Lancaster County Family Ties

I have racked my brain for references that I remember about older relatives discussing the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. It had to be an important event for anyone alive in 1918, but it was a void as far as my memories from listening to older folks talk.  On vacation in 2023, while haunting bookstores I found this book. There was an entire chapter on Ft. Dix, NJ and the mess the Spanish Flu caused there. Ft. Dix rang a bell in my brain. After going through several files, I realized that Uncle Scott APPLEBACH had been at Ft. Dix during the right time. I have not even tried to get his military records. The website Fold 3 showed me he had been in the Army during WWI. His enlistment ran from Sept. 6, 1918 to Jan. 18, 1919. Ancestry.com had his enlistment card from 1917. I found all kinds of stuff for his marriages but only 3 items to do with his military service. So, I thought the best place to see about him during this time frame might be Newspapers.com because the personal columns tended

  ORGANIZING THE CHAOS Source: Bing clip art I am confessing right now to a mountain of family papers and pictures. Time for filing has been at a minimum the last several months. What genealogy time I could make was spent searching on two family members: Winfield Scott APPLEBACH, and Susanna BOEHM. I have dug around through Family Search, Ancestry, Fold 3, Newspapers.com, and Google collecting all the info possible. And worse, it has been saved as both digital and paper. Can we say no real organization? This morning I decided it was time to tackle the issue and organize the chaos now that I have two computer screens to work with again. I find it so much easier to have a file open on one computer screen while I move documents and photos into it from the second screen. Since I actually have computer files for these two people already, it was easier to start with the downloads that were on the computer. So, two and half hours later, the APPLEBACH and BOEHM files have been updated. One suc

 SUSANNA BOEHM (c. 1775 - 1848) Poor Susanna - she has been a mystery person as far as parents or childhood information. Growing up, I was told she was the daughter of Abraham BOEHM/BEAM or that her father was not known. Her mother was named Barbara. It was almost like her life started when she married Jacob RESSLER. There is another Susanna RESSLER in the family that overlaps some of the same years as my Susanna's life. I have been stumbling over that Susanna for years. Any time I asked questions or looked for documentation that was the Susanna I was directed too. It got very frustrating because that Susanna did not fit with my Susanna. She has been a brick wall. I was at the genealogy library in Vincennes, IN last month. I got off on a rabbit trail (that never happens to you right?) and looked up Susanna BOEHM on Ancestry. Sure enough, the other Susanna popped up. I scrolled through the first 3 or 4 pages just to see what I could find.  Suddenly, a family tree popped up that had

Source: Bing clip art If you have been doing family research for more than a few days, you have found interesting, funny, or ironic things. I recently ran across the "Graff" name in a book titled: He Loves a Good Deal of Rum...Military Desertions during the American revolution 1775-1783...Volume One 1775 - June 30, 1777 by Joseph Lee Boyle.   The title alone caught my attention. Um...I had ancestors in the American Revolution. Would this book have anything about any of them? I flipped to the index and started looking for any familiar name: Bowman/Bauman, Groff/Graff, Boehm/Beam, Stover, Wolf, Metzler, Musselman, Ressler. Some of the names I had to look for alternate spellings.  Um....Graff, Jacob. Maybe a possibility? The below had been published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on May 13, 1777: This is to certify that Frederick Shinkle and Jacob Graff, two militia men of this city, brought me a man named John M'Cartney, the 21st ult. 1777, as s substitute for th

 James C. FINDLEY was the grandfather of Reba (RESSLER) GARNER. He has somewhat difficult to track due to the last name being spelled as FINDLEY and FINLEY. The constant spelling issues became a frustration, and I would put his file back in the file cabinet for "another day". I wish that I had questioned Grandma more about her grandparents, but I failed to do so. Plus, James would have been dead several years when she was born. Whatever she may have known about him would have been told to her by other, older relatives. I suspect his parents are Samuel and Sarah FINDLEY, but so far have nothing to confirm this for sure. I have found family trees on Ancestry that state Samuel and Sarah (GOOD) FINDLEY/FINLEY are his parents, but none of them have documentation. Um...it does make me wonder if I am on the right track though. I have not found a Samuel FINDLEY on Find a Grave that is the right age or with the correct spouse in Pennsylvania. This despite trying various years and plac

Grandma and Pappy GARNER spoke openly about how hard the Great Depression was and their own survival skills to make it through. I grew up on their stories and memories.  Many of those same skills I learned and practice routinely. I choose to live frugally and in the current economic situation here in the US, I am sure glad this has been a way of life for many years. Source: my personal collection I was reminded of this recently while watching a grandma talk to her adult gr-daughter about ways to make money go further. These tips included food, household tips, gardening, and even car repairs. Some background: Nationally here in the US, the Great Depression was from 1929 to 1941. Unemployment, depending on place and year, ranged from 8% to 24%. Inflation rose, banks failed, children were put in orphanages because parents could no longer feed then, and people migrated around the country looking for work.  At the same time, the Dust Bowl was going on in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas,

  My sister recently finished going through the last of mom's possessions. Among the items she sent to me was a cookbook that mom used, but many of grandma's recipes were in.  It has been fun to look through the cookbook page by page and see familiar names, or at least familiar last names. I thought that my readers would find the recipes interesting. But mostly I am pointing out that our ancestors had real lives. In this case, both sides of my family attend this church. Going to church at Covenant, even now, means seeing cousins, aunts, uncles, and other assorted relatives. Source: my personal collection I was hoping to share some history of the church here as well, but a five-minute search only turned up a book about the history of this church at the Lancaster History site. I do remember various relatives on both sides of the family saying that Covenant and Bethel merged in the 1960's which allowed Covenant to tear down that building to make a parking lot for Covenant. Up