About a year ago someone named "Maggie" posted the following query on the Homestead query board:
"Two years ago I found a Wertz monument in our local cemetery. Knowing I had a cousin in PA studying her Wertz line, I wrote down the info.:
"Samuel Wertz, born April 1848, died August 1927Caroline Wertz, born Feb. 1851, died June 1914Sarah L. Wertz, born 1851, died 1924."None of these were familiar to my cousin and the names kept nagging me. So I began to look in the old papers for Caroline Wertz. She had died of heart trouble while at LongCliff, Indiana. Ok, where is LongCliff? My map showed so such city! Then I came across something interesting one day. LongCliff is the present-day Logansport State Mental Hospital! Then it really nagged at me as to who she was! In our Gemberling family there was a Caroline Wertz listed in a will but no relationship was known (that was 1884). So I felt she had to be related in some way. I found out recently that Caroline was a granddaughter of that Gemberling who wrote the will! I also believe that the above Sarah L., mentioned may have been a sister to Samuel. I'm not sure who his parents were but I believe they came here with the Gemberling's and other families in the early 1800's. The Gemberling's were from Snyder Co., PA. Caroline and Samuel had a son named Elmer who lived in Bellevue, Ohio. I'm interested in learning more from the Wertz family so that I may find out what happened to Caroline. Caroline had a cousin named Julian Bender who was also mentioned in the will but he was also named as an insane person. With Alzheimer's in my family, this is a big interest to me. Can anyone help?"
Unfortunately I have not been able to locate any working email address for "Maggie". Does anyone out there know who she is?
If Maggie's "local cemetery" is in or near Livingston County, Illinois, than this Samuel Wertz is almost certainly the son of Charles Washington Wertz, 1826-1910, and Sarah Jane Lyons, 1827-1899, who moved from Harrison Twp., Bedford County, PA to Tazewell Co., Illinois between 1850 and 1860, and on to Livingston County, Illinois in 1864. Their son, Samuel, was born 1 April 1848 in Bedford County, according to the "Historical Encyclopedia and History of Livingston Co., Illinois." Samuel is listed as age 2 in 1850, age 12 in 1860, age 52 in 1900, and a widower, age 71 in 1920. Our records show that he married about 1870 to Elizabeth (maiden surname unknown), who apparently died between 1810 and 1820.
All of our records on this Samuel Wertz fit with Maggie's cemetery record if that Cemetery is near Livingston County, Illinois. But the names of the women recorded on the same tombstone with Samuel don't quite match.
Could his first wife have been Caroline Elizabeth or Elizabeth Caroline? And is Sarah L., perhaps a second wife??
What are their maiden surnames?
