ROOTS & BRANCHES

When you’re doing your best to adhere to orders to stay at home, one of thing you can do is take stock of … well, what’s at home.

For me that resonates all the more since I spent more than half my life—the first 18 years and the last 16—is my present home on a six-acre tract in Berks County.

And now spending so much time in its midst has me running through the many vestiges of my family contained here, which is probably appropriate since this year marks a full century that one or another member of my family has owned this house.

A lot of those vestiges involve my mother, Mildred Mae Hiester Beidler, and that’s fitting since she spent from birth until well into her 70s in the house.

There’s her cradle from when she was an infant, lovingly refinished and restored some years ago.

As well as a four-generation picture, taken when my mother was just a baby, the only time it could have been taken since her mother died the year after my mother’s birth.

There’s her secretary-style desk, with many of its nooks and crannies still filled with her papers and memorabilia, including a copy of the speech she gave as salutatorian of her eighth-grade class.

And then there are afghans she lovingly knitted over many years. Probably the best presence of my dad is his La-Z-Boy chair, which is my comfortable spot (when I’m not outside on an Adirondack chair).

Then there are other items, such as a Victrola record player from the 1910s, which must have been hauled by or on behalf of my great-great-grandparents Wellington B. and Emma R. (Dehart) Machmer, the first members of my family to own the property,

I even look at things such as the door moldings; you can tell which ones are original to the 1870 construction of the house that contrast with ones that came with renovations such as when my parents put in a bathroom in the 1950s.

There are four bedrooms in the house and over time I’ve worked my way around all of them, finally occupying the master bedroom.

And then there’s the part about the six acres … I like to occasionally go on “perimeter walks”—seeing how trees have changed and where the latest groundhog hole is.

I also like to think about what I’ve heard the property looked lie years ago. A couple of acres were once an orchard. There were many more outbuildings on the acreage (the barn and an outhouse remain!)

On one side of that perimeter is a road that’s been a property line since 1751.

Now that’s a sense of the greater history.

Beidler is a freelance writer and lecturer on genealogy. Contact him by e-mail to james@beidler.us. Like him on Facebook (James M. Beidler) and follow him on Twitter, @JamesMBeidler.