelphia : together with other lists of persons appointed to administer the laws in the city and county of Philadelphia, and the province and commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Rees Walsh, 1883; by John Hill Martin, page 79, and History of Philadelphia: 1609-1884, Volume II, 1884, by John Thomas Scharf, Thompson Westcott, page 1572.

These two sources say basically the same thing, that the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia was organized in 1811 and abolished in 1873, and that Jacob Sommer was an Associate Judge who was commissioned on June 3, 1811.  This account says that Sommer was not a lawyer and he died in February 1857 at the age of 69. What's remarkable - for us - is that in the Martin source available on ancestry.com, somebody crossed out the 5 in 1857 and wrote 2, making the result 1827. If Jacob the Judge was 69 and died in 1827, then he as born in 1758, which is exactly the year of birth of Jacob Sommer, son of Johannes Sommer, brother of my ancestor George Summers. Note that we have the will of Jacob Sommer of Moreland, and indeed, he died in February, 1827.

The Colonies and early Republic - Volume 2 - by Eric H. Monkkonen, Page 738

 "...the District Court was created in 1811 with three judges described as a president and two assistant judges.  This was the same number of judges constituting the courts of common pleas in other judicial districts in the state.  The first president judge of the District Court was Joseph Hemphill and the two associate judges or "wing judges" as they were called in that day were Anthony Simmons, a goldsmith, and Jacob Sommer, a farmer, who appears to have devoted little time to his judicial duties."

Courts and Lawyers of Pennsylvania, A History, 1623-1923 (1922) by Frank M. Eastman

 "Jacob Sommer, the other lay judge, was a farmer, and lived in Byberry Twp. He was of Pennsylvania German descent, and discharged the duties of his office with the patient good sense and modesty that characterized his race. Probably owing to his residence in the country, he does not appear from the minute-books to have given as much time to his duties as the other judges, but was nevertheless reappointed in 1817, and continued to sit until the expiration of his commission in 1821. In 1823, he was appointed a judge of the peace for Bristol, Germantown and Roxborough, after which time I have not been able to find any trace of him."

 A History of the townships of Byberry and Moreland in Philadelphia, Pa., from their earliest settlements by the whites to the present time by Joseph C. Martindale, p. 223

"Somerton, the largest village in the township, is situated on the Bustleton and Somerton turnpike road, about three miles from the former place, and thirteen from Philadelphia. It is partly in Moreland and partly in Byberry, and extends a quarter of a mile along the turnpike...." The end of the paragraph has a footnote that says "The village is named in honor of Judge Sommer who dwelt on the property now occupied by Enoch Taylor. It was previously called Smithfield, but assumed its present name at the beginning of the nineteenth century."

We should note that an early church record for my ancestor, George Summers, said he was "of Smithfield" so it would not be a surprise that his brother Johannes also settled there.

 Finally here is another description of Somerton from a history website:

 "The name Smithfield was changed to Somerton sometime between 1862 and 1876. The change was prompted by the control that Judge Sommers exercised over the region in owning substantial property on both sides of Bustleton Avenue where Leo Mall stands today."

So this is more information than we have about all our New Jersey Summers families combined! Given these clues, we should be able to find even more, especially from deeds, so stay tuned.  Meanwhile I have located who I think could be this Jacob Summers in the 1800, 1810, and 1820 census of Moreland township in PHL county. If indeed, those census' do show a snapshot of this Jacob Summers, then he had several other family members.  Who were they, his wife and other children? 

Let me here note that there was a Jacob Sommer and other Sommer relations who lived in Germantown and they were carriage makers.  So far I have not been able to connect that family with ours, but they were in the same general neighborhood!

I am happy to correspond with anybody who'd like to discuss the points related to this post!

The Straw Church is Alive!

On January 30, we (via Cousin J) received an interesting email from two of the most lovely people who are representing the Straw Church's newly formed Historical Committee. We had sent the church several inquiries over the last few years trying to find out if they still hold the original church records, to which we never received much reply. But the new Historical Committee is full of friendly and helpful energy, and they were writing to inquire about our 6th g-grandpa Georg Sommer who was being considered as possibly the earliest member of the Straw Church congregation. Isn't it a miracle how some things don't actually get lost and eventually do come back around?

Well, we happily provided the Historical Committee with everything we've discovered about our Sommer family over the past couple years. But the question of whether Grandpa Georg was the earliest member depended on, we felt, a current analysis of the original record that recorded his obituary, most probably written in German. We (and probably any other Sommer descendant) have been working from translations handed down to us, one of which comes from the wonderful website called Raub and More:

Raub
1785, Aug. 8.  John George Summer, born in Freystadt in Elsas, April 23, 1721. He was a member of this congregation forty-two years* and had eleven children, and blind for eight years, age 64 years, 3 months and fifteen days.

A slightly different translation was on file at the Straw Church, which they provided to us as:

New Straw Church
1785, Aug. 8, Johann Georg Summer, born in Freystadt in Alsace on Apr. 23, 1721. Father of 11 children. Blind for the last 11 years. Died Aug. 6. Age 64-3-15.

We asked if the new Historical Committee could provide us with a digital image of the original record? Yes they could and they did, twice in fact, the second time in a better resolution for zooming in! From there, my very talented Cousin J did her magical translation performance, and came up with:

1785, Aug. 8. John George Summer, born at Freystadt in Elsas, April 23, 1721. He was a member of our parish, forty-two years married, eleven children raised, he was eleven years with cataracts until he became blind, died Aug. 6th, lived 64 years, 3 months and 15 days.

Well, this new translation is interesting indeed! I immediately sent the image of the church record to my archivist friend in Freistett, and he confirmed the interpretation that Georg was married 42 years rather than in the congregation for that long. This particular point was important for us since we feel certain that Grandpa Georg arrived in Philadelphia in 1752, which would be 9 years later than 1743 when he would supposedly have been attending the Straw Church. Also given that we found Grandpa Georg's marriage record in Freistett in 1745, we can agree that he was married at least 40 years when he died.

And to top it off, the Historical Committee has impressively asked their own translation expert to re-examine this obituary record carefully.  Here are this expert's translation and comments:

English:   1785, Aug. 8th.  Johann Georg Summer, born at Freystadt in Alsace, April 23rd 1721.  Had as (a) member of our congregation in a 42 year marriage raised 11 children.  Was eleven years (with) cataract(s) (at) his end blind.  Died Aug. 6th.  Lived 64 years, 3 months and 15 days.

In the translation I tried to preserve most of the original syntax, adding a few words that would make it easier to understand in English and changing word order only where really necessary.

It’s interesting that the wording could let you assume that the membership and marriage were both 42 years, but I’m sure that’s just the scribe’s sentence structure.

So here we are, 229 years after grandpa Georg died, still arriving at a better understanding of the few details left behind about his life. And certainly we can also learn alot here about how our ancestors stories unfold:

• It's ALWAYS worth it to seek out original records whenever possible, which in itself can take time and effort, but once available still requires a high level of commitment and determination to attempt deciphering and understanding as objectively as possible. There was no quick answer to any question we have ever posed about our Sommer and Menge relations - we've had to keep asking the questions, sometimes in just slightly different ways, we've had to ask for help, we've had to wait, we've had to spend hours/days/weeks/months teaching ourselves at least parts of another language written in a script that is long ago faded and only because we really want to know that badly.
• It's my experience that genealogy work simply does not happen in a vacuum. Sure, we can thank all the unknown volunteers who are out there helping to digitize and index genealogical records so that we can sit in the comfort of our homes and discover all kinds of previously unknown details about our ancestors. (Thank You!) But this episode illustrates genealogy generosity in a personal way. This very minute there are complete strangers to us in New Jersey who want to know the history of their church better, and in their learning have reached out to help those of us descended from their church members so that we can all share the story together.  Does it matter to me that our grandpa Georg Sommer may not have been the earliest member of the Straw Church? Not one bit. I am thrilled with this process and that we can all benefit from seeking clarification together. It's a wonderful story all told, and it surely belongs to all of us.

Finally, let me here add a plug to send any donations you can to the Straw Church Historical Committee. They did not ask for money when we asked for their help, but we all know that any efforts at historical preservation need some financial support. If you're like me, you'll find great satisfaction in contributing so that our New Jersey story can live long into the future.

Ochmig Bird's Uncle John Oliver

I did a fair amount of hunting on the topic of Ochmig Bird (mentioned in a previous post here) while recently at FHL in SLC. I might be closer to determining how John Oliver, who died in Ft. Wayne, Indiana in 1869 and who is possibly my relation, could be Ochmig's uncle. Here is an update of my findings.

First, I was able to locate the deed in Luzerne, PA where Christian Oehmig Bird and his wife Ann sold the land that had been acquired for him in trust by Abram Bird. It noted that Christian O. Bird was of Wayne, Allen, Indiana. It seems obvious now, but it took me awhile to realize that Christian Oehmig Bird is our Ochmig Bird! Ochmig Bird married Ann Suttenfield in Ft. Wayne on 9 Oct. 1838. They sold their Luzerne county land to Henry Oakley on 7 Aug 1855. If there was any lingering doubt that this Ochmig Bird was named for Christian G. Ochmig of Kingston, I think that doubt has evaporated. But the question does still remain how Christian Ochmig was associated with the Bird family, a topic still worth investigating because for the Bird family to name a son for Mr. Ochmig means their connection must have been a close one.

So who was Abram Bird, the person who put the Luzerne County land into trust for Ochmig?  According to the Michael Shoemaker book (pgs. 723-724; thanks to fellow researcher K. for finding this reference), Abram was the son of John and Rebecca Bird, and his siblings were James, Thomas, Derrick (Richard), Sarah [Harding], John, Margaret [Swetland], Elizabeth [Shafer], Mary [Van Camp], Jane [Philips], and Rebecca [Goodale]. 

Two key things could be learned from the deed where Abram purchased the property he put into trust for Ochmig Bird.  One was the date of the deed:  29 Apr 1830. The other was that C. Oehmig Bird, the person the trust was for, was noted as being of Eceter.

So what Bird families were living in the area at that time? When looking at the 1820 census of Luzerne county, there were two Bird names of interest, both brothers of Abram:

• Thomas Bird of Exeter; he had two males under 10 in his household.  He was married to Polly Hill in 1811 and he died 7 Jul 1828.
• Richard Bird of Kingston; he had one male under 10 in his household. He was married to Elizabeth Space (we're not sure when), and he died 22 Aug 1831.

Ochmig seems most likely to be a son of Thomas Bird because: a) the land trust acquired for him by his uncle, Abram Bird, was acquired shortly after the death of Thomas and before the death of Richard, and b) Thomas Bird lived in Exeter, which is the town where John Oliver and wife Miranda Hutchins also lived. 

But how could John Oliver be the uncle of Ochmig?  I have been concentrating on the OLIVER side of this picture, guessing that maybe John Oliver had an older sister we didn't know about. That theory, however, was going to be very difficult to prove given the dates of the deeds found in New Jersey which listed names of the Oliver children who were heirs to the estate of Ernest Mann. But what if Ochmig's familial connection was to John Oliver's wife, Miranda HUTCHINS?

Here let me paraphrase what the Michael Shoemaker book has to say about Polly Hill, the wife of Thomas Bird, who I propose was Ochmig's father:  Polly was the daughter of Gamaliel (1770-1796) and Christanti Hill (1769-1810). The second husband of Christanti Hill was Henry Hutchins of Kingston township. [again my thanks to researcher K for pointing out this reference]

So hmmmm. If Henry Hutchins was the father of Miranda, wife of John Oliver, then Miranda Hutchins would be a half-sister of Polly Hill, who married Thomas Bird. In this case, assuming Ochmig Bird was the son of Thomas Bird and Polly Hill, Ochmig's maternal uncle and aunt would be John Oliver and Miranda Hutchins! We still have to find any kind of documentation to prove this theory, but at least this theory provides a framework that *might* actually be possible!

After all this, I should also add that my previous guess that Ochmig and James Bird, both of whom ended up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, were brothers has changed. If they were brothers, both orphaned when Thomas Bird died in 1828, wouldn't their uncle Abram have bought a land trust for them both? The fact that Abram set up a land trust for only Ochmig, suggests to me Ochmig and James were not brothers. Instead, James was probably a son of Richard Bird, and Ochmig and James were cousins. This agrees with data presented at birdgenealogy.org (a great site, by the way).

And finally, the obit of John Oliver in 1869 also mentioned the name of William Lytle as being a close relation. The only Lytle (also spelling of Little) I could find in Luzerne deeds hailed from Hanover and Dennison townships. But again I must credit fellow researcher K for observing that Ochmig Bird died in his residence at 146 W. Berry in Ft. Wayne, the same residence as William Lytle!

As always, please feel free to contact me if you have comments and/or information that supports or refutes any of the suggested claims in this post!

John Mann of Milford, MI - A Junior Jumble

Note: This blog post has been updated from the original post. Generally I prefer to leave original posts intact, unless my information turns out to be wrong or potentially misleading. Based on what I know today, I found this post contained too much confusing speculation, so I have reduced that speculation to a theory that can be more easily considered by other researchers.  MAS, July, 2017

I am researching John Mann of Milford, Oakland, MI believing that he could be connected to my Mann family tree. Here are the clues I have:

• Johannes "John" Mann was the son of Ernst Menge and Maria Magdalena Sommer, born in Philadelphia in 1775.
• In 1816, there was a New Jersey deed from John Mann to David Mann, conveying John's interest in his share of property from his deceased father, Ernest Mann. John Mann was noted as being of Kingston, Luzerne, PA with a wife, Agnes.
• In 1823, there was a PA deed from John Mann and wife Agnes of Dallas, Luzerne, PA to Abraham Honeywell, the latter is thought to have been a brother of Joseph Honeywell who married Sarah Oliver Mann and relocated to Milford, Oakland, MI.

However, in the course of my research to determine if this John Mann also came to MI, I hit a snag. The first reference I found to John Mann in an Oakland County history book says that he settled on section 5 in Milford and he was the father of Sarah O. Mann Honeywell. All other documentation I have found, which is to say land patents and deeds, refer to John Mann JUNIOR - lots and lots of reference to John Mann Jr., enough to confuse me to no end. So this post attempts to summarize my analysis and ideas about the preponderance of John Mann Jr.'s in Oakland County from 1830-1860.

==================
1.  Starting with the land patent in 1835, we find John Mann Jr. of Washtenaw County, MI who acquired 40 acres in Section 5 in Milford twp. If this John Mann was related to my Menge family, I still have no reasonable explanation for why this John was referred to as "JR" or what he was doing in Washtenaw county other than that was the center of German culture at the time. Even if we suppose this was the John Mann Jr. (1819-1863) who married Adeline Hayes, that John would have been only 16 in 1835, which doesn't seem a likely age to acquire a land patent.

2.  As for the two other land patents acquired in 1837 by a John Mann Jr., I've thought they were acquired by John Mann, 1814-1885, son of Earnest Mann and Catherine Cruts. See the following patents, all granted in Oakland County, Michigan, to people presumed to be my New Jersey relations:

Anna Mann     14 Aug 1837  5-N  11-E  32  
Earnest Mann  10 Aug 1837  5-N  11-E  34  
Earnest Mann  14 Aug 1837  4-N  11-E  4  
John Mann Jr  14 Aug 1837  5-N  11-E  32  
John Mann Jr   2 Nov 1837  5-N  11-E  29  
Rebecca Mann  18 Aug 1837  4-N  11-E  3
George Mann   12 Aug 1837  5-N  10-E  19

All the patents listed here were acquired by, presumably, siblings, children of EM and CC, all acquired within the same timeframe, all state they are "of Macomb County, MI" which is where their parents settled, and all patents were located near one another in the Oxford/Addison area of Oakland County.

The first rather obvious question is with all these Junior's, who was the Senior?  And following that, were John Mann Jr. #1 and #2 the same guy, or different men?

The New Jersey Mann family, to my knowing, had only one adult member named John, the son or Ernest and Catharine.  One possible explanation is that the NJ Mann family traveled out together with John Mann from PA (b. 1775, the brother of said Ernest), and since the latter was the elder of a group with two men of the same name, they had to differentiate. Certainly the Jr. designation did not always indicate father-son relationship at that time, only that there were both an elder and a younger person of the same name in the area at the same time. But presuming the older John Mann settled in Milford, we can't explain why the 1835 patent named him as a Junior.

So this particular case remains bothersome.  Milford and Oxford in Oakland County, Michigan are roughly 35 miles apart. The guy who settled in Milford did so, apparently, by himself, away from all the other NJ Mann relations.  Hmmmm. It seems completely possible that the John Mann in Milford is not related to my Menge family at all, even with all the clues leading from Ernest Mann's son John to Luzerne County, PA to Milford. Research goes on!

Birds of a Feather

I've been corresponding with another researcher who works on the line of John Oliver and Miranda Hutchins.  This is a line I believe my family connects to by way of Nathaniel Oliver and Sarah Mann Oliver, both of whom died early leaving orphans:  Daniel, John, Mary, and Peter.  Later Orphan Court records in New Jersey tell us that John Oliver resided in Luzerne County, PA which is where John Oliver and Miranda Hutchins raised their family before later moving to Indiana.  The evidence seems good although admittedly circumstantial.

But there's also the matter of a pesky Indiana newspaper obituary found for John Oliver in 1869.  Aside from dramatic description of a tragic end (hit by a train), the article states John was "an uncle to Hon. Ochmig Bird of this city, and a near relative to William Lytle, Esq."  It seems to me that answering the question of these relationships might be the ticket to confirming the connection to my Mann family.

But where to start?  I know about New Jersey, but little about the PA side of things, and even though there are some Bird connections in NJ, they are not very near to the main branch of my tree.  Still, the name Ochmig Bird made it to a blog entitled "The Strangest Names in American Political History"  so it should be easy to find information about him.  Oddly enough, just the opposite is true.  So I started working backward from Indiana.  What I quickly came to was the realization there were TWO Ochmig Bird's!

1.  Ochmig, b. 1813 - this is the guy featured on findagrave and supposedly the nephew of John Oliver

2.  Ochmig, b. 1850 - this is the son of James and Matilda Bird, also referred to as Ochmig L. Bird.  In tracing his parents, James Bird was born in PA about 1818 and married Matilda Eyck (with different spelling variations), their children were (apparently) Emilie, Thomas, and Lucy born in PA, and starting in 1850 Ochmig L. and then James S. born in Indiana.  There is a family tree on rootsweb that makes Ochmig #1 and this James Bird brothers.  That tree can't really name the parents of these brothers, and I don't have any documentation to confirm the thesis, but it seems at least possible.  It appears that Ochmig and James, both born in PA around the same time (1810s), arrived in Indiana around the same time (abt 1850) and they settled in the same area (Allen County, IN).  The younger brother (if he is that) named his son Ochmig.  Seems plausible these two Birds were closely related.

Still, where can we go with this but not far? What was bothering me most was the actual name, Ochmig.  Where did that come from?  Bio's of Ochmig said he was of German descent (yes I agree), but I have searched high and low for any German with a given name of Ochmig and just came up blank!  Finally I decided to search newspapers on genealogybank, entering 'ochmig' as a given name and nothing else but a place of PA.  What came up were two small notices about letters left at the post office, which included the name C. G. Ochmig in Luzerne. Oh my gosh - of course! Ochmig is a surname assigned as a given name, which naturally carries significance - it can indicate the mother's family name, famous people of the time, or "a couple might also name a child after a respected friend."

So now we can find loads of information about Christian G. Ochmig, abt 1764-1839. He was definitely a German, his name is in the 1788 militia rolls of Luzerne County, PA, and he lived many years in the Kingston area. His wife was Esther Gallup and they had 4 children. As for Birds, there was a John and Richard Bird in Kingston, Thomas Bird in Exeter, and Sylvanius, James and James Jr. in Catawissa (Catawissa and Kingston are 50 miles apart (or so) and looking at a map, both places are on the river, so travel between the two places was probably not difficult).

And yet for all this, can we do anything more than hypothesize about the connection between Christian Ochmig and the Bird family? Happily, I found an  answer to that in a source called the Michael Shoemaker Book. On page 712 it says this:

Isaac Shoemaker Jr. and Elizabeth Chapin sold a small piece of land adjoining the Exeter line to Archibald Knight in trust for Elizabeth Landon.  April 29, 1830 they sold about one acre adjoining this other parcel to Abram Bird in trust for Christian Oehmig Bird for $26.23.  Christian Oehmig Bird and his wife Ann sold this land to Henry Oakley of Benton twp, Luzerne, PA.

So Christian Ochmig did have some definite connections with the Bird family. That explains how Ochmig Bird got his name, but the question still remains, how can Ochmig Bird (b. 1813) be the nephew of John Oliver? My only guess is that Mary Oliver, daughter of Nathaniel and Sarah Mann Oliver of NJ and sister of John Oliver who came to live in the Catawissa area of PA, had a first marriage to a Bird - who that might have been, we currently have no idea - and she had two sons, namely Ochmig and James. That marriage ended for whatever reason, and Mary's second marriage was then to Nathan Cleaver. It does not appear at first glance like the Cleaver's raised the Bird boys.

Even I can see how my theory wobbles.  On the surface it all seems far-fetched, and I'm certainly not willing to make any claims one way or another about anything.  More than that, I suppose this is an awful lot of effort just to see if a guy with a common name like John Oliver who died in Indiana really has any connection to my German family in New Jersey.  But with names like Ochmig and Bird in the story, how can I not be curious?  I just can't help being curious....now I wonder who William Lytle was....

Michigan Summers

Another Summers researcher recently discovered children we didn't know about belonging to William Summers and Mary Horn, namely David and Emby (and I'm so curious about the origins of the name Emby!).  It appears they also migrated to Oakland County, Michigan, as did their mother Mary.  Wow - great find!

This discovery lead me to review my family tree regarding the Summers relations who migrated to Michigan, and it's clear that in piecing together that puzzle, there was no shortage of confusion for me!  But I think I have finally untangled it - or at least I'm closer.  Here's the (current) low-down.

John Summers Sr., son of Georg and Barbara Sommer, married Anna Van Deren.  They had 5 sons:  George, David, John Jr., William, and Jacob.  Of those, George, David, and William died before the 1830s when the migration to Michigan happened.  The families of John Jr. and Jacob migrated to Sterling, Macomb, MI and later settled in Shelby.  The descendants of David and William migrated to Oakland County - specifically they were found in Oakland and Avon townships.  But what about the descendants of George who died in 1814?  It appears that George might have had two wives:  Sarah Hoagland with whom we think he had 4 children, and Clara Johnson with whom he had a daughter named Matilda.  We still don't know anything about the children George had with Sarah, nor the mysterious Clara Johnson, the person listed on Matilda's death certificate as the mother.  Research continues, but it appears that Matilda married Smith Scudder in New Jersey in 1831 and they traveled with Matilda's uncles to Macomb County, Michigan.

As for the question that originally made me realize that Summers had migrated to MI in the first place - that being the last will and testament of Ernest Mann (1773-1846) where he named his cousin Jacob Summers as executor and which at the time caused me to go HUH? - the answer is that Jacob Summers Sr. (1787-1863) was the son of Ernest Mann's mother's brother (Ernest's mother was Maria Magdalena Summers and her brother was John Summers Sr.), and thus first cousin of Ernest Mann.  Aren't we glad that's all cleared up?

There's probably even more to the story of the Summers family and their migration from New Jersey to Michigan.  But this seems like a pretty good snapshot!

A Study of Grotz/Crutz/Cruts

Well, it has been exciting to discover our 4th g-grandma's family was Cruts, but I can hardly believe the research road I have traveled in the last month or so trying to piece together who this family was.  It's quite an adventure!  In any case, you can read about it here: Grotz-Crutz-Cruts Families of Early PA-NJ-NY.  Please do send me a message with feedback or inquiries.

And in case you're wondering, I'll probably rest awhile before tracking this family back to its German origins!