ROOTS & BRANCHES

Genealogists sometimes find that they don’t need to have an ancestral connection to a family to help out another genealogist.

They just need to know someone who does.

A few weeks ago I helped coordinate a workshop at the Ohio Genealogical Society’s conference called “Nuts & Bolts, Bells & Whistles: Pennsylvania Genealogy Boot Camp” along with Shamele Jordon, Marilyn Holt and Kay Bodenhorn.

Jordon, of course, is the showrunner of “Genealogy Quick Start” and a Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania vice president. Holt is retired as the head of the Pennsylvania Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Bodenhorn is Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s genealogy director.

I was mostly the “master of ceremonies” for the three, who delivered presentations and then led geographically based breakout groups with individual brick wall problems that they had submitted ahead of time.

Most everyone was given some “next steps” on which to work, and there were some great follow-ups that came out of the workshop, too.

I got involved with a couple of those follow-ups in which the surname in which the attendees were interested “rang a bell.”

One registrant, Pamela Stevens,  has Proudfoot ancestry—which is a literal translation of the German-language surname Stoltzfus. Well, I’m friends with a modern-day descendant of that family named Nic Stoltzfus, who was more than happy to take things from there since he’s literally written a book on that family.

Then there was Pamela Bowers. She was getting some expert advice from Bodenhorn in a breakout session when I saw they were looking at the surname Labar in Northampton County.

While I have no connection to the surname, I have researched a bit in the area when I still was “for hire,” but more importantly I knew that Barry Becker of Philadelphia had Labar ancestry.

Thankfully, Becker was more than happy to start a conversation with Bowers … they’re both struggling with same thorny Leonard Labar.

And then there’s GSP’s “Genealogists Helping Genealogists,” a special interest group or SIG of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, which meets monthly at the society, 2100 Byberry Road, Suite 111, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19116.

In the meeting earlier this month, I had the opportunity to help member Tim Graham through a number of German research challenges by looking at the website with many German Protestant church records, Archion.de.

We found in one village a number of records relating to a Mumma or Momma family that may be related to his colonial Lancaster County family. And we were able to verify work done by a German researcher years ago for Graham on the Staaf family with original baptismal and marriage records.

Putting people together with the right people or resources is the best part of a genealogist’s life.