Category: Pennsylvania
Families that lived in the state and left records behind there.
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Adam Brookhouser, Jr. (1803-1865) of Hayfield Township, PA The history of a place doesn’t begin with people, and this place was no exception. Recorded history does begin with people, although we have to acknowledge that we have a “selection bias” towards history that we can access through the written word. The reality is that there…
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How our origin story shapes our future A couple of weeks ago, David Shaw of Serengenity made a salient comment (emphasis added) on my post about great-great uncle George’s 1911 Callin Family History: In that time period Genealogy was quite a fad, consequently many are badly written and poorly sourced. Their resources at the time…
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or, Catching Up With the Joneses You might recall that I talked about my wife’s ancestry in February—particularly the difficulty in tracing the Jones family of her 2nd great-grandmother, Alice Frances (Jones) McCullough. I had intended to follow up on the Jones family sooner than this, but today is the day: Introducing the Brookhousers Alice’s…
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A close examination of Elizabeth Shown Mill’s Witter research Some time ago, I posted an essay about Finding John Witter. John Witter might be the name of my 5th-great-grandfather, on my paternal grandmother’s side. If so, his son was Abraham Witter (1786-1882), but I haven’t been able to prove that connection. I was reminded to…
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A tale from when the West was still young Once upon a time, several families founded a town in Ohio. Benjamin Montgomery (1766-1841) brought his wife, Nancy, and their six children from Virginia to settle in Weller Township, Richland County, Ohio, where they laid out a town in 1816. Benjamin called the town “Olivesburg” after…
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Using lessons learned from a different family In January I talked about finding some of my wife’s ancestors in the records of the Society of Friends (also called “Quakers”) in Indiana. As it happens, the skills I picked up as I learned about the Dyer family may help me learn more about my Scottish immigrant…
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The search for David E. Jones (1830-1902) Depending on your sources and time frame, the surname “Jones” is about the 5th most common surname in the United States. The same can be said for “David” when you look at first names for males.1 Our work is cut out for us today, since we are looking…
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Another one of us – but where is his legacy? While updating the Callin Family History, I ran across another cousin who researched the Callin family. His name was Dr. Frederick Blecker Callin – and I am left with questions. Hugh Callin (1817–1856) was the youngest son of John and Elizabeth (Simon) Callin. He was…
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The top of my ladder is the bottom of another Abe Witter (1859-1918) was my 2nd-great-grandfather – one of My Sixteen. After I added his profile to WikiTree in 2019, another WikiTreer connected it to the profile of Abe’s father, Adam Piper Witter (1829-1909). I have since taken on the Profile manager role for Adam…
