Who Was William Frank Byle?

| November 20, 2011

Recently I received an email inquiry from a reader who was asking me about his great-grandfather, William Frank Byle (1868 – 1933), who appears in my North Annville Genealogy. Specifically, he wanted to know how I had come to the conclusion that William Frank was the son of Henry Byle. He correctly pointed out that, [...]

Who Was Albrecht Deibler’s Wife?

| August 17, 2011

Albrecht Deibler was a known historical figure. He was also one of my 5th great-grandfathers. He was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, around 1726. Later he settled in what is now upper Dauphin County and established a homestead he called Horn Pipe. The Land Grant map of 1773 shows his 336-acre estate. During the Revolutionary [...]

Hey, I’m a Screenwriter!

| July 27, 2009

Today I watched The Blue Eyed Six documentary on DVD. The Blue Eyed Six were a group of six men, all of them coincidentally blue-eyed, who were arrested and indicted on first degree murder charges in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, in 1879. The motive for the murder was an insurance scheme which relied on life insurance [...]

Researching at the National Archives

| May 8, 2006

While researching my father’s native American ancestry, I had been contacted by a researcher in Minnesota, who had information about my great-grandfather’s first wife. In her correspondence, she referenced a tribal census. I asked her where she got that information, and she told me about how she and her husband had taken a week’s vacation [...]

Finding Priscilla Mark

| October 28, 2005

Early on in my genealogy research, I had found a set of our great-great-grandparents, John E. Mark and Dolly Snoke. The burials at Steelstown showed that John had been married previously to a woman named Mary, who died in 1865. When I researched the 1860 census, I discovered that John and Mary had a daughter, [...]