with Maria Bayard (1765-?) The British Are Coming! My fourth great-grandfather Gabriel Sprung was in turn the great-grandfather of my great-grandmother Hanna “Hattie” Sprung Drayer. If you are keeping score – among my near relatives, these are ancestors of Dan/Lillian Myers’ descendants only. Click here to view Gabriel’s profile in…
No, folks, “1777” isn’t the address, it’s the date the cemetery was established. On the grounds of the cemetery stands the Methodist Meeting House. The oldest existing building in the Wyoming valley, it was built in 1808. It is tastefully restored, and registered as a National Historic Place. Predating even…
Saturday, May 25 Leaving the Pennsylvania Dutch country, I drove a few hours further north, to Luzerne County, and the Susquehanna river valley named Wyoming.I have already written extensively about this place, drawing on considerable literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Densely populated today, the valley was inhabited only…
Day of the Brethren, part 2 Still May 24. Eighty miles northeast from Sams Creek, in Lancaster County, PA, is the Mohler Church of the Brethren, outside the town of Ephrata. As explained in this Wikipedia article, Lancaster County was at the center of “Pensylvania Dutch” (German-American) communities, including many…
Friday, May 24 After a second brief, unproductive visit to the Frederick County Historical Society, and another drive through the area of Michael Myers’ farm, I drove about 20 miles east to Carroll County, Maryland, and the Sams Creek Church of the Brethren, located in a rural area near the…
Monuments of Maryland, Part 3 Michael Myers‘ son Thomas Jefferson Myers apparently became quite wealthy as a miller in Buckeystown, a historic community several miles upriver from Michael’s farm near Creagerstown. Evidence of his wealth can be found in this entry for the US Census of 1850 (just months before…