ROOTS & BRANCHES

This “Roots & Branches” column is one that I’ve been dying to write for almost the entire existence of “Roots & Branches.”

That’s because way back during my first stint as executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, I noted that a genealogy guidebook publication called the Pennsylvania Line had gone out of print.

Toward the end of that stint in 2003, I had gotten as far as putting together a table of contents for what I wanted to put in a publication I dubbed The Pennsylvania Genealogical Almanac. I even commissioned the legendary John T. Humphrey to write an article on Pennsylvania’s early church records—one of his many specialties—and dutifully held on to that article even after I left GSP and (later, much to my chagrin) after Humphrey passed a decade later.

Fast forward to 2021. Pennsylvania family historians were still without a guidebook, and I was back at GSP as interim executive director.

There were many things that were “job one,” but it wasn’t too long into my tenure that I revived the notion of such a publication, which at least initially would be a benefit of GSP membership.

I gained the special support of Kathryn Donohue from GSP’s executive committee, and she added greatly to the proposed content for the Almanac. I also enlisted Sean Kessler, a genealogy professional whose made his chops assisting me with research and a variety of publications, to put together one of the Almanac’s marquee items: A listing of all of Pennsylvania’s townships, past and present, including ones that no longer exist due to being divided into new townships not preserving the original name.

GSP President Valerie-Anne Lutz was also a supporter and she enlisted Katherine Bucher and Rebecca DeLuca to better format and edit the draft I had produced before I left my GSP post earlier this year.

But enough background information! The things that are really exciting are all the features put together in just one 300-page guidebook in a size that’s convenient for researchers to use at home and on research trips:

• repositories and organizations in Pennsylvania;
• online newspaper databases from leading sources;
• data on geography such as Native American trails and land records;
• county formation and township outline maps;
• Humphrey’s church records article as well as summary of major historical religious denominations;
• timeline of Pennsylvania’s vital records and substitutes;
• records relating to enslavement in Pennsylvania;
• DNA projects centering on Pennsylvania families;
• occupational records summary for agriculture and coal, and much more!

GSP members are expected to receive their copies in the mail from publisher Masthof by the middle of summer. For folks who are not GSP members, now’s a good time to sign up for membership on the GSP website, https://genpa.org/