Lancaster County Family Ties

This week I had a few hours to visit with another family historian in my area. We have no known ancestors in common. My takeaway from the visit was simply to "claim your family roots". Source: Bing clip art  My roots are deep in Lancaster County, PA. I have at least two maternal lines that arrived in 1710/1711. In other words, years before Lancaster was even a "real" city which was generally felt to have been founded in 1729. Growing up, I was that quiet child who observed everything and asked many questions. My elderly relatives humored me with answering questions, telling me family stories, and even bringing out old family photos with explanations of who was in the photos. What a treasure of info and memories. Some relations took me along to clean family gravestones in various cemeteries in the county. Another opportunity to listen, watch, and learn. More notes into those notebooks that have become my go-to when I need to remember some small possible fact that

  JUST MARRIED - RALPH & REBA GARNER 1935 One of the things I found tucked away in my many notebooks of notes and interviews with family members was Grandma telling me about her wedding. I obviously did not know all the questions to ask and so I am still left with some questions, but here is grandma's story: Ralph Garner was working on a farm in the Quarryville, PA area.  Reba Ressler was living and working for a doctor in Quarryville. They met there in town (my notes are unclear whether at a restaurant, or the movie house) and dated once a week for at least a year.  Working on the farm did not pay much, and they did not make any kind of wedding plans until Ralph got a better paying job at Moore's Dairy driving a milk truck. Grandma said she worked for that doctor for five years starting when she turned 17. Ralph Garner and Reba Ressler went to the Lancaster County courthouse and picked up their marriage license on 26 March 1935. The license number appears to be #17003. Sou

  Life has tended to be more than a bit busy and crazy the last few months at my home.  I noticed today that I have not posted here for about two months. Shame on me! However, I have been slowly researching, organizing and downsizing the genealogy mess of papers and photos in my genealogy world. In a perfect world, I would work a few minutes on some part of genealogy every single day.  My world is far from perfect, and the last couple years I tend to work in blocks of time rather than a few minutes a day.  However, since my last post: I have gone thru boxes of semi-organized boxes of photos, and pulled out many that had more to do with other family members than me.  Some I scanned into the computer and labeled right then . Many of the pulled out photos were sent to family members or their children for them to enjoy (or not).  I do not need every single photo that has been given to me over the years by other relatives. Or I have taken over the years. It is worth the postage to be able t

Source: Bing clip art Many years ago, my grandma gave me an old newspaper article about great uncle John W. Applebach.  It was a neat article with a write up about his chair caning and his singing at church revivals in the area.  It also had a photo of him. I have spent all week looking for this article.  I am sure it is here but where is the question of the week.  I have carefully checked all the APPLEBACH/AFFLERBACH paper files. I have been going through the computer files of documents and photos.  Nothing. Today I finally just said enough - I will stumble on it unexpectedly down the road.  I wanted to add the photo of him to his memorial on Find A Grave , which is how the search started last week. What I did discover is a computer file that my wonderful hubby spent a lot of time scanning in old photos.  Instead of a file name, there is only a date.  None of the scanned images have names or titles only the scanning number.  I am thrilled for his help and am not complaining.  But I am

I was recently able to get the death affidavits for both of John APPLEBACH'S two wives from the Lancaster County Archives. Death affidavits can give more information about the death of the named person, even if there is a regular death certificate. Since I personally do not have death certificates for either wife, getting these was helpful - even if only for the dates. See this post for more info on the archives:   Lancaster County Family Ties : RESOURCES AT THE LANCASTER ARCHIVES  . I would encourage anyone looking for info from Lancaster County, PA to view the indexes of documents available.  The archives have a treasure trove of stuff for family historians. John was blind.  He supported himself as a chair caner. He also was well known in the Lancaster area for his singing at churches and revivals. I do not know when he married his first wife Elizabeth, but she died in Jan. 3, 1926 and is buried at Millersville Mennonite Cemetery.  No children have ever been mentioned. Her death

  Taking Time to Clean up my Desk Source: Bing clip art   I doubt that I am the only family historian who has a file cabinet full of files all neatly labeled. Or filed neatly in alphabetical order in a drawer in a file cabinet. I also have neatly labeled files on my computer for all those digital records that have been saved from email attachments, archive downloads, and great finds from Google searches. So why is there a 15" deep pile of family documents on my desk?  They are not neat, not really organized (unless you count the ones with the same name that are paper clipped together). At this point I am really pretty disgusted and discouraged at having to clean up this mess. I have been researching one family line on Ancestry, Find A Grave, and Family Search.  Found all kinds of really cool stuff.  Got really excited about the chase. Kept collecting info. Source: Bing clip art Now I have a stack of stuff to file because I did not keep it up as I was working on it.  Plus, part of