Small world coincidences

How a signature lead to a connection between me and a friend

Have you ever looked at the fine print on a document you’ve discovered in your genealogy research? In particular, a signature of a person of authority? Until recently, I rarely have myself. 

A few months ago my dad, knowing how much I value genealogical data and original documents, showed me his baptism certificate. The document is from the 1940’s. It’s simple, completely typed and had no fading which made it remarkably legible, which is not always common! The signature of the priest who signed the baptism certificate was crisp and clear: Rev. Robert J. Merth.

Baptism certificate from St. Agnes church with a signature of a familiar surname. (Some details have been covered for privacy.)

I don’t know about you, but I rarely have paid much attention to signatures on documents unless they were of my ancestor. Usually they aren’t even legible! But, I have a friend with “Merth” as a last name, so with the amazing legibility of the signature and the familiarity of the name, it really stood out for me. I’m not sure how common “Merth” is as a surname, but I doubted it would be any close relation to my friend. Nevertheless, I sent a picture of the certificate along with the note “Looking at my dad’s baptism certificate from St. Agnes and the pastor was Robert Merth . . . any relation ???” To my surprise, the response came back quickly:

Text message response from my friend about the signature on the birth certificate.

The coincidence doesn’t stop there though. My friend’s dad (whom he mentions in the text) is actually one of my dad’s friends, George! Evidently “Father Bob” was the much older brother to George. My friend explained:

George’s dad (Rudolph) had two wives. The first one (Anna) gave birth to my aunt Sr. Dorothy, Fr. Bob, and then died in childbirth in 1923 when my uncle Bill was born. Eight years later he married again, this time to my grandmother, Agnes. It couldn’t have been easy to be a single dad with an infant, a six year old, and a four year old. I’m sure he had some help from relatives though. Rudolph and Agnes had two children; my dad George, and my aunt, Sr. Therese. Technically, Fr. Bob was my step-uncle, but the older three were always very close to the younger two and vice versa. And that’s right…3 out of 5 of them became clergy!

A photo of Robert J. Merth from a public tree on Ancestry.com. The photo was not dated, but Father Bob looks pretty young in this picture. He had only been ordained for a few years when he signed my father’s baptism record. Maybe this is what he looked like at the time.

My friend went on to recall what a fun person Father Bob was, as illustrated by a great memory he shared: 

In the mid-1970’s I started a coin collection and Fr. Bob would almost always come back to the Twin Cities on Sunday afternoons from Spicer, Minnesota where his parish was at the time.  He’d play some golf or cribbage with my dad, and then we’d all have Sunday dinner together.  When I told him about my coin hobby, he started bringing me all of the coins from his Sunday Masses and would let me sift through them for the dates of the pennies, nickels, dimes, etc. I was missing.  You can be certain I ALWAYS made sure to properly reimburse the collection plate for the face value of the coins I needed - I didn’t need that particular ledger to go into the red!

Contrary to the image of most Catholic Priests, Fr. Bob surely does seem like he was a fun person!

When I pointed out this connection to my father, he said something to the effect of “no kidding? It sure is a small world.” No truer words because this is what genealogy is all about – remembering our ancestors and finding unexpected tie-ins between families.

What small world connections have you found in the details?