Post by kaima on Aug 22, 2006 20:43:20 GMT -7
www.post-gazette.com/pg/06234/715221-51.stm
Pennsylvania Genealogy Conference
Information: A complete conference schedule and registration information for the first Pennsylvania Genealogy Conference, Sept. 29-30 at the Sheraton Station Square, are available online at www.pagenealogyconference.com
Family historians headed here in search of roots
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Family historians often discover they have immigrant ancestors whose personal stories not only illuminate the nation's past, but also hardships their 21st-century descendants couldn't begin to imagine.
For John T. Humphrey, born in Eastern Pennsylvania's Northampton County in 1948, one of them is Jacob Repsher, born in Beerfelden, Germany, in 1767. He immigrated with his parents and seven siblings in 1773, and when they arrived in Philadelphia, the four oldest children became indentured servants, forced to work for others until they were 21.
"Imagine a mother getting on a boat in Germany and, arriving in America, sells four of her kids to pay the passage," Mr. Humphrey said. "Life was tough."
Mr. Humphrey descends from the first-born, George, who served for several years working for a Northampton County farmer and died in his 30s. But it is Jacob who led the more interesting, or at least the more peripatetic, life as an adult. Mr. Humphrey found him in 1798 in Pennsylvania's Washington County, in 1801 in Ohio's Belmont County (where his home served as a polling place) and in 1820 in Alabama territory.
"Pennsylvania is a genealogically significant state for a lot of Americans," said Mr. Humphrey, a featured speaker at Pennsylvania's first statewide genealogy conference, to be held here Sept. 29-30 at the Sheraton Station Square.
Philadelphia was the largest port of immigration in the mid-18th century, when Pittsburgh was the gateway to the West. "Literally thousands of people came down the Ohio River, and their descendants now are living in Ohio and all points west," he said.
WQED documentary filmmaker Rick Sebak will be the keynote speaker for the conference. It's co-sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, which has 1,163 members, and the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, which has about 2,000 members and serves the eastern half of the state.
"We wanted to do a Pennsylvania conference because so many people passed through here and trace their roots to Pennsylvania," said conference chair Barbara Guffey. "We have people coming from as far as Minnesota and California. They are all trying to get to those early, early ancestors."
Mr. Humphrey, former education manager for the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Va., has been a professional genealogist since the 1990s, specializing in Pennsylvania Germans. A 1970 American University graduate in government and public administration, Mr. Humphrey was a Capital Hill lobbyist and real estate broker before turning his hobby into his life's work. He still lives in the D.C. area, but travels the country as a genealogical lecturer, publisher and researcher. Among his books is the 14-volume set "Pennsylvania Births," listing more than 170,000 recorded births in 11 Eastern Pennsylvania counties.
The conference will have three tracks: Pennsylvania, Advanced Genealogy and Internet Technology. Mr. Humphrey, one of its 13 speakers, will kick off the Pennsylvania sessions with an overview of the state's early ethnic and religious groups, settlement patterns, migration trails and shifting county boundaries.
"There were more denominations in Pennsylvania than in any colony because of William Penn's religious freedom," Mr. Humphrey said. The two dominant language traditions -- English and German -- spawned many sects. "You had Church of England (Anglican), Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists and Methodists" from the British Isles, and among the Germans were Lutherans, German Reformed, Mennonites, Amish, German Baptist Brethren (Dunkards) and Moravians.
As in Europe, it was the churches that first kept birth, marriage and death records. As part of a countrywide movement in the 1850s, Pennsylvania began to keep vital records in 1852, but discontinued the effort three years later because of noncompliance, Mr. Humphrey said.
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Allentown maintained vital records from about 1860. But marriages weren't recorded by the state until 1885, and birth and death records weren't kept by counties until 1893 and by the state until 1906.
On the plus side, Pennsylvania is the only colony that kept immigration records, in lists of arrivals of German immigrants at Philadelphia between 1727 and 1808. Earlier immigrants from Great Britain were concerned because so many Germans were coming, Mr. Humphrey said.
"They forced men over 16 to take oaths of allegiance renouncing the sovereign in Germany and taking a new oath to the king of England and the proprietor of Pennsylvania."
In 1934, the ships' manifests were compiled in a three-volume set called "Pennsylvania German Pioneers," one of 30,000 volumes in the Pennsylvania Room of Carnegie Library in Oakland, which also houses the 4,000-volume library of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.
The department began in the 1920s as a small collection assembled by and for the Colonial Dames, and was expanded over the years by the Dames and the Daughters of the American Revolution. With the addition of city and state materials, it became a separate department in the 1970s and moved to its current location on the library's third floor last year.
Presiding over this mecca is librarian Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, who joined the Pennsylvania Department in 1983; she also is president and program director of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society. At the conference, she'll provide an overview of research and repositories specific to Western Pennsylvania.
Partly to better understand genealogical pursuits, years ago she began researching her own German-Irish-Italian roots.
"We are recent immigrants," she said, referring to the Italian grandparents who immigrated in the late-19th century. "I doubted I would find anyone of note" in American history.
But on her mother's side, a person of interest surfaced. Her mother's father had grown up at St. Paul Orphanage after his mother, Clara Lindenmuth, died of a heart ailment in 1903 at age 31. Ms. Holt discovered Clara descended from Johann Michael Lindenmuth, a veteran of both the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars. Eventually the father of 16 children by his first and second wives, Mr. Lindenmuth also was the author of a journal detailing his private life and his service in both wars. Written in German, it was published in English by Picton Press in 2000.
Born in Germany in 1737, Mr. Lindenmuth arrived in Pennsylvania in 1752 with his parents and younger brother. Four years later, he was fighting for the British in the French and Indian War. In 1758, he helped cut a road through the mountains for Gen. John Forbes' army, which succeeded where Gen. Edward Braddock's had failed three years before.
"They had not eaten for six or seven days when they finally reached the destroyed Fort Duquesne," Ms. Holt said. "In December they built lean-tos for shelter and began their journey back to Carlisle," but in the spring Mr. Lindenmuth marched west again, fighting Indians in April near Ligonier and building fortifications in July in Pittsburgh.
"I was extremely surprised to find this man," she said. "I never thought that I would have a Colonial ancestor."
But, as Ms. Holt tells library patrons, not all research has a happy outcome. Hers also showed that Clara's husband, presumed by the family to have died around the same time she did, instead had parked the children in the orphanage, moved west and remarried.
"I found him in the 1920 census living with his stepdaughter and her husband in Terre Haute, Ind. He had survived his second wife as well."
Ms. Holt found her Cocchiola grandparents through records maintained in Italy, microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and accessible at its Family History Center in Green Tree. She learned her grandfather emigrated from a village in Avellino, near Naples.
Some Mormon records can be accessed for free online, at www.familysearch.org.
"The Internet is a vital part of the work that we do with our patrons," Ms. Holt said. The library has a subscription to Ancestry.com, which provides data from all U.S. censuses between 1790 and 1930 (but only a partial 1890 census, most of which was lost in a fire).
The conference's Internet Technology track will show how family historians can access online fire insurance and topographic maps, historic newspapers, court records, legislative proceedings and more. The Advanced Genealogy track will cover tax, land, military and federal-court records; family life and trade work in Germany; avoiding "self-defeating" behaviors in German family history research and more.
Pennsylvania Genealogy Conference
Information: A complete conference schedule and registration information for the first Pennsylvania Genealogy Conference, Sept. 29-30 at the Sheraton Station Square, are available online at www.pagenealogyconference.com
Family historians headed here in search of roots
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Family historians often discover they have immigrant ancestors whose personal stories not only illuminate the nation's past, but also hardships their 21st-century descendants couldn't begin to imagine.
For John T. Humphrey, born in Eastern Pennsylvania's Northampton County in 1948, one of them is Jacob Repsher, born in Beerfelden, Germany, in 1767. He immigrated with his parents and seven siblings in 1773, and when they arrived in Philadelphia, the four oldest children became indentured servants, forced to work for others until they were 21.
"Imagine a mother getting on a boat in Germany and, arriving in America, sells four of her kids to pay the passage," Mr. Humphrey said. "Life was tough."
Mr. Humphrey descends from the first-born, George, who served for several years working for a Northampton County farmer and died in his 30s. But it is Jacob who led the more interesting, or at least the more peripatetic, life as an adult. Mr. Humphrey found him in 1798 in Pennsylvania's Washington County, in 1801 in Ohio's Belmont County (where his home served as a polling place) and in 1820 in Alabama territory.
"Pennsylvania is a genealogically significant state for a lot of Americans," said Mr. Humphrey, a featured speaker at Pennsylvania's first statewide genealogy conference, to be held here Sept. 29-30 at the Sheraton Station Square.
Philadelphia was the largest port of immigration in the mid-18th century, when Pittsburgh was the gateway to the West. "Literally thousands of people came down the Ohio River, and their descendants now are living in Ohio and all points west," he said.
WQED documentary filmmaker Rick Sebak will be the keynote speaker for the conference. It's co-sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, which has 1,163 members, and the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, which has about 2,000 members and serves the eastern half of the state.
"We wanted to do a Pennsylvania conference because so many people passed through here and trace their roots to Pennsylvania," said conference chair Barbara Guffey. "We have people coming from as far as Minnesota and California. They are all trying to get to those early, early ancestors."
Mr. Humphrey, former education manager for the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Va., has been a professional genealogist since the 1990s, specializing in Pennsylvania Germans. A 1970 American University graduate in government and public administration, Mr. Humphrey was a Capital Hill lobbyist and real estate broker before turning his hobby into his life's work. He still lives in the D.C. area, but travels the country as a genealogical lecturer, publisher and researcher. Among his books is the 14-volume set "Pennsylvania Births," listing more than 170,000 recorded births in 11 Eastern Pennsylvania counties.
The conference will have three tracks: Pennsylvania, Advanced Genealogy and Internet Technology. Mr. Humphrey, one of its 13 speakers, will kick off the Pennsylvania sessions with an overview of the state's early ethnic and religious groups, settlement patterns, migration trails and shifting county boundaries.
"There were more denominations in Pennsylvania than in any colony because of William Penn's religious freedom," Mr. Humphrey said. The two dominant language traditions -- English and German -- spawned many sects. "You had Church of England (Anglican), Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists and Methodists" from the British Isles, and among the Germans were Lutherans, German Reformed, Mennonites, Amish, German Baptist Brethren (Dunkards) and Moravians.
As in Europe, it was the churches that first kept birth, marriage and death records. As part of a countrywide movement in the 1850s, Pennsylvania began to keep vital records in 1852, but discontinued the effort three years later because of noncompliance, Mr. Humphrey said.
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Allentown maintained vital records from about 1860. But marriages weren't recorded by the state until 1885, and birth and death records weren't kept by counties until 1893 and by the state until 1906.
On the plus side, Pennsylvania is the only colony that kept immigration records, in lists of arrivals of German immigrants at Philadelphia between 1727 and 1808. Earlier immigrants from Great Britain were concerned because so many Germans were coming, Mr. Humphrey said.
"They forced men over 16 to take oaths of allegiance renouncing the sovereign in Germany and taking a new oath to the king of England and the proprietor of Pennsylvania."
In 1934, the ships' manifests were compiled in a three-volume set called "Pennsylvania German Pioneers," one of 30,000 volumes in the Pennsylvania Room of Carnegie Library in Oakland, which also houses the 4,000-volume library of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.
The department began in the 1920s as a small collection assembled by and for the Colonial Dames, and was expanded over the years by the Dames and the Daughters of the American Revolution. With the addition of city and state materials, it became a separate department in the 1970s and moved to its current location on the library's third floor last year.
Presiding over this mecca is librarian Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, who joined the Pennsylvania Department in 1983; she also is president and program director of the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society. At the conference, she'll provide an overview of research and repositories specific to Western Pennsylvania.
Partly to better understand genealogical pursuits, years ago she began researching her own German-Irish-Italian roots.
"We are recent immigrants," she said, referring to the Italian grandparents who immigrated in the late-19th century. "I doubted I would find anyone of note" in American history.
But on her mother's side, a person of interest surfaced. Her mother's father had grown up at St. Paul Orphanage after his mother, Clara Lindenmuth, died of a heart ailment in 1903 at age 31. Ms. Holt discovered Clara descended from Johann Michael Lindenmuth, a veteran of both the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars. Eventually the father of 16 children by his first and second wives, Mr. Lindenmuth also was the author of a journal detailing his private life and his service in both wars. Written in German, it was published in English by Picton Press in 2000.
Born in Germany in 1737, Mr. Lindenmuth arrived in Pennsylvania in 1752 with his parents and younger brother. Four years later, he was fighting for the British in the French and Indian War. In 1758, he helped cut a road through the mountains for Gen. John Forbes' army, which succeeded where Gen. Edward Braddock's had failed three years before.
"They had not eaten for six or seven days when they finally reached the destroyed Fort Duquesne," Ms. Holt said. "In December they built lean-tos for shelter and began their journey back to Carlisle," but in the spring Mr. Lindenmuth marched west again, fighting Indians in April near Ligonier and building fortifications in July in Pittsburgh.
"I was extremely surprised to find this man," she said. "I never thought that I would have a Colonial ancestor."
But, as Ms. Holt tells library patrons, not all research has a happy outcome. Hers also showed that Clara's husband, presumed by the family to have died around the same time she did, instead had parked the children in the orphanage, moved west and remarried.
"I found him in the 1920 census living with his stepdaughter and her husband in Terre Haute, Ind. He had survived his second wife as well."
Ms. Holt found her Cocchiola grandparents through records maintained in Italy, microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and accessible at its Family History Center in Green Tree. She learned her grandfather emigrated from a village in Avellino, near Naples.
Some Mormon records can be accessed for free online, at www.familysearch.org.
"The Internet is a vital part of the work that we do with our patrons," Ms. Holt said. The library has a subscription to Ancestry.com, which provides data from all U.S. censuses between 1790 and 1930 (but only a partial 1890 census, most of which was lost in a fire).
The conference's Internet Technology track will show how family historians can access online fire insurance and topographic maps, historic newspapers, court records, legislative proceedings and more. The Advanced Genealogy track will cover tax, land, military and federal-court records; family life and trade work in Germany; avoiding "self-defeating" behaviors in German family history research and more.
