Thursday, July 14, 2011

Oh so close...........

July 12.2011

   Today my husband and I made the trip from Upstate New York to New Ringgold, Pa., we were on the hunt for the Zehner family, one of the founding ancestors for my paternal side, the persons that we were looking for were Johann Adam Zehner and his wife Maria Catherine Mertz. When we arrived at the church which is on a hill, we had about 2 hours of daylight left, we didn't realize that the church and cemetery are in the hills and daylight doesn't last long.
To my surprise most of the early  tombstones are in German, and I didn't have enough time to try and figure that out, so I just started to take photos, my husband and I drove to the upper parts of the cemetery trying to get as much light as we could, we found more of the Zehners, Hoppes midway and at the top of the hill, I got half way up and the battery on my new camera died, urgh! So we'll be heading back up in the fall, I'm going to try and plan it when the trees are changing colors.
I did find this information on the church door, for genealogy information contact
Todd Cheese

So hopefully this fall I'll be able to return and have plenty of time to go over this cemetery, and also look at the others in the area.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Getting Ready to Find Dead Relatives

This week I'm going to visit my son and his beautiful family,(yes I'm biased). On our way home,I'll be going to the Zion Stone Church Cemetery in New Ringold, Pa, I'll be looking for the families of Harter, Mertz, and Zehner's. These families are the founding families from Germany. I'm very exicited to visit this cemetery and find them.

We are also going to try and visit the Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Va. to find a George H. Woods, he's supposedly buried in the "Old Confederates Section" of this cemetery, he died of typhoid fever while fighting in the Civil War.

I can't wait to find these relatives and show them to our extended family members.