That Day I Fell Out of an Airplane

The picture below shows me and my Uncle Steve (my mother's brother). It was taken in 1972 in Miami, Florida.

As a little girl, when I would see this picture in our photo album, I was told that I had fallen out of an airplane, and my Uncle Steve was fortunately there to catch me. :-) Best story ever!!



If you look closely, you can see the old-school pacifier I wore on a ribbon around my neck. My mom tells me that one day, I put it somewhere safe, and the spot was so safe that no one ever saw it again. I'm also told that one day I took her wedding ring and stowed it safely outside in the yard in the grass. Amazingly (and the reason that I am still alive to tell the tale), the ring was found!

Anyway, back to the picture - if you squint and look even more closely, you can see that I have an actual real-life diaper pin holding my diaper on! Now there's something you don't see around, unless you watch old Bugs Bunny or Three Stooges episodes. I remember those diaper pins, they were big and had a plastic or metal cover on the one end that was pastel-y in color (I guess so it didn't look so much like a safety pin).

I'm so happy to have this picture!!

Wordy Wednesday - 13 April 2011

I had a request to provide some more information on the photo I posted this last wednesday for Wordless Wednesday - so here goes!

First off, here's the pic:


It's from black and white film negatives that belong to my grandfather. Hand-written on the paper they were wrapped in is "Sept 1958".

Of course, it has to be kept in mind that it could be that the film was developed in September of 1958, the pictures weren't necessarily taken then. BUT, I also had a roll that had "Aug 1958" written on it, so I didn't think it was too far behind in time.

In 1958, my grandparents lived in East Palestine, Ohio. And, on the "Aug 1958" roll, there were pictures from a family trip to New York City.

So, my guess would be that this is a picture from the trip home to Ohio from New York City. I can't tell from the landscape where exactly this picture was taken, although I have seen many scenes like this on my trips on the turnpike in PA between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and on my trips driving north from Philadelphia to Binghamton NY.

The car on the road, is (I believe), a 1953 Chrysler Windsor 2-door. This conclusion is based on a conversation with a guy I work with who's hobby is working on cars. He showed me a picture that we matched to the back of this car so I'm pretty convinced. But I'm willing to consider other suggestions as always!!

When I look at the possible route using mapquest, I see that it's basically a straight line between the two places! I had no idea.



That road that is highlighted across PA is Interstate 80. The history of that road that I found on wikipedia notes that a small part of the road (near NJ/PA border) was completed in 1953, but other parts of it were not even started until 1959! So this easy highway crossing of PA would not have been possible in 1958.

If I go to google maps and do the same destinations but tell it to avoid highways, it doesn't look that different:


BUT, even though it looks similar, when looking at the route steps for this, there are a LOT of different roads used, so there's no one road that this picture is likely from.

So then! Conclusion then is:

It's likely the photograph was taken sometime between August-September 1958 while the family was in the car driving from NYC to East Palestine, Ohio.

As a point of reference as well, here are the photographs that were taken right before and after the one shown above:

Mary Ellen Cook has been Found

Back in December I posted on my 2nd great-grandmother, Mary Ellen COOK. She's been one of my brick walls since I started genealogy.

To sum up that post, it turned out that she wasn't Mary Ellen COOK after all. She was Mary Ellen WEAVER, who grew up living with a family named COOK.

After that, I sent away to New York State for a copy of her death certificate, and lo and behold, they sent it to me after only 3 months! Way faster than the last time I tried ordering something from them. Now I'm encouraged to order more stuff!

Anyway, her death certificate arrived last week and it was all I could hope for - it listed her parents names and where they were born. Joy! The informant was Mary's son Wesley who she had lived with for many years (her husband John MIX had passed away in 1906.

So here is the information I wanted all these years on Mary's parents:



"FINNEY" is a brand new surname to me, sounds Irish! I searched around to see if there was anything easily found on Almira and Thomas on ancestry and the internet and there isn't that I can see (yet). Both Mary and her mom Almira are listed as being born in Cooperstown, NY.

And Poughkeepsie as a birthplace for Thomas! That's also a new county for me, all this time I've been limited to a few counties in the Finger Lakes region of New York - now I have some interest way over in Dutchess county in southeastern NY (near the Hudson river).

There's a bit of confusion surround her birth year. The death certificate lists "Feb 19th, 1839" as her birth date. The age is listed out as "85 Years, 11 Months, 24 Days". I had had "1840" as the birth year from her gravestone. I figured the gravestone would be the one that had a typo but wasn't sure.


So I went to the super awesome WolframAlpha search engine site that does math and stuff for me and entered "feb 19 1839 - jan 13 1925". The death date is right off her death certificate as well.


So somebody was wrong somewhere. I have to admit, I would have messed up figuring out years/months/days for people as well. Whenever I do math I seem to lose interest somewhere in the middle and start thinking about flowers or sparkly things.

hmm...sparkly...


...things...


...things that sparkle...










I'm sorry, I've lost track of what I was writing about! :-)

Oh yeah, so I don't know for sure if Mary was born in 1839 or 1840. For now, I'm going to leave 1839 in my records with a notation about the chance of it being 1840.

And so with all that, I no longer have a Mary Ellen COOK brickwall! Now it's time for some new research on my new surnames!

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Can you believe I've been blogging for 3 years? In internet years that's like 152 years, right?

Coming up with posts is not always easy, but everything is so wonderfully worth it when I get those emails from relatives that have discovered me through a blog post - it actually happened twice within the past few months!! To me, happiness comes from sharing the research I've done and to know that it actually helped someone fill in a few holes? Well, that's pure bliss! :-)


In the meantime though, I'll do what lots of other people do on their blogiversaries, I'll share some, well, unusual search terms that have brought people to my blog!

1. "the left side of my brain hurts after a night of drinking"

Huh. I'm...sorry to hear that?

2. "stuffed cabbage and manwich"

How is it possible someone would specifically combine 2 foods I greatly dislike into one search phrase? The only thing worse would have been "stuffed cabbage, manwich and lima beans". Blech!

3. "some informetion about drowing tool bar"

I think that maybe you should search for a spellchecker first.

4. "inbred island"

I really can't take the blame for this one. I know I post a lot of weird phrases and topics, but I am sure I've never discussed this.

5. "I hate physics"

If only you were with me during the day when I tease one of my co-workers who just so happens to have a degree in physics - I like to tell him that "I don't believe in physics" because it makes so sense to me. :-) What are the chances I'd get a search term like this?

6. "caught wearing diapers by my mother"

Well, I'm sorry for you. And I'm also sorry for your mother.

7. "hunky steak"

Wow!! This is the name of a recipe that my grandmother made and taught to her kids so now I know it - you take stew meat and dump ketchup on it and let it simmer in the pan forever - cheap and delicious, we'd serve it with egg noodles. Ok, ok, here I am saying that reduced ketcup is good on meat when I turn my nose up at Manwich, but hey, it's my blog, I can say what I want. Anyway, I always figured it was a recipe left over from the depression and that it was made up by my grandmother. Maybe there are others out there? Maybe it was a recipe on a bottle of ketchup at one time. I'll have to investigate!


Anyway, thanks to all of my readers that stop by, I appreciate all of you and your comments!!

Benjamin Pennypacker House

There is a newly opened little park nearby where I live - they created paths through farmland. I took a walk back there when we had some late spring temperatures a couple weeks ago and it was very lovely.

Something cool I happened to notice way back on a path was this:

For all you young whippersnappers out there, it's an old-school aluminum can where you didn't just pull the tab to open it and safely push down the piece that breaks for the opening, all rounded corners and safe...This was the old days of sharp metal and danger lurking around every corner! We'd pull that tab completely off and toss it with reckless abandon so that later when we were in our bare feet, we'd be running and stomp on the razor sharp metal edges of the pulled off tab! Yay for Summers Past!!!

Also, there's the question of just how it got there - I like to imagine the farmer would bring a six-pack or two with him when he went out on his tractor or combine or whatever and would toss a few back and then just hurl the empties in the creek. All so I could notice them 30 years later.

Anyway, what I actually for real wanted to show all of you was the uninhabited house that is on the grounds of this former farm/new park. I've driven past it for years and always liked it, it looks like a lot of the old houses in Southeastern PA, we're lucky in this area that a lot of colonial houses have survived.

Here is the front of the house (that faces the road), it faces North/NorthEast:


Here is the front of the house and the western side:



This is the back of the house, facing South/SouthEast. I love the extra windows built in to give more light into the cellar. You don't know how hard it was for me not to totally break into the place, but I held myself back:


The East facing side:


And finally, the west facing side.



All outbuildings are gone, there's no barn or stable or anything like that, but there is a hand-built stone barbecue in the backyard, with the initials "L.H." and the year "1956". As you can see, it's a pretty big house, so it must have belonged to someone prosperous.




It was the barbecue that got me going. I wondered who "L.H." was and what kind of fun backyard parties the "H" family had in the 1950s and 60s.

First thing I had to figure out was the address! There's no number on the house, I just knew it was on Swedesford Road. It just so happens that Swedesford Road is one of the oldest roads in the state of Pennsylvania. It's named for a ford over the Schuylkill River named "Swede's Ford" that used to exist over in Norristown (a small city/town in the northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia). The road started there, and meandered west until it met up with Lancaster Pike (another old road). Some of Swedesford is completely missing today due to highway expansions and such, but a lot of it is right where it always has been. This is one of those pieces.

I went over to google map and found it there (see my red circle on the screenshot below) - Google told me it was 899 E. Swedesford Road. I poked around on the internet and found that really, it's 800 E. Swedesford Road and I even found mention of it in the township meeting minutes - they noted that it was not structurally safe to have the general public in there, AND, I found it was on the National Register and is called the Benjamin Pennypaker House.



So now that I had a good idea of what the place looked like from above, I went on over to ancestry to see if they had a map of the area that listed landowners.

And, Voila! (If only research for my own family went this easy!) :-)

Ancestry has the 1873 Chester County landowners maps available and I found my house, and so also found the name of the owner in 1873. It's the big red circle below. The little red circles are houses from this map that I know for sure still exist because I see them all the time (just thought that was interesting).


So now I know my Benjamin Pennypacker/L.H. house belonged to a "Jn W Stone" in 1873.

I also checked the 1883 version of Chester County landowners maps that Ancestry had and he was there too, and this map showed just how much land he owned!



Also, the little triangles next to the red circled black dot (our house) mean a "framed" building according to this map, so I would guess that was the barn and another outbuilding. The filled in black dot means a stone building. And they listed the owner as "John W. Stone".


Now of course, we can look at the 1870 census to find a John W. Stone and yep, he's there, along with an absolute boatload of people living in his house. It appears to be John and his wife, 4 of their kids (aged 16 - 4), John's Mom, 2 other Stone relatives (nieces maybe?), some random 15 yr old girl, a guy who works on the farm, and a domestic servant (and her daughter). That's 13 people folks. You thought it was a big house, but I bet it wasn't that big when you have 5 adults and 8 kids running around in it! Yikes!!

Oh, and John is a "Farmer and Merchant".

I found John and Hannah 10 years later in the 1880 census in the same house, down to having only 10 people living in the house (kids, boarders and servants). John's occupation is now "Government Store Keeper". Hmm. I'll have to look into that.

After that? Nothing. Can't find the Stone's. I found who I might think is their son, but he's living up in Reading, PA in 1900 and I can't confirm yet that it's him. And I don't know who they would have sold the house to so I'm still not sure who "L.H." is.

I also tried going backwards a bit to see if I could find the Pennypacker family. In the 1860 Federal Census, John and Hannah are in that house again, so I know the Stone family was at 800 E. Swedesford Road from at least 1860 - 1880. The house is echoing and empty with only 7 people living in it - John and Hannah, 3 of their kids, and 2 other children from Ireland (?) - don't know if they were relatives, servants, boarders, or what.

And before that? too many Pennypackers for me to nail down my specific house, and the census information gets less detailed.

So this is what I could find with just searching on the internet. This will have to be something I save up and make a trip to the Chester County Historical Society for.

It's nice though, when I drive by the house now I know where the barn was, and I know there were a whole lot of people running in and out of that house (and probably a lot of laundry hanging out back) for a good 20 years. I know that several kids would have spent a lot of time out in the land owned by their father, probably walking right where I've been walking on the trails. Hopefully they weren't drinking their father's beer and tossing the bottles into the creeks though.