Our Baer* Family Tree

(going back 8 generations to Germany or Switzerland)

Table of Contents
(click on first name for Vitals; spousal surname for associated tree)

Johann/John Jacob Bare* (c.1763-after 1821)
unknown@ (  )
I
Christian Baer, Sr. (1800-1862)
Elisabeth Miller# (1809 -1878)
I
Abraham Baer (1834 -1896)
Sarah Miller +(1843 -1925)
I
Franklin Baer (1862-1916)
Almira Baush (1855-1917)
I
Sarah Jane Baer (1891-1972)
Howard Pearson Miller (1885-1969)
I
Richard Orville Miller (1920-2015)
Hilda Elizabeth Krause (1921-1997)
I
Susan Kay Miller (1949- )
Larry Edsel Pearce (1948- )
^
Annie Rebecca Pearce Matthew Carter Pearce
(1971- ) (1973- )

* Other spellings include Bare, Baehr, Bahr, Bair, Bear, and Barr.

@ Various trees have different wives, dates of marriage, and places of residence including Franklin & Somerset Counties, PA, Ohio, Kentucky, & Indiana

#Elisabeth is the daughter of Christian “Glades” Miller (1779-1865) and Susannah Musser (1785-1818), both ancestors of the southern Somerset County Anabaptists who produced our Krause family.

+The death certificate of this Sarah indicates her parents were Jacob & Lydia Wissinger Miller. No information is available on them. Link to Christian L. Miller (1813-1891) and wife Mary, no apparent connection to our Joseph “Yost” Miller, is very uncertain. This Christian L. is a descendant of the original Christian Miller (c.1700) born in Bavaria. Research is ongoing.

DOCUMENTATION:

Family tradition/ Blough Mennonite, Maple Spring COB, & St. James Lutheran Church & Cemetery records

“Susannah Musser.” 11 Sept. 2004
Http://Freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~quick/d0187/g0000013.html#1066314

Mrs. William (Trish) Baer, Maryland

Various Ancestry.com Public Member Family Trees

14 Responses to Our Baer* Family Tree

  1. Roberta Burnett says:

    Do you know of an Rosa or an August Baer (close relatives; relationship unknown but not h/wife) and of Anna Berg, Rosa’s granddaughter? They lived in Baden-Baden, Bavaria in the mid- to late 1800s. Anna immigrated to the US in 1907 (CT). Her son Rudolf came in 1911.

    • admin says:

      Roberta,
      As you can see from the Baer-associated families, we all came to America much earlier, even settling in eastern PA for a time and intermarrying with other German and Swiss families. I see that some Baers there were spelled Bear and some Bergs were Bergers, so tracing is sometimes difficult. I don’t know if our Baers and Bergers kept touch with relatives in the old world, but I’m certain they were all Christians, some even strict Anabaptists. I’ll certainly keep an eye out for your Baers and Bergers of Baden Baden, Bayern. Thanks for writing.
      Larry

      • Roberta Burnett says:

        My ancestors were recorded in archives as Evangelicals, that is, Lutheran.
        The Ashkenazi genes came out in a DNA Test.

        Christian Bar was an a-umlaut spelling, and his father is Michael Bar, same spelling.

        • admin says:

          Roberta,
          Are you a Somerset County, PA, Baer and if so, which family? I’m wondering if the Evangelicals were necessarily Lutherans, who can be rather liturgical despite having “evangelical” in their modern name “ELCA.” Our Baers also covered Amish-Mennonite and Brethren-Dunkard traditions here. The Jewish connection is interesting. I’ll keep that in mind as research continues. Thanks for sharing.
          Larry

      • Larry, Hello again! Your notes above are interesting. Yes, self-described Christians do seem to cling to that religion. But because of my education, I rule out nothing & prefer to think that alternatives could be (a hypothetical) correct. RE: Your next to last sentence above: In the intervening years, have you found any information that would cast more and wider light? I am still eager to know anything.
        I do wish I knew if this e-gen page goes directly to you, or if it doesn’t. If not, then following trails together would be complicated to do. — roburnett@hotmail.com

        • admin says:

          Roberta,
          Yes, the comments come to me first for approval, and we’ve communicated via e-mail. I’ve left the note above as received in case readers want to write directly to you. Thanks for your interest, yes, I’m a “self-described Christian” and sticking to it. Because of my education, I rule out a lot (more, particularly as I get older ;>)
          Larry

    • Roberta Burnett says:

      Archival research in Germany has discovered many of my German Berg and Bar (with umlaut-a) family members and the other family names that appear for about four generations back. The Berg family came lately to the US. The others really may have stayed in Germany. Most of them did. But Anna Berg had a relative Veronika Schmid who was possibly a very much younger sister of Rosa Bar (Baer), Anna’s grandmother. Anna’s mother was Elisabetha Friederika “Frieda” Bar, who married Josef Berg, Anna’s father. Other names in these families were Schmid, Herrmann, Schneider, Sallmann. EF & Josef Bar lost most of her children (2 as infants; 1 at 14), with Anna the only one remaining to emigrate to the US. They were Lutheran, with the Bar/Baer family Catholic. My father’s father, probably, (his name is unknown) has a Ashkenazi Jewish strain in his legacy to us, from Poland/Lithuania. Three of my 8 ggparents were Jewish. (ftdna.com)

      • admin says:

        Roberta,
        All very good information! Thanks. I will revisit my Baer family research one of these days. Of special interest is the variety of religious faiths. Also, I want to try to connect the Baer families of our Somerset County, PA: one with lawyers & judges and the other mostly farmers. Again, thanks for your interest,
        Larry

  2. Tammy says:

    I’m originally from Illinois. John Bare’s granddaughter, Mildred, was my maternal grandmother and was born in Iowa. She eventually moved to Illinois after marrying my grandfather. John spelled it “BARE.”
    I’ve been able to connect the branches in our family tree back to Christian and Elizabeth but couldn’t get past Elizabeth. I’m still not 100 percent sure that your Elizabeth Miller is our Elizabeth Miller, but I think so …
    Here’s an item I found, that corroborates another article I have about the History of Shelby County, Iowa:
    JOHN BARE, son of CHRISTIAN and ELIZABETH (MILLER) BARE, was born August 11, 1830 in Somerset Co., PA. Christian Bare was a native of Switzerland and came to America when he was 21 years of age, with brothers, John and Ole, and located in Somerset Co., PA. Christian was a weaver in his native land and after coming to America he followed the cooper’s trade until his death in 1862. Elizabeth Miller was born in Somerset Co., PA, and lived and died in the county, passing away in 1870. Christian Bare and wife were both Mennonites and reared 9 children: Solomon, John, Abraham, Anna, Jacob, Christian, Katherine, Mary, and Susan. All died by 1915 except John, Christian, Mary and Susan. Jacob was a soldier in the Pennsylvania regiment and was frozen to death while on picket duty during the Civil War. John Bare, son of Christian, went to Ohio in 1852, then to Lagrange Co., Iowa, then to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He enlisted August 7, 1862 in 24th Iowa Infantry. In 1880 he brought his family to Shelby Co., Iowa. John Bare married Rachel Blough, also of Somerset Co., PA, daughter of Jonas and Elizabeth (Bowman) Blough. I hope this is helpful to someone. (On GenForum, posted by Mona Serratt Knight)

    I think that many of the Bares/Baers came to America by way of Germany, where they lived for a short period of time. This is why you find both “Germany” and “Switzerland” listed on the census forms for them. I’ve noticed this discrepancy especially in later Bares who almost indiscriminately switched their parents’ birth places from census to census. There is a name for these German/Switzerland migrants, which escapes me now. I found it in an article about the Bares/Baers.
    Anyway, I’m happy to have another jumpstart to my research.
    Thanks again, Larry!
    Tammy

    • My Elisabetha was a Bar with umlaut-a at birth. She married in Karlsruhe Germany one Josef Berg, a carpenter. She had three children, a girl who died at 1 day old, my gma Anna Berg b. 1889, emigrated to US in 1907, and who died in CT in 1980. My father Rudolf Berg (AKA Ralph Hilse) was born in Frankfurt, traveled to the US with his great gma Rosa Baer in 1911. I was born in CA after he had gone to L.A. to seek work and find my mother, a SW Texan, by accident. So your Elisabetha and mine are not the same, alas.
      Many Jews changed their religious affiliation to stay alive. My and my female cousin in New England–our DNA shows many Ashkenazi Jews through an autosomal test (both m and f genes) at ftdna.com. I know that some relatives are out there. But they may be the children of the Siblings of Elisabetha and Josef. Anna had no siblings who lived past 15.
      How strange it is after years of hunting to see family names all in one place, one “surrounding” and find them to be unrelated.
      My gggm Rosa/Rosalie Baer was born a Herrmann or a Schmid. Her “sister” Veronika Schmid (resident of New Haven in 19078) possibly was indeed the woman who paid my gm Anna Berg’s passage to America. Veronika, I imagine, must have come to Ellis Island to meet Anna and take her to New Haven/area where she/Anna lived all her life. Rosa married a Christian Cristof Baer/Bar with umlaut-a. She then had a son Adolf Otto or August Otto, and then later bore Elisabetha Bar Berg.

      • admin says:

        Roberta,
        All very interesting information. Thanks for sharing. While I’m sure there were no Jews in our Baer family, perhaps one of our readers can help further enlighten your quest for information.
        Larry

  3. Roberta Burnett says:

    Reading these entries after nearly a year, I certainly wish I had PA relatives. Things would be more certain. After a more refined DNA test at Family Tree DNA, it is certain that all my Ashkenazi genes came directly from my unnamed birth-grandfather, the man who did not want his name (or it could have been Anna Berg, my birthgrandmother who didn’t want his name) on the birth records for Rudolf Berg, my father. In fact many of the Germans with the last names on my ancestry tree have denied any connection with Anna Berg. Of course. They would have been kept in the dark. I have no idea (because Anna was secretive and very worried about moral censure) whether he was a person her age (16 at time of insemination) or whether it was incest, or rape. Nonetheless, my father was a good man and a sweet spirit.

  4. John F. Lutz says:

    I have reached a ‘brickwall’ with Margaret Baer married to Casper Lutz and members of Muddy Creek Church in Berks county, Pennsylvania. I don’t have information on her side of the family tree. They resided in East Colcalico township, Lancaster county, Pa. and, I have exhausted the records there.

    • admin says:

      John, My wife’s Baers were the Amish-Mennonite from eastern PA, but our Somerset County also has lots of what we call “the rich Baers,” lawyers, judges, and the like. I need to get back to digging deeper into that Muddy Creek family, but for now I have nothing. Thanks for the tip, and please stay in touch.
      Larry

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