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Hello PA Friends,

How about a lazy Saturday morning email this week? Someone hacked my paancestors.com email, so that was an unexpected issue to deal with end of this week. I have my ancestorspa@gmail.com email as a back-up, so not a crisis, but annoying none the less. I got to visit the Moravian Archives this week in Bethlehem and see some of there treasures. I'm always in awe of seeing people's handwriting from hundreds of years ago and so glad I got the chance to see some of their records.

🗺 History Highlight

As you research your Pennsylvania ancestors and narrow in to the county (or counties) they lived in, there’s some easy ways to learn the history. I’ll be covering these through August, so here we go!

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) has been erecting markers for significant people, events, and places in PA since 1914. The oldest signs are cast iron, and now they are aluminum. They have a couple sentences on the historical event, person, or place, which is enough to launch future research. Some have gone missing over the years, but they are still recorded in the database.

If you are trying to get oriented to your ancestors’ county, they are a great way to get the highlights of famous people, landmarks, and significant events. And since they are still being installed, they are more up-to-date than the county annals and biographies which were published at the turn of the 20th’s century.

If you go to PHMC’s home page, Marker Search is a main selection. You can narrow by keyword, county or topic. It takes several seconds for the results to come up, and be sure to scroll down. The PHMC also retires markers (but doesn’t necessarily remove them) so there are more markers out there than are in the database. Here’s one from the church where I went to preschool. I can imagine this whole event while standing in the church graveyard.

A second set of markers begun by PA’s Department of Transportation and now managed privately, are called Keystone Markers. These are much smaller and focused on places, but still could be valuable for your research. Their website is here.​

🔖 Featured Genealogy Record

Pennsylvania had some vital records go wrong over its 300+ year history. The first ones that went wrong were the birth, marriage, and death registrations in the Province of Pennsylvania. Very few people did them. The ones that survived were recorded in the Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd series. (These are the books, not to be confused with the Pennsylvania Archives building!)

County government recorded marriages are found in the Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd Series in the following volumes:

• Bucks County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume IX
• Chester County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume VIII
• Cumberland County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume VIII
• Dauphin County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume VIII
• Lancaster County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume IX
• Lehigh County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume IX
• Montgomery County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume VIII and IX
• Northampton County Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume IX
• Philadelphia City Marriages Prior to 1810, Volume VIII and IX
• Other counties Prior to 1810. Vols. I & II. Volume VIII, 1-790 and IX

The second vital record attempt that just didn’t work were the 1852-1854 registrations which I talked about in this podcast here.

The third time vital records went wrong, it actually worked out right for genealogists. Rare that a mistake works in our favor! When Pennsylvania started the Department of Health in 1905, it didn’t tell the counties and cities to stop doing their own birth and death registrations in 1906. So for a period of time, starting in 1906 when we had state birth and death certificates, we also had cities still doing their own registrations. Yes, we had two sets of records in some places!

The registrations for births and deaths would have be done by a city’s Board of Health or Department of Health. Some are on FamilySearch like this one for Philadelphia Birth Returns. (The Death Returns/Registrations that I refered to in the podcast seem be missing from FamilySearch, but the Philadelphia City Archives has them.) Always best to check with the local county or city itself to see what records remain.

🎙 What’s New on the Podcast

I tell the story in this week’s podcast of Philadelphia’s dual death certificates from 1906–1915 and how I figured out which was the “original original death certificate” and which was just the “original death certificate.” I know “original original” isn’t a real category, but listen to the story and see what you would call it.

🍬 Just for the Inner Circle

I’ve been inviting long-time supporters of the podcast to the Inner Circle this past week. And it will be opening later this fall to everyone. You could become a founding member too!

If you’ve ever felt like…

• You'd get your research done, if someone could just tell you where the records are.
• You want something different than Facebook groups.
• You have a lot of collected information, but not sure if you have everything.
• You could solve your own research problems with a little extra help.
• You want to compile and share your family history.

Then the Inner Circle is the place for you!

I will be opening up the Inner Circle to everyone this fall, but if you want to be one of the first people inside, this is your chance.

​Get on the waitlist here​

I've been sharing some Pennsylvania German proverbs on Instagram this week and this one is my favorite:

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