Year: 2014

2014 in Review

Kris Hocker on 31 Dec 2014

Top 10

On this last day of 2014, it’s time to take a look back. I don’t have specific goals for this website—other than to provide access to my family research. So, how did I do?

In 2014, I wrote 63 new posts with most posts being written in January—April and July—September. May, June and December were my worst months. Here is how the year stacked up:

  • January — 10 posts
  • February — 7 posts
  • March — 4 posts
  • April — 4 posts
  • May — 1 post
  • June — 2 posts
  • July — 13 posts
  • August — 9 posts
  • September —6 posts
  • October — 2 posts
  • November — 3 posts
  • December — 2 posts (including this one)

My longest writing streak? 2 days in a row.

I started the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge at the beginning of last year. The goal was to write a post about an ancestor each week. Although I started off well, my participation was rather hit or miss. I posted my last contribution at the beginning of September.

All told, I only wrote 22 posts for the challenge, less than 50% of the goal. Because I preferred to write about something new that I’d learned about each ancestor, it wound up being too time consuming. If I had just written about what I already knew, maybe I would have been more consistent. Sigh. I much prefer the hunt for new information and the reward of finding it over documenting it.

Although I didn’t write very often. I did receive more than 19,000 page views. All things considered that’s not too shabby for this little blog. Here are the ten most viewed pages of 2014:

  1. Andreas Huber (1723—1784) (#8 in 2013)
  2. Pennsylvania Warrant Township Maps (#9 in 2013)
  3. Andreas Huber Origins: Trippstadt, Ellerstadt, or Ittlingen? (#5 in 2013)
  4. Friday Finds: Trinity Lutheran Birth and Baptismal Records Online (#4 in 2013)
  5. Huber Immigrants (#7 in 2013)
  6. Jacob Hoover (ca 1746—1800) (#6 in 2014)
  7. Lancaster County Deed Books Online
  8. How to Use Online Land Records at the PA State Archives (#3 in 2013)
  9. Pennsylvania Genealogical County Map (#2 in 2013)
  10. Home Page/Archives (#1 in 2013)

Once again, most of these pages made the list in 2012 and 2013. It’s not surprising that the general information posts were popular. Nor is it a shock that the Huber family posts made this list—since the Hoover surname is one of my most researched!

I believe that more of those visitors who viewed the Andreas and Jacob Huber posts were more than likely looking for information on the ancestor of President Herbert Hoover. However, they do provide valuable information for the descendants of Andrew Hoover of Fayette County, Pennsylvania—who is frequently confused with the president’s immigrant ancestor. Although I’ve determined that I’m not a descendant, I’m glad I did the research and shared the results.

So, that’s a look at my blogging for 2014. What did your year look like?

Coming Soon in Print

Kris Hocker on 17 Dec 2014

Lancaster PA Online Deeds Books A-D

Lanc Co PA Deed Index

An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds

I’ve been working on a print version of my An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760. The proofing for the print format is almost complete. I want to review it one last time in hard copy, then it should be available for purchase through Lulu.com and eventually Amazon and other book sellers.

The book includes indexes arranged by both grantor and grantee, the location of the land or type of deed (i.e. mortgage), and, if provided, the name of the spouse. It also includes both the deed book page number and the online film image number for easy access to the appropriate online image file. It will be sized 8.5″ x 11″ for easy skimming.

Stay tuned for the announcement.

An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760 is now available as a paperback book. You can purchase it on Lulu.com for $14.95.

1702 Marriage of John Jones & Margaret Waterman

Kris Hocker on 17 Nov 2014

I’ve been researching and gathering information on John Jones of Philadelphia, because I think I may be descended from him—although at this time it’s a really big leap. So, I’ve been searching through the Quaker meeting records on Ancestry, looking to document information that I’ve found in online forums.

One of the items I’m searching for is the maiden name of John Jones Jr.’s wife. According to an abstract of John Jones Sr.’s will, his son John was married to a woman named Margaret as of 28 Feb 1708. According to the Quaker meeting records, John Jones married Margaret Waterman. They announced their intention to marry on 29 Jan 1702 and again on 26 Feb 1702:

John Jones and Margaret Waterman appeared at this Meeting Declaring thier Intentions of Marriage with each other it being the first time Sarah Goodson and Hannah Carpenter are appointed to Enquire concerning her Clearness and make report thereof to the next monthly.1

I was surprised by the date. My understanding was that John Jones (the father) married Margaret Waterman, widow of Humphrey Waterman, in 1696 and had their first child in 1697. What was with the 1702 date?

My confusion soon cleared, however, when I found the actual marriage record. It reads:

Whereas John Jones Son of John Jones of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania Merchant & Margaret Waterman Daughter of Humphrey Waterman late of the same place deceased having declared their intentions of taking Each other in Marriage before Several Monthly Meetings of the people of God called Quakers in Philadelphia aforesd according to the good order used amongst them Whose proceedings thereinafter due deliberation thereof and consent of parties and relations concerned they appearing clear of all others were approved by the said Meetings Now this is to certify all whom it may concern that for a full accomplishment of their said Intentions this Eleventh day of the first Month in the year according to the English account one Thousand Seven hundred & two they the said John Jones & Margaret Waterman appeared in a publick & solemn assembly of the aforesaid people mett together att their publick meeting house in Philadelphia aforesaid and in a solemn manner according to the Example of the holy men of God recorded in Scriptures of Truth He the said John Jones taking her the said Margaret Waterman by the hand declared as followeth (viz.) Friends In the Fear of the Lord and before this Assembly I take this my friend Margaret Waterman to be my Wife promising through the Lords assistance to be a failthfull & Loving husband till it shall please the Lord by death to Separate and then & there in the said Assembly the said Margaret Waterman Likewise declared as followeth (viz.) Friend In fear of God & before this Assembly I take this my friend John Jones to be my husband promising through gods assistance to be a faithfull & loving wife till it shall please God by death to Separate us and for a further confirmation thereof they the said John Jones & Margaret Waterman now (assuming the name of her husband) Margaret Jones did then & there to these presents sett their hands and we whose Names are here underwritten being present amongst others att the Solemnization of their said Marriage & Subscription as aforesaid have also to these presents as witnesses thereunto subscribed our Names the day & year above written2

The marriage intentions and marriage record refer to John Jones Jr. and Margaret Waterman, daughter of Humphrey Waterman. The couple signed the record “John Jones Junr.” and “Margaret Jones Junr.” Then—it appears to me—the family members signed after them.

  • John Jones Senr
  • Margaret Jones Senr
  • Jane Waterman
  • Richd Jones
  • Saml Jones
  • Marcy Waterman
  • Eliza Waterman
  • Grace Jones
  • Yeamans & Mary Gillingham

These names seem to be consistent with the family members of John Jones, merchant, of Philadelphia who came from Barbados in 1683, and his wife Margaret, formerly the widow of Humphrey Waterman, who also came to Philadelphia from Barbados. Furthermore, I also found the record of the marriage between John Jones [Sr.] of Philadelphia and Margaret Waterman in the records of the Abington Monthly Meeting. It was recorded in the minutes of the meeting on 30 Nov [9th mo] 1696.3

I’m not sure how Yeamans & Mary Gillingham fit in, but their names are grouped with the rest of the family members, so I expect I’ll be researching them, too.

Liturgical Days to Remember

Kris Hocker on 4 Nov 2014

I’ve been reading communion lists and calculating dates recently. Here are some of the days I saw that I had to look up.

  • Easter (calendar)
  • Quasimodo Sunday (aka “St. Thomas Sunday”): 1st Sunday after Easter
  • Misericordia Sunday: 4th Sunday of Easter
  • Cantate Sunday: 4th Sunday after Easter
  • Rogate Sunday: 5th Sunday after Easter
  • Pentecost (aka “Whitsunday”): 50th day after Easter (calendar)
  • Trinity Sunday: 1st Sunday after Pentecost (calendar), 8 weeks after Easter

Many of the lists indicated the date of the church service by the number of Sundays after Trinity, making it a useful date to know.

Update: William H. Hocker & the Aetna Explosives Co.

Kris Hocker on 3 Nov 2014

Aetna Explosives Co. Crew, ca 1916?

I was finally able to review Harrisburg city directories to see when my great grandfather was living in the city. I hoped that they would narrow the window for his possible employment at the Aetna Explosives Company in Mt. Union, Pennsylvania. It didn’t narrow the timeframe nearly as much as I was hoping it would.

William H. and Isobel A. Hocker were living at 35 N. 18th Street in 1915.1 The directory does not give a date of publishing beyond the year, but Jun 8, 1915 is stamped on the table of contents, indicating that it was published before this date. By the time the 1916 city directory was compiled, William and family were no longer living in Harrisburg.2 Nor were they listed in the 1917 city directory.3

So, sometime between the birth of his first child in May and the compiling/publishing of the 1916 Harrisburg city directory, Will was likely hired to work at the Aetna explosives plant. Unless, of course, he worked somewhere else outside Harrisburg first.

This timeline means that he very likely could have been working at the Aetna Explosives Plant in Mt. Union at the time of the 21 Sep 1916 explosion. He doesn’t reappear in the Harrisburg city directory until 1918—which has Jul 19, 1918 stamped on the table of contents.4 He was most likely back in Harrisburg before that date.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know which explosion the family story refers to.

Going Pink

Kris Hocker on 1 Oct 2014

The site is going pink for breast cancer awareness month in honor of all those family members who are surviving breast cancer and those who have  been lost.

Friday Find: Reviews in History

Kris Hocker on 19 Sep 2014

Book lying open on desk

Book lying open on deskLooking for some of the sources used in Our Daily Bread, German Village Life, 1500-1850, I found the Reviews in History website. While books reviews may not be an ideal source, I was able to pick up several nuggets of information from reviews of books by Sheilagh Ogilvie. Obviously, the book itself would be a better source—or the original documents referenced in the work—but when you can’t get the book (or can’t afford it; some of these textbooks are expensive!)—a discussion of the content may provide some valuable information you might otherwise not have found. For instance, I learned that “Women could work in guilded occupations only if they were the wife of a master or if they were a guild master’s widow, and had inherited his guild licence.”1 This provided a possible source of income for the widow of my ancestor—a shoemaker in his village—and explained one reason why she might have been able to wait several years to remarry, even with a household of young children.

Book Review: Our Daily Bread Gaining Insight into German Village Life

Kris Hocker on 18 Sep 2014

Church at German village Haag


I’ve been working on “A Hacker-Hocker Family” recently and decided I needed to add flavor to the narrative. I wanted to provide some social and historical context to help bring my ancestors to life as real people.

Since most of my ancestors were German and continued their customs and traditions, bringing their way of life to the New World when they immigrated, I needed to understand life in a German village. Unfortunately, while there are scads of information about historical events and personages, I wasn’t able to find much on the day-to-day lives of the common people—people like my ancestors.

Until, that is, I found Teva Scheer’s book Our Daily Bread: German Village Life, 1500-1850 (affiliate link). The author created a fictitious village called Hochfeld am Neckar in southwestern Germany and tells the story of village life through the events in the life of her main character, Johann Adam Mann, his family, ancestors, and neighbors.

The book sets the groundwork in the first three chapters, covering peasant status, religion, and war. It, then, expands to cover family, “the daily aspects of villagers’ lives: their families, livelihoods, inheritance customs, self-governance practices, and village institutions such as the school.”1 And finally, the author wrote about the immigration experience, both leaving Germany and settling in America.

Although as the author claims, “this is not an academic work,” she does provide extensive footnotes throughout the content and a bibliography at the end. While most of the events she wrote about occur in the 1800s, they are still applicable to earlier generations. Nor does she ignore earlier historical events that shaped the villagers lives—the Reformation, the 30 Years War.

The book was both informative and easy-to-read. I bought the Kindle ebook, but it is available in paperback, as well. I would recommend it to any genealogist with German ancestors.

Buy Our Daily Bread: German Village Life, 1500-1850

This is an affiliate link. If you purchase the book by clicking this link, Amazon will pay me a little money. It won’t affect the price you pay.

Follow-up: Aetna Explosives Co. at Mount Union

Kris Hocker on 12 Sep 2014

Will Hocker - Aetna Explosives Co. Crew
Will Hocker - Aetna Explosives Co. Crew

Will Hocker – Aetna Explosives Co. Crew?

Last week I wrote a post about the September 1916 explosion at the Aetna Explosives Company’s factory in Mount Union, Pennsylvania. Following up with additional newspaper research, I found that this explosion wasn’t the first, nor was it the last. Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together regarding the history of this factory. 1

Timeline:

1915

  • Week of May 19, 1915: Purchased Westbrook farm
  • 25 May 1915: William Hocker’s first child was born in Harrisburg
  • 1 July 1915: Plant scheduled to open
  • 14 July 1915: Two workmen died in accident
  • 16 August 1915: Started manufacturing explosives
  • 15 September 1915: Factory started manufacturing gun cotton
  • 24 September 1915: Workmen burned by acid when ringer exploded, one man seriously burned
  • 5 October 1915: Four workmen badly burned on their faces and bodies by acid in accident
  • 14 October 1915: Plant was looking for 1,500 workmen (1,000 carpenters) to expand
  • 11 November 1915: First shipment of gun cotton, 150,000 pounds, sent out
  • 18 November 1915: Started manufacturing smokeless gun power
  • 22 November 1915: Ether room at the factory exploded
  • 2 December 1915: Broke ground for factory expansion
  • 19 December 1915: Footbridge to factory washed away after flooding in the Juniata River

1916

  • 7 January 1916: Solvent Recovery Building No. 3 burned down
  • 14 January 1916: Fire at factory
  • 16 January 1916: Fire in the “screen barrel house” at factory; third fire in one week
  • 25 March 1916: Powder plant almost a year old
  • 26 April 1916: Worker Harry Pierson lost his right hand at wrist when it was caught under a hydraulic press
  • 16 May 1916: Three fires overnight in cotton drying building
  • 2 July 1916: Explosion at least one dead2
  • 29 July 1916: Aetna received order for 5 million pounds of smokeless power from U.S. government
  • 12 September 1916: H. Subree, an Aetna chemist, was bitten by a copperhead snake
  • 20 September 1916: Six men killed and many injured in explosion in the cotton dry house
  • 2 October 1916: Powder plant closed down
  • 12 October 1916: Plant planned to open to manufacture dyes and sulphuric acid
  • 16 October 1916: Last smokeless powder manufactured
  • 21 November 1916: Powder plant to reopen with large order for explosives, planned to hire 1,500-2,300 men
  • 2 December 1916: Powder plant resumed operations

1917

  • 17 January 1917: Solvent recovery building completely destroyed by fire, no one was badly hurt
  • 18 April 1917: Debtors applied for receiver to be named for Aetna Explosives Company
  • 30 April 1917: Acid tank exploded, badly burning six men, one of whom—David Sollenberger—later died
  • 5 Jun 1917: William Hocker registered for the draft and was working at the factory as a millwright
  • 17 July 1917: Two men—Lew Port and John Flasher—were seriously burned in an explosion at the plant
  • 24 December 1917: Fire at the plant caused about $60,000 worth of damage
  • 29 December 1917: Citizens of Mount Union signed up to become members of the local Red Cross chapter

1918

  • 19 January 1918: Seven state policemen arrived to guard two million pounds of TNT powder
  • 2 July 1918: Seven buildings were destroyed by raging fire at the plant, however there was no loss of life
  • 13 July 1918: 300 men arrived to repair the damaged building and expand the plant
  • 15 July 1918: Nine men were injured, possibly five fatally, by explosion in the gun cotton building

 

My great grandfather was working at the Aetna Explosives Company manufacturing plant at Mount Union by 5 Jun 1917.3 In reading through the news reports on the company after that date, I see nothing that matches the family story. There were fires that destroyed buildings and resultant injuries, but no loss of life. I can’t imagine that there would have been no news coverage of an explosion that killed workers.

So, if the explosion my grandfather told me about didn’t happen after 5 June 1917, then it must have happened before that date. Again, in 1917, I found reference to explosions, fires and burn injuries, but only one casualty is mentioned—David Sollenberger in April 1917. The only explosion that resulted in multiple deaths that was reported consistently in the Pennsylvania newspapers I reviewed was the September 1916 explosion.

There was a mention in the Gettysburg Star & Sentinel of an explosion in October 1916 that killed 19 men.4 This was also reported in the Chicago Livestock World in an article about another explosion in January 1917.5 This explosion seems a better match to the family lore.

However, I found no mention of the October 1916 explosion in Pennsylvania newspapers when I searched Chronicling America or the Google newspaper archive. With such a substantial loss of life, the lack of newspaper coverage seems very strange to me. Especially when the Harrisburg newspapers reported on the layoff of workers from Mt. Union and the “closing” of the factory that month and the reopening a month later.

I’d still like to review Harrisburg city directories to try to determine when my great grandfather and his family left Harrisburg for Newton-Hamilton. Maybe that’ll help narrow down the time frame to look for a historical match to the family story.

Updated 27 November 2016: Add a reader-sourced explosion and death (2 July 1916) to the timeline.