Pictures Mislead--Jean Was Right

Letters from Jean's files show that her account of her birth and Ada and William's golden wedding anniversary was right.  Marjorie and I were trying to piece a coherent account together based on my memory of Jean's account and available photographs.  .  We weren't sure when the anniversary was, but we now know it was August 6, 50 years from the wedding in August 6, 1885.

Here's the

photograph showing the family assembled for the anniversary.  Note my mother.  At this point she's close to  9 months pregnant, but does it really show? Jean was born 4 days after this picture was taken.  This letter from Ralph to Gertrude confirms the timing, and the fact that her pregnancy was a surprise.

She and dad had been married almost 16 years (they married on August 21, 1919) and as far as we know this was her first pregnancy (age 37).  Jean speculated that the lingering effects of dad's lead poisoning accounted for the late birth.

On Names

One point that's interesting to me--the variability of names. (Maybe I've already mentioned this, if so I apologize.) Obviously, I assume that the Platonic "ideal" of my family name is "Harshaw". Anything else must be a deviation. But when you search, you find lots of "Harshas"--obviously a branch of the family that got a little lazy, dropping the superfluous "w". But there's also a "Harshe" recorded in the census--what's that about--some census taker who couldn't really spell? And "Harshy"--did people mispronounce the true name all those years ago?

And a "Hershey". Now we're really getting into trouble--is it possible that we're really the unrecognized heirs of the founder of the Hershey chocolates and Hershey, PA? And what does this do to the search? Do you try to follow all the variants down all the rabbit holes? Ancestry.com uses the "Soundex" system in searching (I think--Soundex being a formula that converts variant spellings into one set of sounds) and therefore turns up a lot of "Harrises". Do you seriously consider the possibility one or more of those results is the misrecorded offspring of a "true" Harshaw?

And all this is without getting into other sources--like Germany for "Harshas".

What's Up

Been working on the Washington County, NY Harshas (see this link for the progenitor). As I've told Marjorie, I've found James and some of his children, and a bunch of people from 1840 on, but the pieces I can identify in-between don't link up well. There's a John born 1784 who is claimed as the father of a Daniel, born 1796! (I know Harshaws are precocious, but I'm not convinced of that.) Unfortunately, there's lots of Johns and James and Davids around and because the census shows only the household head's name before 1850, it's hard to link them together.

What's interesting is the more you search, the better you can become at it. I'm finding the Rootsweb.com searches to be helpful--most people seem to track just their line back. If you're lucky you can get 2 or 3 lines meeting at one ancestor.

Genes for Harry Potter

Inquiring minds want to know--what are the odds that two Harshaw descendants, Jean Louise Harshaw and Marjorie Harshaw Robie, are both reading the last Harry Potter this weekend?

What I Am Doing Here?

That always struck me as a good question to ask, even when Ross Perot's running mate was ridiculed for asking it.

My profile gives a bit of my background, but to amplify: I'm the son of John Rippey Harshaw, grandson of William Roseborough Harshaw, cousin of Marjorie Harshaw Robie. What my profile doesn't say is I originally hoped to be a historian, but dropped out of the University of Rochester. Since retiring from USDA I've found some pleasure in researching my ancestors--seeing in their varied histories reflections of the larger history of the U.S.

Marjorie is the storyteller, I'm the faux historian. Or maybe I'm the antiquarian, because I like to collect bits and pieces but have problems in organizing them into the larger picture. Anyway, I hope this blog, and the associated web pages, help to organize the materials we've collected for whatever benefit others may find in them.