ROOTS & BRANCHES

When I was a teen-ager, one of my annual “buys” as far as books was the Guinness Book of World Records. I was fascinated by the tallest, oldest, shortest, biggest—all the superlatives that the book profiled.

And ever since then, my ears always prick up when I hear someone’s feat has been recognized by the Guinness book (although, upon reflection, there are plenty of “records” that never made it into any of these volumes).

So, that got me thinking—what about the “records” in own ancestral pedigree? Here are a few of them:

• A logical one is “Longest-Lived Ancestor” and that’s my great-great-grandfather Wellington Bickel Machmer, who reached the age of 94 before he died in 1943, and was the first of at least three consecutive generations of nonagenarians (the other two of which, alas, are not in my direct line … a potential fourth generation is still kicking in his 70s).
• Then, sadly, there’s my “Shortest-Lived Ancestor,” who is Luella Emma Frederick Hiester, my mother’s mother who died at just 27 of galloping consumption (tuberculosis)
• My “Most Distant Ancestor in Time” would be Ludwig Enders, an ancestor of my Kirschner family in Langenselbold, Hessen, Germany, whose burial suggests a birthdate in the late 1400s.
• Then there’s the coveted “Oldest Extant Tombstone for an Ancestor” category, which is a virtual tie between Stephan Brecht, who died in 1746, and Leonhard Rieth (1747). I guess I can break this up into father’s side and mother’s side but both of them are on my father’s side. Earliest date on a mother’s side stone for me is Yost Hiester, who died in 1780 but his tombstone notes it was “established by Catharine Hiester” (likely a daughter), and the marble of his memorial only appears to date from the 19^th century.
• My “First Soldier Ancestor” is likely many-greats-grandfather Martin Walborn, who fought in the 1710s in the colonial Queen Anne’s War phase of the British-French conflicts that culminated in the French and Indian War.
• My “Richest Ancestor?” is probably my great-great-grandfather Henry William Beidler, who built a western Berks County, Pennsylvania, farm empire (OK, part of what he “built” was from his mother-in-law Sarah Zeller Kintzer) before an untimely death of typhoid at age 50 in 1871.
• Then there’s “Longest Married,” which goes to the aforementioned Wellington Machmer and his wife Emma Rebecca Dehart Machmer. They were married from Oct. 17, 1874, until her death in 1941—66 years and some change!
• And what about a subject category of “Most Favorite Ancestor?” Well, I’m going to go with my fifth-great-grandfather Conrad Beidler, if only for the fact that I’ve been asked to portray his “spirit” several times at a house he built in the 1780s. Based on a few photographs of his descendants in other Beidler lines, I’m thinking I might even resemble him, too!