Although I never lived there, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, where my parents grew up, is very dear to me. Located in Schuylkill County in northeastern Pennsylvania, Tamaqua was a coal and railroad town. It was settled in 1799 by my ancestor Burkhardt Moser. Tamaqua has a historical society (of which one...
Archives

Land Records Showed the Way
One of the first stumbling blocks I encountered in my research was the family of my great-great-great-grandfather Peter Andrews (1814-1882), father of my great-great-grandmother Rebecca (Andrews) Whetstone, who married Absalom K. Whetstone of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. A handy county-history biography of one of Rebecca and Absalom’s sons-in-law revealed the...

Sakusky DNA–Segment Data!
These are my great-grandparents Anthony Sakusky (1878-1921) and Cecelia “Tillie” Buscavage (1883-1922). They lived inShenandoah and Tamaqua, coal and railroad towns in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Anthony was a coal miner. Both Anthony and Tillie were born in Lithuania, but neither left documents specifying their family places of origin. Tillie...

An “Easter Egg” in Some Pittsburgh Church Records
Sometimes in computer software we find an Easter egg–“an intentional inside joke, a hidden message, or a secret feature of an interactive work (often, a computer program, video game or DVD menu screen). Apparently they occur in online genealogical...

In Honor of Labor Day 2017
For Labor Day 2016, I wrote a blog post highlighting ancestors who belonged to labor unions. For 2017, I thought I’d highlight a few labor-related resources I’ve found helpful in researching my ancestors who worked in northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal industry. Ancestry, “Pennsylvania, Coal Employment Records, 1900-1954“ This collection...
