52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

          My parents, Dot and Roscoe, were married at 4 PM, October 16, 1943 In Margate, New Jersey. Those are the facts. We all have facts like these in our family trees. What makes that day come alive are the details which I was fortunate to uncover in a few newspaper articles that described their wedding. And I was able to tie that information to details in Roscoe’s letters home during WWII. Admittedly I have had these newspaper articles for a few years, but never really dug into the details until this week. The things I missed, or didn’t put together until now are pretty fascinating. Having this specific topic “wedding bells” gave me a reason to dig deeper. I am sure glad I did.   Dot and Roscoe's wedding 10/16/1943 Margate, NJ My mom’s father, C. Wilbur Harley, was the church organist in the Margate Community Church where Dot and Roscoe were married. For some reason, I had it in my head that Dot’s father would need to play the organ for her wedd...

          As we grow older, I suppose it is natural to think about attending family reunions.   We want to gather with families, particularly family that we don’t often get a chance to see. And I also think that it is natural to want to share these reunion experiences with our children and grandchildren. We want them to meet their relatives, share in the stories that are part of their heritage, and understand where they came from. And we also want to be remembered by the younger generations, and I think attending these reunions together is our way of helping cement those memories and family ties. Location of the Hinch reunion every year 2nd Sunday in July When I personally think about a family reunion, I always think about the annual Hinch reunion - my dad’s paternal line. This Hinch reunion has been an annual occurrence since around 1925. It originally started as a birthday celebration of James Nathan Hinch, my great grandfather. It is believed that...

          About 7 years ago, I came to realize that we had a few Revolutionary War veterans in our family’s history. This discovery started with Samuel Harley, who I have previously mentioned in other posts. When I visited his grave site in Harleysville, PA, there was a Revolutionary War stake by his headstone. Then the   next person I found was Henry Hunsicker, while I was visiting his grave site on that same trip. This got me to thinking. I wondered how many direct ancestors we actually had that fought in the Revolutionary War? I had never really considered that before, so I started down that path to find out. A typical grave marker for Revolutionary War Soldiers           And the answer (so far) is 12 !!! I find this incredible. There could be more that I haven’t identified yet, along with the War of 1812 and the Civil War too. My plan is to do a more thorough write-up about all of them in book form, and I sure do hope ...

          I have a fuzzy memory of my dad talking about “riding the rails” with his oldest brother Roy when they were young. He told this tale when I was a teenager, in the late 1960’s. This memory has been taunting me lately, wondering when he did this and where they went.   But I never had any real hope of solving this puzzle. I have asked both of my brothers too. Did they have any memory of Dad talking about this? My brother Jim did not remember hearing this story, but my brother Bob did. So at least I proved to myself that I hadn’t totally imagined it. But Bob remembered no details other that his brother Roy was with him. Last month I was doing a name search on newspapers.com . for my dad’s name from his high school days through his college days (1930’s decade) in Tennessee.  And wow did I strike gold. For one thing, I found that the University of Tennessee in Memphis was not the first college he had attended. Prior to that he had attended...