Visiting The Archives: Surprise findings.

Part 2

After our trip to the Carbon County archives, we drove around Eastern Pennsylvania just to look at the small towns and the countryside. It is a beautiful state. We didn't really have specific plans so we drove back to Allentown and spent the evening there. On Tuesday, we decided to visit the historical district and possibly stop in at a museum. There was a museum listed in one of the hotel brochures that sounded interesting; it was the Lehigh Valley Historical Museum. The brochure mentioned that it told of the history of Allentown and had displays about the Pennsylvania Dutch. We had about five hours until our flight home, so we headed downtown. The city was interesting and I enjoyed looking at the old buildings mixed in with the sky scrapers. After a short walk around the city, we found the museum.
Upon entering we were greeted by volunteers who were very happy to tell us about their displays. I mentioned that I was in Pennsylvania doing genealogical research and the volunteer told me that this museum also housed a genealogical library that contained many collections. I was very excited to see what might be held here. I tried to stay interested in the displays but my mind kept drifting to what I might find in the library. Finally, I just left Curtis in the museum and headed down. This was the highlight to my trip. This library contained church records, cemetery records, family histories, state archive collections, etc.

I spent several hours searching the church and cemetery records for traces of the Peters' ancestors, but I came up empty handed again. One of the other patrons mentioned to me that she saw a book on one of the back shelves that was a history of the Peters' families in Pennsylvania, so I headed back to look. I found the book, but determined that this was not the same family line. As I was perusing the collections, though, a name I was familiar with jumped out at me. There was a two volume collection of family history for the Peter Fullmer and Susannah Zerfass family. I was familiar with this name, as this is also the name of my 4th GGF. I didn't know that this book existed and I was thrilled to see it. I quickly opened it and verified that this was the same family line. It was. I had not realized until this moment that my family line and Curtis' family line had all settled in the same county in the same state. What a SMALL, SMALL world! I took a picture of the contact information for those who put the book together, and I plan to contact them and see about getting a copy for my library. After this find, I was done for this trip. It was a great trip and I did find some new information to help me along. Some of the information was not expected and very eye opening for me.

Until next time...

Visiting The Archives

Part 1

My trip to Pennsylvania began on Sunday morning. I do my day job for an airline, so I have the benefit of flying standby to my desired destinations. This can certainly save on money, but not necessarily time or patience. My goal was to get to Allentown, PA that day so that we could start our research first thing Monday morning. We started out at 5AM with a plan to reach Allentown about 4PM. Unfortunately, the flights didn't work out as we hoped, but a quick search for alternatives, got us into Allentown, PA at midnight.

There are a few things I did to prepare for this trip in hopes of making it successful. The first thing I did was to look up the archive sites in the area and call ahead to make sure that they would be open and available to me on the dates I would be there. The website had a list of the available records and I made a listing of which records I would want to search and for which ancestors. My research goal was to find evidence of Evan Peters' birth and death. To find out what land he owned and to tie together the families I had found in previous census records.

We woke up on Monday morning to a beautiful landscape of lush green hills and beautiful old buildings. It was really exciting to be in a place where our ancestors had once lived. I imagined what it might have been like to live there in the 1800's, how hard the travel must have been from township to township. As we drove the thirty minutes to Jim Thorpe (formerly Mauch Chunk), Pennsylvania, we passed signs for the cities and towns in the area. Many of these I recognized from my research. I shared the stories I knew with my husband of ancestors who had lived there and what they had done while they were there. We drove through the towns just to see the places of their history. We loved the homes there. Almost every one of them had porches with chairs and tables. In the evening, we actually saw folks just sitting out on the porch watching the sun set and the people pass by.

When we arrived in Jim Thorpe, it was raining. Not really raining, but dumping sheets of water from the sky. A quick two or three minute walk had us soaked through to the bones. I would have loved to spend more time just wandering the streets here, but the weather was horrible. The historical town of Jim Thorpe was beautiful. The old buildings were fascinating. Our first stop was the archives. It wasn't anything like what I had expected. My previous research has all been done at LDS church family history centers where there is so much information to browse through that you could spend days looking. This center housed just a few collections. I was disappointed to find that some of the indexed records that I had hoped to search could not be located by the staff. In the future, this is one of the questions that I will ask before taking a trip.

The staff was very accommodating and took the time to show me where to find the information I was looking for, how to use the microfiche machines and explained to me the cost for making copies. I began my search. Unfortunately, I could find not a single record for Evan Peters. I moved my search on to his wife Margaret and was able to find a will for her. This gave me a firm date and place of death and also confirmed the spelling of her second husband's surname. This information is valuable even though it wasn't exactly what I had hoped to find. The staff explained to me that the records I was looking for, may not exist or may have been recorded in another county. The search will continue for Evan, but for now, I was done in Jim Thorpe.

Over a year ago...

I am thinking about starting another blog and when I pulled up blogspot, what do I find, but a list of neglected blogs... Go figure. I reread my past posts and it reminds me of how lucky I am to have the persons and things in my life that I do. I am truly blessed.

Perhaps this is the place to continue my new blog. It is going to be about genealogy, and what better title to use than "Who Am I". I am a collective set of DNA from my ancestors. I am a collection of their experiences. Without them, I would not BE... Thank you to all those who came before me, for the events and experiences that led to my birth, my life and my turn here on this earth!