When my dad first researched our family history, he drove to remote courthouses, libraries, and archives in search of dates, documents, or other traces of the Clark family that settled in Perry County, Ohio in the early 1820s.
I recently did remote research myself. Sitting seven hours away in Scranton, Pennsylvania I checked the Ohio Historical Society’s web page to find the death certificates of most of my great grandfather’s siblings. The organization has an index of death certificates filed between 1913 and 1944. Enter the name and county, and the web site pulls the volume and certificate number from its database.
Last week, my dad got back in the car and drove two hours to the state archives. Armed with the certificate numbers that I gave him, Dad easily found microfilm copies of the death records. I got them in the mail yesterday. Deaths in 1922, 1933, 1936, and 1940.
My ancestors – and their relatives – never could have imagined that it would be possible to learn so much about them so quickly and so easily from anywhere in the world.
I just returned from a visit to Palmerton, Pennsylvania, a town of just more than 5,000 people in Carbon County. I drove to Palmerton today to attend a grave marking ceremony for the Sons of the American Revolution. Descendants of Conrad Solt – two separate branches – discovered each other while researching his grave. Today, the two families (I’m not related) met for the first time and placed a small marker to honor their ancestor and to preserve his record of service in the American Revolution.
As we stood in the churchyard cemetery, we talked about the history of the area. During the Revolutionary War era, residents used the Blue Mountains as a barrier to escape attacks from hostile Native Americans. Tracking families through the years means searching in communities on both sides of the mountain.
I looked up at the mountain towering above us. Farms dotted the sides of the surrounding hillsides, and trees and fields covered most of the scenery. The church was at the end of the road leading out of town. I realized this was similar to the way the area appeared 220 years ago, as Conrad Solt began his life after the Revolution. In fact, this resembled most towns in the early United States.
I sometimes bemoan the fact that I’m not in a large metropolitan city. I see it as encouraging, and inhibiting, my travel. My trip today was a reminder that most of America both now, and throughout its history, is small towns. Many of us, and our families, end up in tiny churchyards. The vibrant cities, while exciting, aren’t solely America.
