In Our Garst Family7, William T. Garst lists her full name as Marie Elizabeth Garst, and her birth date as 29 May 1768. This name and date have been widely copied into many other genealogies which use the 1950 book as their principle source for Garst data, such as the Clark County Friends of the Library collections. Indeed, it was so listed on my web site for many years.

In July 2004, Dwayne Wrightsman pointed out in a posting to the FRANTZ-L and BRETHREN-L mailing lists that William T. Garst had incorrectly entered the christening date from the baptism of Marie Elizabeth, daughter of Dewalt Gerst (and the first cousin of this Elizabeth Gerst) as the birthdate of this Elizabeth Gerst. Curiously, on the description of the Dewalt Gerst family in section 6, Our Garst Family also shows the baptism record for Marie Elizabeth. So the same record was used for two different individuals.

So far as I know, there is no primary record of Elizabeth’s date of birth.

There is also no evidence that her name was prefixed with Marie. Prefixing a baptismal name, usually John or Marie, to the name the child actually went by, was a very common practice in the Lutheran and Reformed Church, but not so common for Brethren families.