Mightier Acorns

Journeys through Genealogy and Family History

A parody of a family coat of arms designed with acorns as elements, with the motto "ex gladnis potentioribus" Latin for "from Mighty Acorns"
From Mighty Acorns

Category: New Jersey

Families that lived in the state and left records behind there.

  • Amos Clark: Weighing Evidence

    Finding evidence is never a straightforward process; here’s an examination of a source that holds as many questions as answers.

  • Lives and Fortunes: Three Revolutionary War Americans

    This story is part of the celebration of America’s 250th birthday at Projectkin – Stories250. Look for more at https://projectkin.substack.com/p/stories250-now-in-timeline-and-map

  • Grandma Bert’s Travelogue

    Married after the end of the Second World war, my maternal grandparents embarked on a lengthy 50-year journey. Here’s a taste of it!

  • Samuel Tuttle: the Late Bloomer

    Finding Samuel’s occupation led me to realize that the online trees had him mis-identified. How studying the original documents brought me closer to finding his correct ancestry.

  • Some stories hide behind the records Born on 11 March 1870, James Henry Opp grew up in the small town of Dansville in Livingston County, New York. His father, Jacob Edward Opp, was a veteran of the Civil War, and his mother was Mary Elizabeth Palmer, descended from a family of New Jersey shipbuilders. Jacob…

  • Most of her story remains underground The Opp family is my mother’s maternal grandmother’s maternal side—and if that doesn’t emphasize “maternal” enough, I think of them as being on the Opp-osite side of the tree from my Callin family. (Opening with a Dad joke of that magnitude should rebalance things, don’t you think?) I’ve tried…

  • Seeking the Wavetop for my Hart family A year ago, I wrote about my maternal grandmother’s paternal grandmother (one of My Sixteen), Florence Mabel (Hart) Tuttle (1874-1945): I followed Florence’s ancestry from there through her mother, Harriet Isette (Wells) Hart. Today, I am looking at her paternal ancestry. Seymour C Hart (1851–1934) was the youngest…

  • Rescued from obscurity Before we begin: I’ve been struggling to make these Wavetops posts work the way I wanted them to work – so I’m taking a slightly different approach. Instead of pointing at the “top” and talking about the work that still needs to be done, I’m going to start at the “bottom” and…

  • Leopold Zindle: The Story Behind the Story

    Why we keep doing research after we think we found all the answers Last week, we revisited a story about my 6th-great grandfather, a Hessian soldier who was captured by General Washington’s troops and sent to work in Mount Hope, New Jersey, for John Jacob Faesch, who needed laborers to continue making ammunition for the…

  • The Hessian soldier in our family tree This week, I want to talk about Leopold Zindle, my 6th great-grandfather, a Hessian soldier who was taken as a prisoner of war by General Washington’s troops during the Battle of Paulus Hook in August 1779. To get to Leopold, we go through one of My Sixteen, John…