This will be a short post, because I know little about this man. However, I am trying to write about the immigrants in my children's family tree, and Matthias was one of them. The first thing we know for sure is that he arrived in Philadelphia in 1732. He is listed as 40 years old at the time, which would put him born about 1692. There is a Johann Matthias Craemer who was born on April 7, 1692 and baptized April 8, 1692 in Wolf (Kr. Bernkastel, Rhineland, Preussen, Germany, but his parents are Conradt Craemer and Anna Margaretha. All of the trees I can find list his parents as Johann Peter and Anna Barbara Lorenz Craemer, so one of these sets of parents are not correct.
At any rate, we know he married a woman named Elisabeth and they had at least two children, Andreas and Christina. Both were born in Germany. That is really all I know about Matthias at this point. His death date is given as 1793 which doesn't seem likely, so I suspect that the Matthias who died in 1793 would have been a son or nephew to our Matthias. Still, if he did live 101 years, we could make a really neat timeline for him!
Although much research remains to be done for Matthias (or I need to find what has already been done), we know that he came to the New World fairly early in the German immigration, when Philadelphia was not yet a city and when the frontier wasn't more than 50 miles from Philadelphia. I need to find land records or indenture records or something that will give me a clue as to where he went and what he did, and information about the rest of his family.
Nevertheless, we know that the immigrant ancestor was from what is now Germany, and we know that he would have either been Lutheran/Reformed (probably), or of one of the Anabaptist groups (less likely, but possible). Land, church, and death/burial records may be available, and if so, I will do a follow up post on him. I'd sure like to find a maiden name for Elisabeth, also! Maybe someone reading this will have answers to some of these questions.
The line of descent is:
Matthias Kraemer-Elisabeth
Andreas Kramer-Maria Magdalena Birckel
Daniel Kramer-Anna Maria Geise
Anna Maria Kramer-Andrew Kepler
Mary Kepler-George Harshbarger
Lewis Harshbarger-Catherine Mentzer
Emmanuel Harshbarger-Clara Harter
Grover Harshbarger-Goldie Withers
Cleveland Harshbarger-Mary Margaret Beeks
Their descendants
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