For some reason, I was just surfing on MyHeritage and decided to search for my great-great-great grandfather, Peter Koontz, the father of Ezra Peter Koontz. At least that was the story my grandmother had told me and she did not know about “Peter’s people”. I already had found that Gpa Peter used the name Baltzer Koontz when he married Elizabeth Derr on 22 June 1832. But searching for either Peter or Baltzer turned up Johann Balthasar Koontz who married Elizabeth Derr.
I had earlier tried to find an English equivalent for Baltzer and the nearest name was Peter. Now there was Johann Balthasar — Balthasar / Baltzer have a phonetic equalness. And the German tradition of naming all the male children Johann and using their call name to keep them apart made sense that he went by what we would assume was his middle name.
So, I now have 3 major research papers under way, along with the 3 books I am trying to research.