The Bretz Register

The endeavor to establish the genealogy and history of this John Bretz has met two unsurmountable obstacles; the lack of early written records, and the difficulty or impossibility of identifying those of the many John, Jacob and Philip Bretzes of the Pennsylvania archives who were members of this family. A third difficulty, of less consequence, has been the apathetic attitude of older living Bretzes, due in part to their advanced age at the time of this investigation but also a lifelong lack of interest in family history. Dates, events and relationships, never recorded have been simply forgotten. Outstanding exceptions have been Allen Bretz and two others, H. F. Pennington and Anna B. Seitz, whose mothers were Bretz-born. To them we owe the establishment and preservation of a considerable part of the family tree down to about 1912 in the manuscript record called the "Bretz Register". However, Allen's claim that John's father was Jacob Pretz, the immigrant of 1732, is obviously in error.

Another Bretz genealogy, that of Ludwig, immigrant of 1750, apparently has been more successful in tying that family to an ancestor born in Germany but has failed to trace Ludwick back of 1750. Attempts made by Geo. Z. Bretz, of Brooklyn and by Harry Bretz, a descendant of Ludwick, both of whom visited the Rhine and Moselle valleys with hope of finding documentary records of pre-Revolutionary dates, have been unsuccessful. Only the later Bretz immigrants, (There are German-born Bretzes living in America today) appear to know what parts of Germany their Progenitors lived.

Every promising source of information known has been investigated in this study. The unimaginative habit of repeating given names through the generations, true of almost every line of Bretzes, and the limited variety of those names, has rendered hopeless any further unraveling of early family relations. At least 32 Johns, Philips and Jacobs are recorded in America. Thirteen male descendants of our John have carried his name!

Attempts to add to the "Bretz Register" of the early 1900's have been unsuccessful, except in a few lines. Among living Bretz descendants of John, the apathy concerning the derivation indicates the task as largely impossible. Probably the cousinships are too distant to be worth establishing in a family so careless of its history.

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