Genealogy Notebook

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Genealogy Notebook It’s difficult to get around the fact that genealogy is a highly personal journey one that can be shared but not duplicated by kindred souls. The people of Pennsylvania stem from a mosaic of ethnic backgrounds and so there is no such thing as a “typical” Commonwealth pedigree. Early history is populated by English Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends), mainstream and...
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Genealogical Research of Pithole

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Genealogical Research of Pithole Genealogical research can best be described as a search for matching up the crosshairs of “time and place” to find what records a specific era and particular location can yield. The phenomenon of the “boom town” can be one of the most frustrating situations for family historians. While many might think of boom-to-bust ghost towns in terms of the American West,...
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Genealogy Records at Ephrata Cloister

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Genealogy Records at Ephrata Cloister The types of source documents that help family historians most often depend upon such factors as ethnicity, ge­ography, and time period. Even within an ethnic group, there can be great variety. Pennsylvania Germans constitute one such group. The large immigration to Pennsylvania of German­-speaking people in the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century was composed...
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Pennsylvania Naturalization Records

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Naturalization Records Genealogists strive to find many types of written records about their ancestors Some make checklists to show which types have been consulted, such as census, naturalization or church baptism, and nearly every genealogist who expects to be taken seriously uses current standards of documentation to detail sources that support his or her conclusions. Experienced researchers are aware that there are...
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Sinking Valley Family Tree Project

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Sinking Valley Family Tree Project Beginner family historians are counseled that going beyond their own direct line to find information about siblings of their ancestors­ – called “whole-family genealogy” – can help avoid and reduce errors, as well as add a rich dimension to their pedigree quests. More and more genealo­gists are ratcheting up the “whole-family genealogy” con­cept a few more...
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Septennial Census

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Septennial Census Pennsylvania’s consti­tution has nothing like the “actual Enumeration” clause of the U.S. Constitution, which is the basis for the once-per­-decade federal censuses that have become the sin­gle most important record group for genealogists. While the Commonwealth has never taken such an all-inclusive headcount, it did enumerate taxpayers in listings called the Septennial Census...
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Our Old Citizens (1888)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Our Old Citizens (1888) Rarely are so-called “genealogical records” created with genealogists in mind. Whether it’s the U.S. Census, church registers, newspaper reports, or courthouse wills and deeds, these “primary sources” are given a new use by genealogists. But even this “new use” by genealogists, which usually takes the form of seeking data about direct line ancestors, is...
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Ancestry of the Pennsylvania Germans

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ancestry of the Pennsylvania Germans The ancestry of the Pennsylvania Germans has been an extraordinarily rich genealogical mine from which researchers have extracted informa­tion since at least the time of Israel Daniel Rupp (1803-1878), a self-taught historian who collated primary source records along with family histories in the 1840s. Since the mid-nineteenth century, a princi­pal genealogical challenge of these families has...
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