The Hyphen Family Lineage

See the notes for her husband, David Forst.

Note: Researching Mary Schlosser Forst

Finding information on Mary has been difficult, owing greatly to her death prior to the Civil War, along with the large variety of phonetic spellings of her surname over the years. The actual spelling of her maiden name - believed to be Schlosser - had often been anglicized as Slusher or Slusser by native English speakers in records and documents throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries, leading to some challenge in connecting families in later research.

The only confirmed record I have found for her is the 1850 US Census listing for her and husband David's household in rural Huntington, Huntington Cty, Indiana; by the time of the 1860 US Census, Mary had died and David had remarried to a young widow, Mary (Carr) Delvin, which led to some confusion on my part in my earlier research.

One of the earliest unconfirmed finds in my searches was the listing for Mary's burial on the FindaGrave.com website, which placed her in County Line Lutheran Cemetery in Luther, Whitley Cty, Indiana. The listing did not include a photo of her headstone, but does include inscription information ("w/o David") and names her Mary Slusser Forst in the listing's title. The vital dates are also given as b. 1790, d. 19 Nov 1855. Intending to find her headstone and verify what information it might contain, I walked the cemetery in December 2014. What I found was that most of the stones were gone, and the majority of those remaining were eroded beyond legibility. Further reading on this cemetery's history indicated that it had been cared for but unused for new interments for many decades, and that the information for most of the burials listed for that cemetery on the website likely came from older records or listings kept by local historical or genealogical groups.

The vital dates from that listing do line up with the other information presented so far - namely her age as given in the 1850 US Census and her death coming just three months prior to her husband's remarriage - and as such I have held them to be mostly accurate.

Other early research of mine uncovered some online family trees and genealogies that listed Mary as the daughter of Johannes Schlosser and Christina Wirth, both of Northampton Cty, Pennsylvania and later residents of York Cty, Pennsylvania in 1790 and Stark Cty, Ohio by the time of Johannes' death in 1822. These locations seem to line up with other incidental information, namely York Cty being the purported birthplace of Mary's future husband David Forst, and Stark Cty being where David and Mary are believed to have married in 1822. None of these online compilations, though, seemed to report any sources for connecting Mary to this couple, but additional searches on my part turned up references to a text that seemed a likely source these genealogies - Patricia Shaffer Frappier's A Genealogy of the Schlosser, Slusser, & Slusher Families of America 1605-1994.

After finally securing a digital copy of the text, I failed to find any particular reference to our Mary Schlosser, nor was there a single individual in the index with the Forst surname. The text does include Mary's purported parents, Johannes and Christina, with vital and residence information that lines up with the online genealogies, but Mary is not included in the enumeration of their children. Listed are eight children - in order, five sons and three daughters, spanning a range of birth years from 1785 to 1809. Interestingly, there is a nearly eight-year gap in the list between the second child (Jacob, b. 1 Oct 1787) and the third (Peter, b. 5 May 1795). Mary's birth year has typically been assumed to be between 1788 and 1790, which falls neatly within that gap. The supposition, then, that she is among the older children of Johannes and Christina seems possible, and with the geographies of the two families' histories even seems somewhat likely, but I have not yet found records or histories that would validate this.

ADDENDUM: In the 1850 US Census listing for Mary and David's household there is a nine-year-old Ohio-born girl by the name of Malinda Henry; she later married John C. Miller, brother of Mary and David's daughter-in-law Henrietta (Miller) Forst. A descendant of Malinda's, Chester Sprinkle, contacted me to suggest that Malinda was living with the Forst family because she was likely related to either David or Mary. Further research he had done, including searching the Frappier text, found a younger daughter of Johannes Schlosser and Christina Wirth named Elizabeth Schlosser. There is a Stark Cty, Ohio marriage record from 1835 for an Elizabeth Schlosser and a Levi Henry, officiated by Rev. George Schlosser - who appears to be another grandchild of Johannes and Christina (via John Schlosser, their eldest known son). The confluence of these individuals strongly suggests that Mary (Schlosser) Forst is indeed a daughter of Johannes and Christina, but further research will be required to try and find confirming evidence or record.