Week 9 2023: Gone too Soon #52Ancestors

How about instead of “gone to soon,” we go with “here for a long time”?

On March 4th, 1879, the Reading Times and Dispatch noted on its front page that my third great-grandfather, John Michel Rebholz, was 100 years-old that day.[1] The next day, the Reading Eagle reported that several hundred relatives and friends joined in his birthday celebration which concluded with a Caecelia Saengerbund (German singing group) performing.[2]

When John Michael died a year later, the Reading Times published his obituary on the front page of that Tuesday morning’s edition.[3] Lucky for those of us researching John Michael the paper was chock-full of details on his life, including his birthplace (Ramberg, Palatinate, Germany) and his history of having been a soldier in the Prussian army during the battle of Fort Landau. A butcher by trade, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1841, settling in Reading. He was survived by six of his twelve children, nearly 200 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a younger brother who was then ninety-three and living in New York State.

What a great long life and what a help the obit was in fleshing out his history. Heck, I even found ALL his twelve children!

As I went on the hunt for his immigration records, I found a petition for naturalization filed in Reading in 1856 by a sixty-nine-year-old Michael Rebholtz.[4] Could this be him? But this Michael was born in 1787, not 1779. Because his son George filed his naturalization petition on the same day and in the same court confirmed I had the right guy.[5] A 1848 ship’s manifest listing a sixty-two-year-old Michael “Rabholts” verified this much earlier birth year.[6]

Well, I’ll be.

Not surprising that he lied about his age, but making himself older is unusual, especially by seven years.

Getting his birth year right was key to finding his parents’ names (through his 1786 baptismal record) and having that information confirmed by his 1810 marriage record.[7]

What of his service in the Napoleonic War? A quick Wikipedia search on the “Siege of Landau,” showed it occurred in 1793, when John Michael was seven.[8] Maybe because this battle happened in his backyard (Landau is about three miles from Ramberg) and maybe he so wanted to have been a war hero, he invented this history for himself when he came to the U.S. thinking no one would catch on.

Got ya, Michael!

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[1] “100 Years Old To-Day,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Times and Dispatch, 4 March 1879, p.1, col. 3.

[2] “The Centennarian Serenated,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle, 5 March 1879, p. 1, col. 2.

[3] “Death of Reading’s Centennarian,” Reading (Pennsylvania) Times and Dispatch, 10 February 1880 p.1, col. 6.

[4] Court of Common Pleas, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Naturalization Papers, Michael Rebholtz (1856); digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 March 2023), FHL microfilm 7,787,913, images 4-6 of 1189.

[5] Court of Common Pleas, Berks County, Pennsylvania, Naturalization Papers, George Rebholtz (1856); digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 18 March 2023), FHL microfilm 7,787,910, images 1,173-75 of 1,249.

[6] Manifest, S.S. Devonshire, 7 November 1848, p. 5 of 6, line 15, Michael Rebholts, age 62; digital images, “New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” Ancestry (http://Ancestry.com : accessed 18 March 2023).

[7] Church Register, Albersweiler, Rheinland-Pfalz, 1785-1790, p. 14, Joannes Michael Rebholz (1786); digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 19 October 2018), FHL microfilm 247684, image 154 of 166. Church Register, Ramberg, Reinland-Pfalz, Baptism-Marriage Register, 1804-1835, p. 270, Rebholz-Knapp marriage (1810); digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 19 October 2018), FHL microfilm 367,693, image 147 of 451.

[8] Wikipedia.org, “Siege of Landau (1793),” rev. 02:49, 25 February 2023.