ROOTS & BRANCHES

I’d love to belong to every historical and genealogical group that exists.

Unfortunately, I don’t have unlimited money for my own existence, which means I have to pick, choose and “sample” membership in some organizations.

Of course, as someone who’s primarily a writer and editor, the publications put out by a group often tend to be what resonates with me.

Such was definitely the case with the arrival of the Albany Township Historical Society’s recent quarterly newsletter.

My interest in Albany Township – which is a “capstone” of sorts at the northern end of Berks County – consists of just a couple of families in the 1700s, including a man named Bernhard Kremer, who seemed to be a bit of a renegade in that his father-in-law Jacob Lantz made an explicit provision in his will to keep Kremer from getting any benefit from the share Lantz designated for his daughter. Bernhard is also as far as I could get on the Kremer line.

So, every so often over the years, I get interested in trying to blast through this brick wall. One of these times, I became aware of the Albany society and joined as a member to try it out.

In the latest newsletter, one of the Albany society’s board members, Peggy A. Light, wrote a wonderful memorial article about one of the organization’s founding members, John Cargill Robertson, who died suddenly in April 2018.

Robertson was not native to the area – he was born in New Rochelle, New York – but his family moved to Albany Township when he was young and he spent much of his life in the township.

He purchased a 19^th century home that he renovated, learning the history of the property and then expanding that knowledge to research about all the properties from their original owners forward, resulting in a map of the township homesteads.

The historian also published a book about the 1930 U.S. Census of the township, inviting natives still alive when the census was released to the public in 2002 to luncheon at his home to celebrate the book’s release.

He also narrated bus tours, coordinated the society’s cooking at the Kutztown Folk Festival and helped create an annual Civil War Days event.

Despite the gap Robertson’s death leaves in the community and society, Light points out in her article that Robertson’s census book, newsletter articles, bus tour transcripts and warrant map are all available at the society’s library, to be joined shortly by the bequest of his local research materials.

As I’ve noted many times before: “Local expertise” in genealogy remains an underutilized resource. It’s a great thing that the Albany society is keeping much of Robertson’s expertise available.

More information about the society is available on its website at the URL, https://www.albanyths.org/