Family Patriarch Photos

One element of my wife Ellen's family that fascinates me is the amount of information, that is records, available to aid with research. This includes, vital records, family documents, wills, legal agreements, and most fascinating to me, old photos.

In my family line, I have very few photos of my grandparents and only a couple of my Hadden great grandparents. As a result, I think it's remarkable that I have found a photo of Ellen's great-great grandfather and one of her great-great-great grandfather and grandmother! More remarkable still when you consider that photography was a relatively 'new' invention when these folks were alive.

Jacob Emanuel Muerner and his wife Susanna Schluchter (Ellen's three times great grandparents) were born in Berne, Switzerland in 1789 and 1787, respectively. All eleven of their children were also born in Switzerland. In 1837, they immigrated to Canada and settled in New Hamburg, a hamlet located west of what is now Kitchener, Ontario. Below they are pictured in undated photos, but as Jacob died in 1869 and Susanna in 1875, these photos are the oldest in my digital family collection.




The Rev. Jacob Wagner was born in Germany in 1824. In 1832, he immigrated to the USA and settled in Lyons, New York state. Eventually he and his wife, Margaret (nee Hailer) would move to and settle in Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario. The date of his photo below is unknown, however Jacob died in 1858 so it would have been taken sometime before that time.