September is Brown family reunion time. A couple of weeks ago my family gathered for our annual gathering in Indiana County PA. Despite the cool rainy start of the day, almost 40 descendants of Charles and Lucy Brown were in attendance. This marked the 24th consecutive year, excluding 2020 when it was cancelled due to Covid. Continue reading
Swank
Newspapers: Family Visits
Summer is a great time to take a break and vacation, even if it is for a quick weekend getaway to relax or visit family. Today, many people share pictures and posts of their travels on Facebook. But in the first half of the 20th century and before, the newspaper was the social media of the time informing readers of the adventures of their neighbors. Whether it was spending a week, a few days or just an evening enjoying dinner or celebrating an occasion, one might find a small blurb in a local newspaper recounting the event. Continue reading
Census Through the Years: Henry Swank
Although the United States Census is a useful means to gather information about families, the recorded information could contain misspelled or inaccurate names, age differences—sometimes drastic—from one census to the next, misidentified gender or misattributed relationships between household members. This is one reason researchers do not take the census data as fact until other documents have been located to validate the enumerated information. Continue reading
Misc. Tax Rolls — Columbia County PA
As in I had done previously in 2016 and 2017, April’s post includes some extracts from early tax rolls, this time featuring Columbia County, PA. Since April 15th is the deadline to file tax forms for individual earned income, April is considered by many to be “Tax Month”. Besides earned income, citizens must also pay taxes to their county municipalities for real or personal property they own. The records below capture Real Estate (R), Personal (P), and Other (O) taxes for the listed individuals. Continue reading
Marriage Tributes
This June marks my 5th wedding anniversary and it makes me appreciate the ancestors throughout history who have engaged in the rite of marriage—some with a church wedding, some with a civil service, and some without a formal ceremony but living under “common law”. Occasionally, an ancestor might have been born out of wedlock and his/her parents separated, such as in my case with my great grandmother, but most of my known ancestors took the plunge and made a vow to be bound in marriage. Many were fortunate to celebrate numerous years together—hopefully, happy ones. While I have information about when the marriage took place and perhaps a few statistics surrounding the event, for the most part, information about how they met or their courtship is absent. Continue reading
Relatively Speaking Blog 