ROOTS & BRANCHES

Some of the best experiences, I’ve found, come out of a “think on your feet” type of situation. Case in point: I was invited to speak at the Dillman Family Association’s 20th Anniversary Genealogical Conference, held earlier this month in the Harrisburg area. The Dillmans, let me tell you, are no average family association! They …

Last week’s column ended with that frequent rejoinder to do more research, in this case on the Strunck family from the German town of Sprendlingen. Diligent readers of the column will recall I had researched the Struncks in the early 2000s, and that the Sprendlingen Protestant church registers were a mess of ink splotches. I …

A few weeks ago “Roots & Branches” reviewed Edna Barnett Chelson’s Our Pennsylvania German Families book, the 600-page door-stopper that contains her genealogy life’s work. I remarked in the second column about the book that the Strunck family we have in common came from the town of Sprendlingen, which now lies in the German state …

A subject to which I never tire of returning is fraktur—especially the private decorative birth and baptismal certificates of the Pennsylvania Germans. While my personal collection of such items is small, they are among my dearest possessions, which is probably due to the influence of one person whom I miss dearly: the late Corinne P. …