Mary (Ifert) Plyler
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Maria (Ifert) Plyler (1767 - abt. 1848)

Maria (Mary) Plyler formerly Ifert aka Efird
Born in Rünenberg, Basel, Switzerlandmap
Ancestors ancestors
Wife of — married about 1785 in the Old Dutch Buffalo Creek Meeting House, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, United Statesmap [uncertain]
Descendants descendants
Died about at about age 80 in Lancaster, South Carolina, United Statesmap
Problems/Questions Profile manager: Carolyn Pinkerton private message [send private message]
Profile last modified | Created 25 May 2016
This page has been accessed 513 times.

Biography

Maria Ifert "Efird" Plyler was born in October 1767 in Rünenberg, Baselland, Switzerland. She came to America with her family in 1771 and traveled with them to the Mecklenburg County area in North Carolina in 1783. She married Jacob Bleiler/Plyler in 1785 in the old Dutch Buffalo Creek Meeting House in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. She died in 1848 in Lancaster County, South Carolina and is buried in the Rowell Family Cemetery in Stewart's Crossroads in Lancaster County.

From familysearch:

Note First, it is important to note that the best proof for answering genealogical questions is found in direct/primary sources. The genealogical question at issue is . . . . "What was the maiden surname of Jacob Plyler's wife?"

That her forename was Mary seems to be a given based on baptismal documents of their children. However, as things currently stand in November 2021 there are only secondary sources (that don't provide direct/primary sources for their information that can be corroborated) concerning her maiden surname.

The two current theories seem to be either Ifert/Efird or Helms.

The following is combined information from Carolyn Pinkerton and Scott Carles.

--- The weakest "evidence" concerns Mary's maiden name being Helms:

"Descendants of Mark Plyler Bleuler," http://cynthiasmithdeal.com/hamsmithdealgenealogy.com/pdf/MarkPlylerBleuler(End)1610.pdf person #6, page 7, comes the following: "JOHN JACOB 'HANS JACOB' PLYLER BLEILER ... was born in 1764 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He died on 30 Nov 1857 in Lancaster County, South Carolina. He married Mary A Helms (Plyler) between 1780-1814 in probably, North Carolina. She was born in 1768 in North Carolina, United States. She died in 1850."

--- Reasoning why Maria Ifert is the best candidate for the Mary who married Jacob Plyler.

In his book, "The History and Genealogy of the Efird Family", Judge Oscar Ogburn Efird said that during his research he found or was given a diary that said that Jacob Efird had a sister who married a Plyler and moved to South Carolina. He didn't elaborate on it because the sister's name wasn't mentioned in the diary, nor were any particular dates or places, except South Carolina. (What Judge Efird says in his book is that the Reverend Nehemiah Bonham stayed with Jacob Efird when he was in North Carolina and that he (Bonham) stayed with Jacob Plyler when he was in South Carolina. That's all.) In the limited snippet on Google Books: (Please see the Memories section. The "limited snippet" is posted there.)

"[Mary?]...a daughter who married a Plyler and moved to South Carolina. Diligent research has been made to learn more about her, the name of the Plyler whom she married and the names of her children, if any, but all to no avail. The closest approach to further information about her and the connection between the Efird and the Plyler families was found in an old diary."

The above is a limited source but it does match what is known about Jacob Plyler moving to South Carolina and that Jacob Efird's sister moved to South Carolina with her Plyler husband.

The strongest evidence that shows that the Plyler and Ifert families were in some way linked, comes from a baptism record for a baby, Anna Maria Bleiler, at Saint John's Lutheran Church in Concord in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, it lists her parents as Jacob Bleiler and Mary, no last name given. The Sponsors for this Baptism were Martin Ifert (Maria Ifert's uncle) and his wife Anna (Furler). [see document transcription in Memories]

Martin and Anna were the Sponsors for all of the children in the large family of their adopted daughter Elizabeth Fischer Ludwig. Were the parents of the baby Anna Maria Bleiler relatives, too? Jacob Bleiler was not a relative, but there is a good possibility that Mary was Martin Ifert's niece, Maria.


Additional notes from Carolyn that show that Maria Ifert was born in Switzerland and emigrated to America, and that she was a member of the Ifert/Efird family that moved from Pennsylvania to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 1783. There the Ifert/Efird family became close neighbors to the Plyler family and, according to the records of Saint John's Lutheran Church in Concord in Cabarrus County, the two families attended the same Church:

"According to records found in the Kirchenbuchen of the Kirche St Martin in Kilchberg in Baselland, Switzerland, Jacob Efird had five siblings who were born there, Anna born in 1761, Ursula born in 1764 and died in 1771, Hans Jacob born and died in 1766, Maria born in 1767, and Verena born in 1770. In the documents that Jacob Efird's father Hans Joggi "Jacob" Ifert submitted when he asked for permission to emigrate, he said that he was also bringing his wife and three daughters with him, the oldest being ten years old (who would have been Anna), and the youngest being one year old (who would have been Verena). It doesn't give any names or the age of the middle daughter. I had always assumed that this daughter was Ursula, whose record of death in Switzerland has been found only recently, because she is among the children who were listed as emigrating with the family in 1771 in the book "Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies" by Albert Bernhardt Faust and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh", and that, because a record of the death of Maria, who was not in the book about Swiss emigration, had not been found, that she had died sometime between when she was born in 1767 and when her family came to America in 1771. But the book is wrong*. Because Maria is not accounted for in any records after her birth, especially no record of her death, and everyone else is, she was the middle daughter in her father's emigration request documents. So Maria did come to America with her family in 1771.

  • The book has mistakes. It has one about the Furrer (Furr) family, listing one of Heinrich Furrer's brothers as having come to America when he actually died in Germany. It says that Hans Joggi and his brother Martin Ifert's father was Martin Yffert when he was really Matthias Ifert. There are other mistakes that I have heard about."

Carolyn Mecum Pinkerton

DNA Evidence that Supports Maria Ifert as Being Jacob Plyler's Wife "Mary":

I believe in using DNA to find (especially) distant family when it comes to a situation like Maria Ifert's marriage to Jacob Plyler. I looked at my Bleiler/Plyler/Pliler, etc. DNA matches on ancestry.com. I am descended from Maria Ifert's brother Jacob Ifert/Efird but don't have Bleiler/Plyler/Pliler, etc. in my family lineage. The only way that I'm related is through Maria Ifert's marriage to Jacob Plyler. I have twenty-three matches who do have Bleiler/Plyler/Pliler, etc. in their family lineage. Of those, eleven matches and I have common ancestors in other families besides Bleiler/Plyler/Pliler, etc. So they don't count as Bleiler/Plyler/Pliler etc. matches. But in twelve of my matches, I don't have any common ancestors, unless you would count Ifert because of Maria Ifert's marriage to Jacob Plyler. These matches go back to Maria Ifert and Jacob Plyler or one of their descendants. To me that's pretty good evidence right there, especially with all of the other evidence, however circumstantial that it might be, that Maria Ifert was Jacob Plyler's wife "Mary". Carolyn Mecum Pinkerton


Sources


  • Kirchenbuch Kilchberg 3, Stadtsarchive, Basel, Switzerland.
  • Auswanderung B5, Stadtsarchive, Basel, Switzerland.
  • "Lists of Swiss Immigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies" by Albert Bernard Faust Ph.D and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh M.D.
  • Filby, P. William, ed. "Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900". Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA.Gale Research 2012.
  • "The History and Genealogy of the Efird Family" by Judge Oscar Ogburn Efird.
  • "Baptismal Records, 1797-1847, Saint John's Lutheran Church, Concord, Cabarrus County, North Carolina" transcribed by Adam Marcard, and Adelaide and Eugenia Lore.
  • Findagrave memorial #203072613 (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/203072613/maria-plyler)




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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Mary by comparing test results with other carriers of her mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known mtDNA test-takers in her direct maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Mary:

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About Judge Oscar Ogburn Efird's book "The History and Genealogy of the Efird Family (revised) -

When Judge Oscar Ogburne Efird wrote his book "The History and Genealogy of the Efird Family", he thought that he used everything that was available to him and the two genealogists who he hired to help him in his research. He already had a lot of information that he had gathered before he began work on his book in 1953. He had to stop his work of gathering more in 1958 because he had to have cataract surgery. It may have been then that the mistake was made, possibly by the hired genealogists, the mistake that gave the wrong information about the parents of Jacob and Martin Ifert "Efird". Judge Efird's book has so much wonderful information in the beginning about Johann Georg and Chatarina Barbara Ehrenfried being their parents, but the Ehrenfrieds weren't Jacob and Martin's parents. Their last name was Ifert and they came from Rümlingen in Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland in 1771, not from Baden-Wurtemburg, Germany in 1773. Their parents were Matthias Ifert (Ifert-6) and Barbara "Barbel" Bürgin (Burgin-425), not Johann Georg and Chatarina Barbara Ehrenfried. Somehow the book "Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies" by Albert Bernhardt Faust and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh was overlooked, the one book that has the correct information about the Efird family forebears. Maybe, since it seems that Judge Efird was so convinced that the family was German, the book wasn't even considered. It should have been if it wasn't. If Judge Efird had seen the names of Hans Jacob Ifert (Ifert-2) and Martin Ifert (Ifert-4), and their wives, he surely would have come to the conclusion that they were the Original Immigrant Ancestors of the Efird family. In June of 2013 I was looking on the Internet to try to find as much as possible about the early Efird family as I could. I don't remember exactly how but I found a "Sarah Arnfreedt Hays" on findagrave (the memorial has since been changed to 'Sarah Ehrenfried Hays"). There were flowers and a comment about being a Grandmother left by someone whose name was Laura. Taking a chance that this might possibly be the Sarah Ehrenfried from the Baptismal Record from the Church in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, I sent an email to Laura. She answered. We corresponded by email a couple of times and then had a three-hour-long telephone conversation. Laura turned out to be a very nice older lady in her early seventies who has researched her family for over thirty years. She did it the old-fashioned way, by actually going to the different locations and looking for the relevant records herself, with no help from the Internet or genealogy libraries. I asked her questions, she told me what she had found out about her Ehrenfried family. I went away from the conversation convinced that George, as she calls him, and his wife Chatarina Barbara were the parents of only Catharine, Sarah, and, I found out, Mary Ehrenfried (I've since found out that they had another daughter, Anna Margaretha.). She told me about Anna Margaretha Crites, the sister of Andrew Crites, who was the husband of George and Chatarina Barbara's oldest daughter Catharine, who was George's second wife, and their baby David Ehrenfried who was born and also died in in Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania in1792. I had already found something about a Margaret Ehrenfried, and a mention of a Sarah and a Mary Ehrenfried, but I thought that they were "George Jr's" family. It turns out that "George Jr" never existed. He was Johann Georg Ehrenfried himself after he had moved to Westmorland County, Pennsylvania. Laura also told me why that present day Efird female descendants find it to be impossible to get into the Daughters of the American Revolution under Johann Georg Ehrenfried. The DAR has done its' own research about the Ehrenfried/Efird connection, and they found no connection at all. There is a "Red Flag" for Efird descendants who want to join the DAR as descendants of Johann Georg Ehrenfried. Laura IS in it under George, because she can prove that she is descended from him and his daughter Sarah. She has a copy of Sarah's actual Christening Record from Northampton County with George's name on it, a copy of Sarah's marriage record to Abraham Hays, and a copy of George's Will from Westmorland County, Pennsylvania, which mentions Sarah and Abraham as recipiants of some of George's land and property in Westmorland Counnty after he died. She also has a copy of the Baptismal record for David Ehrenfried listing George and Margaret Ehrenfried as his parents. Laura said that she has never found any information supporting the story in Judge Efird's book, nothing at all, so she knows it is a mistake. I have corresponded more with her, and we have talked for several hours several more times. Johann Georg and Chatarina Barbara Ehrenfried had four children only, Catharine, Sarah, Mary, and Margaret. There was never a Jacob or Martin Ehrenfried. Their last name was "Ifert" and they came from Switzerland in 1771. The proof is in the book "Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies" by Albert Bernhardt Faust and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh. Judge Efird said that there were "rumors" about the Efird family being Swiss but he had no research to prove it. He didn't have that book. That book is the proof. If you have any questions I would love to hear from you! Carolyn Pinkerton

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