Following up on a post regarding the story of my maternal DeCamp ancestors, I have found some important family tree clues through a new feature on the familysearch.org website. Their full text search lets you search huge numbers of hand written (as well as typed) documents in their collections. The…
Category: <span>Pennsylvania</span>
Returning to the Gray and DeCamp branches of my maternal grandfather’s family tree, I was recently reminded of John DeCamp and Susannah Gray, my 5th great-grandparents. According to an 1874 newspaper obituary of their son George DeCamp Sr., John and Susannah lived in Winchester, Virginia in the early 1770s, and…
One of my grandfather’s first cousins was Robert Gere Vosler (1904-1968) of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. Before entering the navy in 1942, Robert worked as a musician, touring the northeast and mid-west of the United States, playing the trumpet and saxophone with the dance band The Keystone Serenaders. He enlisted in…
The Carte de Visite was a type of photograph popular during the Civil War in the United States, mainly because it was relatively inexpensive to produce. It came in particularly handy for those with friends and family serving in the war, as they were produced in multiples and could be…
I have written about my Vosler relatives of Western Pennsylvania, including the physician David Clair Vosler who died during the influenza pandemic at the end of World War 1. David Clair’s only child was son Robert Gere Vosler (1904-1968). Robert Gere lost his father at age 14, and was sent…
I’ve written before about trying to determine if old family stories, passed down over a century or more, are completely true, only partly true, or just made-up wishful thinking. The question of a possible ancestral relationship on my mother’s family tree to the US president James Monroe (1758-1831) has been…
My maternal grandfather Frank F Jordan (1895-1975) grew up in Volant, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the army in 1917 and was assigned to the 324th Signal Corps. He trained at Fort Meade in Maryland, but never fought overseas. Searching Pennsylvania newspapers from the period, I learned that he was actually…
Everyone has skeletons in their family history closet, known and unknown. Some can seem quaint and even funny to us today, like my Coles ancestor who had to wear a scarlett “D” for drinking more alcohol than his puritan neighbors liked. But other skeletons can be viewed through current eyes…
In 1791, Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury in the brand new United States of America. Hamilton proposed a tax on distilled spirits production to help pay down the national debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. In spite of opposition from people like Thomas Jefferson, congress approved the…
When looking at racial issues today in the United States, it’s important to look back in history to see where we were, where we’ve come, and where we need to go. One aspect of the history of enslavement of African Americans that may not be well known is that it…