52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

               Who was the most memorable person I wrote about this year? Of course I could never choose just one. They are all important, and all have contributed to my life and my history. However …………   I thought this week would be a good week to ask each of you (my relatives) to give me your thoughts on which blog post or ancestor was memorable to you . You can pick more than one! I’m very curious which posts made you laugh, cry, surprised or resonated with you. Just text me back when you can, or put a comment at the bottom of this post.   Memorable photo I took in 2017 visiting Harley cemetery in PA. Originally I thought my goal in this project would be to uncover more facts about my ancestors and grow my family tree. While that was certainly true, I came to realize there was much more to it than that. It became about the weekly communications with my family members who are spread all over the country, including some that I...

          Music definitely runs in my family, going back to my parents and their parents before them, and I could write about any number of them today. But the one I have chosen is my maternal grandfather, Clarence Wilbur Harley, better known as C. Wilbur Harley, or Poppop, as us grandkids called him. C. Wilbur Harley, my grandfather (Poppop) maybe around 1930s Poppop was born March 1, 1888 In Philadelphia to John Alonzo Harley and Catherine Hunsicker Landis Harley. Poppop was the youngest of four children (all boys). Sadly his oldest two brothers died in their youth, before Poppop was even born. His only brother that lived into adulthood was Jacob Linwood Harley. Wilbur (Poppop) married Florence Koetzle in September 1913 in Philadelphia. (you might recall I wrote about his dad, James Alonzo Harley, a few weeks ago in the blog titled “Urban.” Those are the dates and basic facts that I know, but I am not writing this about facts, but about Wilbur the m...

         I treasure all the family heirlooms that I am fortunate enough to have. Each one is not only special to me, but is also unique in the memory it holds. And, with each heirloom also comes a responsibility to the holder to preserve and share it, where possible, with family. To that end, I want to briefly talk about the two family photo albums that I have in my possession. One is from my mom’s side and one is from my dad’s side. Mom gave them both to me about 10 or 15 years ago. Each album is at least 100 years old now, and hold many photos of my parents’ family and friends, some of whom I never knew, and buildings and places that I have never been or can identify. They also hold mysteries -   unknown faces.   Who were those unnamed people, why were they important to the family, and what stories could they hold?   In my mom’s old album, the photos are glued to that black, heavy paper that was used during that time. In my dad’s old...

          I never knew that my dad was such a great writer until I started reading his WWII letters that he wrote to his wife (our mom) when he was overseas. It is one of the aspects of transcribing his letters that I actually treasure the most, because if they didn’t exist, I never would have known this about him. And to be honest, I don’t know if he even knew this about himself. In this blog post, I am going to share a few snippets of his letters. It was  November 1944 when Dad was sent overseas with the Army Medical Corps. He was a prolific letter writer back home to his new wife. They had been married just over one year when he was ordered to Europe. Maybe the amount of letters he wrote was not that uncommon, but what was definitely uncommon is Mom kept all of his letters until she passed away. That means she kept them safe for over 70 years!!! On average he wrote about 12 letters home a month, and most of those were at least 6-10 pages, on thin...