The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: The family of Hans Jakob Weible and Anna Nancy Metzger

Most of the details we have for Jacob and Nancy stem directly from the text Christian Metzger: Founder of an American Family 1682-1942 (1942) by Ella Metzker Milligan, which captured a great deal of information from those living at the time who remembered the couple. "Jacob" was born in the Swiss Palatinate, and came to America with his parents to settle in Westmoreland Cty, Pennsylvania. In his family’s travels and migrations he met the Metzger family and their teenaged daughter Nancy. Milligan wrote that Jacob wished to homestead in Ohio, with his eye on the region around Tuscarawas Cty, and he and Nancy were wed in her parents’ home before setting off for Ohio to settle in Dover Twp, in the area called by other local settlers “Canal Dover.”

Jacob, a cooper by trade, apparently set out in 1848 for Saint Louis at the age of sixty-six to see about setting up business there, with the intent of getting some of his sons established in business for themselves – the great deal of traffic passing west through that region (driven at least in part by the California Gold Rush, but also growing because of the overall westward expansion of the frontier) had struck him as a prime opportunity. Jacob left alone, and the family waited for word to arrive by mail as to the success of his endeavors, only to hear months later that Jacob was dead of smallpox. His son Frederick traveled westward to find word of his father and to purchase a headstone for his grave before returning home to tell his mother and siblings of what he had learned.

Nancy was born in Northampton Cty, Pennsylvania, the fifth of ten children. Her father, Johann Friedrich “Frederick” Metzger, had served for several years under General Washington in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and after his discharge he returned to Northampton Cty and married. Here the first several of his children were born, including Nancy, though when she was three her father sold his farm and began to migrate westward. The family settled briefly somewhere in the region along the Great Stage Road between Philadelphia and Reading, presumably somewhere in Berks Cty or Montgomery Cty, Pennsylvania. During this time, the Whiskey Rebellion was reaching its peak, and then-President George Washington travelled to western Pennsylvania to support his commissioners (sent to negotiate peace with the rebels) with the militia raised to provide an armed response. In October 1794, he returned to Philadelphia (having left his forces behind under another command), and it was at this time that his travels brought him to the region where Nancy’s family lived. What brought him to her father’s home is uncertain – whether he had heard that one of his Valley Forge veterans lived nearby and decided to visit, or whether Frederick maintained his home as a public house or inn, have both been offered in texts as explanations. Family history maintains that, when Nancy was not quite four years old, her father was visited by President Washington and, on his departure, the President laid his hand on the precocious girl’s head and addressed her in German, telling her to be a good girl (“sei ein gutes kind”). Nancy spoke of this meeting often to her children and grandchildren, remembering it vividly into the latest years of her life.

In 1799, when Nancy was eight years old, the family migrated further west by covered wagon over the Allegheny Mountains and settled in the new frontier of Westmoreland Cty, Pennsylvania. In later years, Nancy spoke of hearing the famous preacher Phillip William Otterbein speak, and it is believed this was at a revival in the region of Antietam Creek in 1799 while the family was westward bound. It was at this time that Nancy devoted herself to the United Brethren church, an organization that remained a central part of her family for some generations.

The family initially settled around Greensburg or Mount Pleasant before establishing a farm, orchard, and cider mill in South Huntingdon Twp in May of 1803. Nancy’s father built a two-story farmhouse, and it was in this house in 1806 that Nancy married Jacob Weible before the new couple would begin their own migration to Ohio to homestead.

Twelve children were born to Jacob and Nancy; after Jacob’s death, their son Frederick took over Jacob’s farm, and sometime in the next several years, Nancy would move to Delphos, Van Wert Cty, Ohio, to live with her son Henry. Many years later, her family arranged for her to travel by train to Indiana to visit family there, notably her daughter “Annie” and son-in-law, the Rev. David F. Thomas in Wells Cty and her nephews Nathanial and Louis Metzker (sons of her younger brother Christian Metzger) in Churubusco, Whitley Cty. Her grandson, George C. Weible Jr., recounted Nancy’s death at the age of ninety-five as coming while sitting on the sofa. She was asked how she was feeling, to which she is said to have replied “I am tired” as she drew her last breath.

Little description of Jacob exists regarding his physical presence, though his character was regarded as hard working with something of an adventurous streak and a touch of wanderlust. Nancy, unlike her tall and broadly-built brothers, was quite short – not over five feet tall, by all accounts, and described “as broad as long” in her later years. Multiple people among her family and friends described her as fastidious and immaculately, if simply, dressed at all times. She primarily spoke the German dialect commonly called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” but unlike her mother she did manage to learn more than a few words of English. She was bright and inquisitive into her final years, and did not hesitate to ask personal or blunt questions, much to the chagrin of her grandchildren.

The Weibles were quite closely tied to their neighbors, particularly the family of Isaac Thomas Sr. Three of Nancy’s children married into the Thomas family, two of them to children of Isaac’s (John Jacob Weible to Anna Thomas, and Anna Weible to David F. Thomas), and a third to one Isaac’s granddaughters (Daniel Weible to Laura A.C. Thomas).