The Jacob Myers + Margaret Gerster connection. Why I’m not convinced.

It was very popular for a while to assign Jacob Myers, supposedly a Rev War veteran, who married Margaret Gerster, to be the father of Charles Myers. In a letter from my uncle Thomas to one of those folks on Ancestry, the reply was..

Thomas wrote: Dec 23, 2010

I am curious as to how you tied Jacob Myers to Charles Myers. I have been looking for the father of Charles for 50 years and have been unable to make a connection. This is the first time I have seen a connection. One family member told me she thought the father of Charles was named Fredrick. I could never make a connection. 

XXXXXXXXX wrote: Dec 23, 2010: I totally hear you on the difficulty of the connection. I inferred this by the circumstantial evidence in favor of Jacob. He like many myers was a blacksmith, he was a revolutionary war veteran, which has been hinted at by others, and he was about the right age to be Charles father. Additionally he resided in Charles hometown. It would not hold up in a court and probably not to too much scrutiny but felt it was solid enough to warrant connection.

 

 

Thomas wrote: Dec 24, 2010

I totally agree with your assumptions. I have just about given up on doing any further research. My brother and his son have done the DNA thing with absolutely no results.  Have you come up with a relationship between the two Charles Myers who lived in the same areas of Tenn and Mo? I think they are cousins but have no proof. I saw one reference to them as Big Charlie, and little Charlie. Big Charlie was ours. Let me know if you discover anything new, Tom Myers

Okay, this is what I know about Jacob and Margaret, mostly taken off Ancestry nodes (this node is typical). Jacob is born in Maryland in Feb 1739, moves to Pennsylvania. Along the way he marries Margaret. Most of the trees, though, have him in Kentucky by the time Charles is about to be born, and I’ve grown suspicious of folks who give birth across state lines.

There is also a time factor, as Charles is by this account, born in April of 1789 in Pennsylvania, while another Jacob Myers is being born in October of the same year, in Kentucky. Jacob dies in Pleasant Run, McCreary, Kentucky, on the 9th of May, in 1814.

Now some of this may be dirty data, but the Kentucky to PA issue is large, as is the simple question of how you get Charles to Tennessee in the first place, if dad is settled somewhere else.

By contrast, John Myers and William Myers can be found on the Pennsylvania census in 1786, in Lehigh County. To throw out a scenario, it’s a lot less fanciful to think that Charles has a father who dies. Charles’s guardianship would have been picked up by William Jr or Sr and he heads down to TN along with the migration of the William Myers pair.

Not only that, but this link notes that 18th century Germans in PA named their kids after grandfathers.  I know it’s the thinnest of possibilities, but Elias Tidwell Myers, Charles’s son, names his first son William. Charles Myers Jr, whom we believe is a son of William Jr, names a son William (I’m lacking a good list of Charles Myers Jr’s kids tbh). This is evidence in favor of another hypothesis, which is that William Sr is the father of both William Jr and Charles Sr. In this telling Charles Sr is then the uncle of Charles Jr.

Update 6/19/17: I’ve grown suspicious of the assignment in 1786 of William to Lehigh county. For one, Lehigh County doesn’t exist in 1786. Second, the tax rolls of 1786 and 1788 assign William and John to Penn Township in Northampton. Testimony on behalf of John Myers’s widow in MS has statements to the effect John moved into east TN in 1790 and into west TN in 1804. Copies of the testimony are on the Ancestry tree of ldking423.