52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

          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...

         Since I am writing this on Mother’s Day May 11, 2025, I thought I would use the occasion to showcase my maternal grandmother (my mom’s mom) Florence Koetzle. She was born in Philadelphia in 1889, and was the second child of John Koetzle and Elizabeth Reilly Koetzle. Florence married Clarence Wilbur Harley (he usually went by C. Wilbur) in 1913, when she was 24 years old. Their first child died when she was one day old, and their second (and last) child was my mom, Dorothy Mae Harley, born on May 1, 1918. So that’s just a little background to the story. I knew my grandmother (we all called her Nanny) pretty well. We all visited her and PopPop often. They lived in a small town in the Atlantic City NJ area, which was just a three hour drive from where I was raised in northern NJ.   Nanny and me in Ventnor NJ in mid 1950's. The painting on wall is one she did. Nanny was a very smart and artistic person. In her younger days, she was a milline...

               This isn't the "institutions" topic that first comes to mind, but after dwelling on it a while, I'm going with this interpretation!             Maybe not many of us would consider golf an institution, but for our father Roscoe, it certainly was. I don’t know exactly when he picked up the game, but once he did, that was it for him. It was an all-consuming pastime. I suspect he started playing in college in Memphis TN in the 1930’s. The first real proof I have of him playing a round or two was in the newspapers during WWII when he was stationed in Atlantic City NJ at the Thomas M. England General Hospital (previously Haddon Hall Convention Center). Also in his letters home when he was stationed in Germany he mentioned he played a round of golf with a previous commanding officer he knew. Our dad on the golf course in AZ maybe In any event, his love of golf never ever waned during his lifetime...