| Notes |
- We do not have a surname for Bernhard's wife. She was identified as 'Catharina' both in the birth record for her son Johannes in 1763, and as a baptismal sponsor with Bernhard for Anna Margaretha Geister on 7 Aug 1760. This dates their wedding to around 1760 when Bernhard would have been twenty years old.
The surname 'Luther' has been put forth on the internet for her, with some claiming she was Maria Catharina Luther, born 1734 in Herbitzheim, Bas-Rhin, Alsace. This Maria Catharina Luther did in fact emigrate to Philadelphia, arriving with her parents on 15 Sep 1749 aboard a different Phoenix voyage, according to Strassburger-Hinke's Pennsylvania German Pioneers. But according to Annette Burgert's Eighteenth Century Emigrants, this Maria Catharina married Josiah Harper on 10 Sep 1763, only weeks after Johannes Zentmeyer was born, so she was not Bernhard's wife.
Others identify her as Catharina Elisabetha Luther baptized 8 Jan 1744 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. But the Kichenbücher (church records) reveal that this Catharina was married in 1765 in Frankfurt and died there in 1782.
The only place we have found the surname 'Luther' connected to Bernhard other than in Ancestry.com member trees is in the IGI on FamilySearch, where Bernhard is wrongly identified in a completely fictitious member-submitted tree as 'Bernhard Nicholas Santmyer, b. 1735' with a wife whose surname is 'Luther.' We believe this is the source of the 60+ Ancestry.com member trees which identify her as 'Luther.'
It is our suspicion that some Ancestry.com tree-makers took 'Catharina' from our website and combined it with 'Luther' in the IGI record. When you then search 'Catharina Luther,' online, the two individuals above can be found.
Anyone having any original source information for the Catharina's surname - family bibles, hand-written genealogies, anything - please contact me.
Gary Zentmyer
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d. Abt 1820, Shenandoah Co., (now Warren Co.) Virginia 