Origins of the R1a Haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer Family

Date: 1600 to 1750
Location: Holy Roman Empire
Surnames/tags: Meyer Myers Moyer

Under the Baschi Meyer Project

Contents 1 Summary 2 Introduction 3 Meyer clusters in the Palatinate 4 Meyer families in Pennsylvania 5 R1a Meyer family cluster in Pennsylvania 6 R1a Meyer family in the Kurpfaltz 7 Brick-wall ancestors in the R1a haplgroup 8 Conclusion 9 Sources

Summary

This article reviews the documentary evidence for the construction of family trees for some Anabaptist Meyer families who emigrated from the German Palatinate to Pennsylvania in the early 18th century, and incorporates DNA evidence which was not available to earlier researchers.

The available records show that a number of Anabaptist Meyer families settled in several clusters in the Upper and Lower Palatinate regions. Examination of y-DNA evidence shows that several unrelated Anabaptist Meyer families emigrated to Pennsylvania. It appears likely that families of different haplogroups were associated with different clusters.

Hypothetical family trees, consistent with y-DNA evidence, can be reconstructed from the documentary evidence.

Introduction

The widely accepted Anabaptist Meyer family trees constructed in the 1990’s by Jane Evans Best ^[1] and Richard Warren Davis,^[2] using pre-immigration records, passenger lists, and early Pennsylvanian records, have been shown by DNA evidence to be flawed.^[3] While the generations in Pennsylvania after immigration are traced with some degree of confidence, placement of the immigrants in pre-immigration families has been largely inaccurate.

Best and Davis were working under the assumption that most, if not all, of the Anabaptist Meyer families who emigrated to Pennsylvania were related, and this drove their construction in directions which are now known to have been incorrect.

This article is an attempt to review the pre-immigration data collected by Best and Davis, but free of the assumption that all the Meyer families are related. This allows us to reconstruct pre-immigration family trees which align better with the geographic, historical, and DNA evidence.

Meyer clusters in the Palatinate

A number of publications have detailed Meyer families in Anabaptist communities in Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article draws specifically on the sweeping history published in 1917 by H. Frank Eshleman ^[4] and the index to Palatine Mennonite Census lists compiled in 1987 by Guth, Guth, Mast and Mast.^[5]

The 1987 index was compiled from files held in the Karlsruhe General-Landesarchiv, and covers an area known as the Kurpfalz which had been largely depopulated during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Initiatives to encourage resettlement and rebuilding in the area attracted a number of Swiss Anabaptist families, who were drawn by promises of more religious freedom than they had been permitted in their home country, and who began arriving in 1664. Eshleman noted that by the 1730’s there were three times as many Anabaptist families in the Lower Palatinate (south of Manheim) as there were in the Upper Palatinate (north of Manheim).

The map below shows the locations where Meyer families were recorded in the censuses between 1664 and 1773. They form a number of rough geographic clusters, which are color-coded for ease of reference. Several towns which will be discussed later are explicitly labelled.

Map of 17th and 18th century Anapbaptist Meyer clusters in the Rhein-Pfalz

Eshleman’s observations are consistent with what is seen here : scattered clusters to the north of Manheim (including Ibersheim and Gundersheim) and several denser and more populous clusters to the south (including around Langenzell and Reihen).

Meyer families in Pennsylvania

A number of Meyer families with Anabaptist connections immigrated to Pennsylvania in the first half of the 18th century, and y-DNA studies have shown unexpected relationships, and lack of relationships, between them. Testers fall into six DNA-matched clusters in haplogroups E1, I1, J1, J2, R1a and R1b. Most of these clusters include testers from multiple lineages tracing back to different Meyer immigrants.^[6]

This article focuses on a reconstruction of the family tree for the R1a haplogroup family, which appears to be associated with the Langenzell and Reihen clusters in the Lower Palatinate.

R1a Meyer family cluster in Pennsylvania

Testers in this cluster trace their ancestry to the following well-known immigrants :

• Hans Meyer, d.c.1722 in Conestoga, Lancaster, PA
• Martin Meyer, d.c.1754 in Manheim, Lancaster, PA
• Ulrich Meyer, d.c.1741 New Providence, Philadelphia (later Montgomery), PA
• Christian Meyer, d.1751 Franconia, Montgomery, PA

Big Y data for the cluster indicates that all testers are descended from a common ancestor estimated to have been born c.1600, with haplogroup BY56978. A branch of the family arose c.1650 carrying a new haplogroup BY67620, and this branched again c.1700 to give rise to haplogroup FTD9531. These relationships are shown in the diagram below.^[7]

Haplotree for R1a haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer family

The fact that Hans and Martin both settled in Lancaster, whereas Ulrich and Christian both settled in Montgomery, is suggestive of two distinct early branches of the family emigrating to Pennsylvania.

R1a Meyer family in the Kurpfaltz

Knowing that we are working with two distinct but closely related branches of the tree, we can seek the immigrants Hans, Martin, Ulrich and Christian in the census records for the Kurpfaltz.

Examining the records for Martin and Christian yields the most immediate results.

Martin : The census records list only one man named Martin. He is located in Bockschaft in 1731, but does not appear anywhere in the area after this. The immigrant Martin arrived in Pennsylvania in 1732, and is almost certainly the same person.

Christian : The census records list only one man named Christian. He is located in Langenzell in 1717, but does not appear anywhere in the area after this. The immigrant Christian is believed to have arrived in Pennsylvania c.1718, and it is likely this is the same person.

With one branch of the family (Martin’s) located at Bockshaft, and another branch of the family (Christian’s) located at Langenzell, just 14 miles away, we can seek evidence in the surrounding area of the immigrants Ulrich and Hans, who are otherwise difficult to identify in the records.

Ulrich : The census records list only one man named Ulrich. He was located in Manheim in 1706 and 1717, but does not appear anywhere in the area after this. It is possible that this is the immigrant Ulrich who had settled in Montgomery County by the 1730’s. However, it has also been suggested that the immigrant Ulrich may have been the man who travelled to Friedrichstadt in 1693, and who may instead have settled in the Netherlands for some time before emigrating to America.^[8] In the absence of any further evidence, it is somewhat speculative to associate the immigrant Ulrich with either the man in Manheim or the man who travelled to Friedrichstadt.

Hans : The census records lists a number of men named Hans (or Johannes) in different locations at different times. It is difficult to be confident of identifying the immigrant Hans amongst them, unless we consider his known relationship to other documented immigrants. He appears, from y-DNA evidence, to be more closely related to Martin (of the Bockshaft family) than to Christian (of Langenzell).

The Bockschaft records do not mention Hans. However, the Bockschaft family appears to have been closely connected to the Meyer family in nearby Reihen. In 1732, Martin of Bockshaft travelled to Pennsylvania with Samuel Meyer, who is assumed to have been the man of that name in Bockschaft with Martin in 1731. The Reihen censuses for 1717 and 1724 also record a Samuel Meyer, and it is likely this is the same person.

Focusing only on Reihen, the 1717 census lists four Mennonite men with the surname Meyer. Three of these Meyer men probably emigrated to Pennsylvania and settled in Lancaster County, and the fourth is likely to have been father or uncle to the other three, and may also have emigrated. One of them is almost certainly Hans Meyer who died in Conestoga in 1722. The four men are :

• Hans Meyer (older) - probably father or uncle to at least some of the younger men.
• Hans Meyer (younger) - probably the man of this name who emigrated to Pennsylvania c.1718 and died in Conestoga, Lancaster, PA in 1722 (and whose descendants are in this y-DNA-matched group)

(It is possible, although less likely, that Hans Meyer (the older) was in fact the man of this name who emigrated and died in Conestoga in 1722, and that Hans (the younger) was his son.)

• Michel Meyer - probably the man of this name who emigrated to Pennsylvania c.1718 and who died in Manheim Twp, Lancaster, PA in 1751 (see Michael Meyer)
• Samuel Meyer - probably the man of this name who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1732 and died in Conestoga, Lancaster, PA in 1755 (see Samuel Meyer)

This south-eastern region of the Lower Palatinate thus appears to have become the temporary homeland of the members of the R1a Meyer family after their exodus from Switzerland. Other Meyer families who were recorded in 1717 in Lobenfeld and Mauer (near Langenzell), and earlier on the 1685 census in Steinsfurt (near Reihen), are assumed also to have been related to this family, although there is not enough evidence to determine how recently they share a common ancestor with the Langenzell and Reihen families.

The diagram below shows a family tree which connects all these immigrants prior to immigration. The tree includes Samuel (c.1645 - aft.1717) and Michael (1612-1676), who are identified in the work of Best and Davis. The relationships between the four men in the youngest generation of the Reihen and Bockschaft families - Hans, Michael, Samuel and Martin - are unclear. Any of them might have been a son of either Samuel (b.c.1645) or of Hans (the older).

Revised family tree for the R1a haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer family

This family tree differs in several significant respects from trees proposed by earlier researchers.

The branch of the family which settled in Conestoga and Manheim, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and which is traced back to Reihen, now includes the immigrant Hans who died in 1722 in Conestoga. Best and Davis had speculated that Hans may have been the son of Hans Meyer, located 50 miles further downriver in Rudelsheim, but the y-DNA evidence clearly links Hans to the Reihen family and there is no reason to suspect he may have come from another region in the Palatinate. (Descendants of a Meyer family which was located in Ibersheim, near Rudelsheim, are known to have an I1 haplogroup - see I1 Haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer Family.)

The branch of the family which settled in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania is traced to Langenzell and the south-eastern Palatinate. Best and Davis had speculated that this branch may have been descended from Jacob Meyer who was living in 1685 in Gundersheim, 45 miles further downriver. Their reasoning for this seems to have been the fact that they believed all the Meyer immigrants were related, and from this inferred the existence of another ancestor in the Palatinate - and Jacob of Gundersheim was recorded with four sons in 1685. Their initial assumption of relatedness was incorrect, and there is currently no evidence to link any of the known Meyer immigrants to Jacob of Gundersheim.

A man named Hans Meyer was recorded in Langenzell in 1717 and 1724. Best and Davis had speculated that he may have been the immigrant Hans Meyer who died in 1748 in Upper Salford. However, Hans of Upper Salford is now known to have been completely unrelated (see J2 Haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer Family), and there is no reason to assume that his family came from the south-eastern Palatinate region. It’s possible that Hans of Langenzell was the father of Christian (1676-1751), and died in Langenzell after 1724.

Brick-wall ancestors in the R1a haplgroup

A number of other testers in the R1a matched group have brick-wall Meyer ancestors who can not yet be traced with confidence to any of the known R1a Meyer immigrants. The fact that these testers must be related suggests that there were other emigrants from the R1a Meyer families in the south-eastern Palatinate. It’s likely that at least some of these were from the families of Steinsfurt, Mauer and Lobenfeld.

The brick-wall ancestors come from several different branches.

In the BY56978 haplogroup :

• Jonathan, b.c.1756, possibly in Germany, who died in 1826 in Washington, Maryland.

• Abraham b.c.1750, possibly in Germany, who fought in the Revolutionary War in South Carolina, and died c.1825 in Daviess, Kentucky.

In the BY67620 haplogroup :

• John, b.c.1785 in Pennsylvania, a Brethren elder in the Bachelor’s Run congregation in Carroll County, Indiana, where he died in 1863.

• Abraham, b.c.1730 and died in Leacock Twp, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is popularly believed to be the son of an older Abraham Meyer, and grandson of Hans Meyer who died in Conestoga in 1722. However, descendants of Abraham b.1730 are in the BY67620 haplogroup, and are thus on a different branch of the tree from Hans of Conestoga. Further, when Hans’s heirs signed a deed in 1739 releasing their claim to Hans’s land, they did not include Abraham or his heirs. All the evidence, documentary and DNA, indicates that Abraham was not a grandson of Hans.

• Jacob, b.c.1787 Pennsylvania and died in Dover, York in 1862. Jacob is frequently reported in online trees to be related to the family of Nicholas Meyer (c.1750-1823) of Reading, Adams, PA, but Jacob’s descendants do not have y-DNA matches to Nicholas’s descendants.

In the FTD9531 haplogroup :

• Abraham, b.c.1776 in Pennsylvania, and died in 1821 in Harrison, West Virginia.

It is possible that the descendants of the R1a haplogroup immigrants Hans, Martin, Ulrich and Christian have not been traced correctly, and that some of the brick-wall ancestors are in fact their descendants. However, it is more likely that each of the brick-wall ancestors descends from one of the less well-documented families (i.e. from Steinsfurt, Lobenfeld, and Mauer / Rohrhof) or immigrants for whom documented descendants have so far not submitted y-DNA tests (i.e. Michael and Samuel).

It is hoped that other genealogists will be inspired to explore these lines, and that interested descendants will consider participating in y-DNA testing.

Conclusion

A number of Anabaptist Meyer families which had previously been assumed to be related have been shown by y-DNA evidence to be unrelated. The hypothetical family tree which traced them to a common ancestor in Switzerland had been constructed from limited documentary evidence and is now known to have been incorrect. A review of the same documentary evidence shows that, free from the assumption that all Anabaptist Meyer families were related, it can be used to construct a tree for the R1a haplogroup Anabaptist Meyer family from the Lower Palatinate which is consistent with available y-DNA data.

Sources

1. ↑ Best, Jane Evans (1998). “Meyer Families Update”. Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, April 1998, pp.31-36
2. ↑ Davis, Richard Warren (1995). Emigrants, Refugees and Prisoners.
3. ↑ Meyers, G. and Myers, E. (2022). “A y-DNA Study of Anabaptist Meyer Families in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania”. Mennonite Family History, July 2022
4. ↑ Eshleman, H. Frank (1917). Historic Background and Annals of the Swiss and German Pioneer Settlers of South Eastern Pennsylvania, and of their Remote Ancestors, from the Middle of the Dark Ages, Down to the Time of the Revolutionary War. Lancaster, PA : np.
5. ↑ Guth, Hermann, Guth, Gertrud, Mast, J. Lemar and Mast, Lois Ann (1987). Palatine Mennonite Census Lists, 1664-1793. Morgantown, PA : Masthof.
6. ↑ FamilyTreeDNA Myers Surname DNA Project at https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/myers/about/background
7. ↑ FamilyTreeDNA Discover at https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-BY56978/story (Nov 2023)
8. ↑ Sutter, Sem C. (1979). "Palatine Mennonites in Schleswig-Holstein, 1693-1698". Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage vol.2 no.2, p.19, April 1979 viewed at http://www.danielhaston.com/resources/Friedrichstadt-group-PA-Mennonite-Heritage.pdf