Connections & Questions

Quite often I’ll be researching one line, and suddenly stumble across the surname of another line. These moments both make me chuckle (all these families did live in a pretty small part of Pennsylvania, after all, so intermarriage is inevitable…) and simultaneously hit my head on my desk. If I could make a three-dimensional model of the entire tree, you’d see many points of connection between lines in multiple places. No creepy first-cousins-marrying kind of connections but… yeah, southeastern Pennsylvania is small, and most of these lines were there centuries ago.

This section serves to try to illustrate some of these connections, with a little humor. And, since these connections often bring up as many questions as chuckles, this section will also list some of the points of confusion remaining in my research.

Everyone marries the Schwenkfelds

If you’ve ever done a craft that involved glitter, received a Christmas card covered in glitter, or happen to work with small children, you’ll know that glitter gets everywhere.

I’ve decided that the Schwenkfelds are like glitter: they are everywhere.

The following illustrates a few points:

  • That two separate lines descending from Anna Krauss through Balthasar Krauss lead to my great-grandparents (and thus parents) on both my maternal and paternal sides.
  • Two apparently separate Hunsberger lines (which may be related further generations back). John Husnberger is the patriarch of the Hunsberger Genealogy’s “L” line. Abraham Hunsberger is the patriarch of the same’s “l” line (that’s a lowercase L, just for confusion’s sake).
  • I really need to get cracking on the Schultz’s. They are the ultimate glitter.

Also, I must point out that Mabel Hunsberger and the husband of Sadie Wolf were first cousins 3 or 4 times removed (still iffy on how the cousin thing works). Why is this a big deal? Sadie and Mabel were inseparable best friends.

Let’s try to make sense of this one. Edwin Wolf and William W Wolf are brothers. Mary Fox and Elizabeth Fox are sisters. Edwin married Mary and William married Elizabeth.

The descendants of William and Elizabeth are my direct ancestors, as outlined on the Wolf page. Not too crazy yet, right? Just wait.

Edwin & Mary’s son Josiah further complicated things by marrying a Heimbach, whose brother marries William & Elizabeth’s daughter. So, basically, Sadie Wolf marries her cousin’s wife’s brother. This is on top of her parents and aunt & uncles being siblings.

Also, we have no idea who the Fox girls’ parents come from. John Fox is a painfully common name, but he could be related to my Fox line.

Laura Erb is often called “Leah” on ancestry.com and only sometimes referred to as “Erb,” which is also a painfully common name. So I have no idea who she is. “Erb” is present on my dad’s side, but this mini tree is all on my mom’s… unless Laura IS related to my dad’s side (in which case, I need an Advil). The good news is that John Fox & Laura Erb are buried at St. Paul’s Lutheran in Pennsburg, so the church’s records would be a good place to start in learning more about them.

Finally, notice that there are two women with the last name “Brey.” I don’t know if they are related or not. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to find out. This graphic already hurts my brain.

No, really. Everyone marries Foxes

(August 21, 2021) Here I am, casually beginning work on the Erb line (on my dad’s side). And I stumble across who I believe to be THE person whose purported existence sparked my genealogical journey when I was all of 10 years old: Laura Fox.

In the mid-90’s, my parents heard that they both had a Laura Fox on their individual family trees. Out of curiosity (the sort of curiosity as to whether or not your parents were distant cousins that makes you both want to investigate and completely ignore the notion) I began researching the Foxes on my mom’s side, and the rest is 400 years of family history. But I digress…

While researching the Erbs today, I found that Daniel Erb (my 2nd great-grandfather on the Beard side) had a brother, Henry Erb (1850-1909) who was a police officer in Bethlehem, PA. I adore Bethlehem. As a student on the south campus of Moravian College I would often wander the city’s old cemeteries just to get away from the bustle and find some quiet. Turns out that Henry and his wife are buried in Nisky Hill cemetery, the same one I would wander. Curious about the life of my 2nd great-uncle who walked the same streets just over a century before I got there, I discovered that his son’s wife was descended from Foxes… and Foxes with familiar names.

So here we go. Daniel Drace Erb (my 2nd great Paternal grandfather) married Laura Rader Fox, a cousin of the same Foxes on my maternal side. And, Laura’s first cousin married her nephew.

How, if at all, do these Foxes and Erbs tie in to the spiderweb illustrated in the section above? Right now I am not sure, as I have yet to find the parents of the John Fox and Laura Erb listed above.

But if Laura Rader Fox is truly that elusive common Fox my parents both referenced years ago, it’s taken 24 years but we’ve found her.

A Tale of Too Many Schultzes

This kinda explains itself in ways that words cannot achieve.

So I’m just gonna drop it here:

Next areas of research

This is really just a place for me to keep track of items I need to research further.

WOLF:

  • Who was George’s father?
  • George appears to have had a half brother who was older and born in Germany.

HUNSBERGER/KRAUSS:

  • Create profiles of Schwenkfelder families (Krauss etc)
  • Josiah Hunsberger married Sarah Krauss, of the Schwenkfeld line. How does she fit in?
  • Burial location & correct death date of Regina Krauss (daughter of Balthasar 11-5)?
  • Is Melchior Krauss’s birth date correct? It is said that he died in 1733 at 40yrs and 9mos of age, but that would have made him 14 years old at the time of his oldest son’s birth. And his wife would have been 17 years older than him.

FOX:

  • Who are the John Fox & Laura Erb, parents of Mary & Elizabeth Fox who married into the Wolf line? Are they related to other Fox & Erb lines?

MISC:

  • Create a section for the Hess line – since we can trace it to the 1520s!
  • Investigate the Schultz lines of Schwenkfelders. Looks like there will be a lot of crossover here.