Being in Tucson and researching in Pennsylvania comes with a few challenges. However, it also comes with its own set of rewards. You meet some of the nicest people when you are researching your family. While I tried to photograph most of the tombstones the last time I was in Pennsylvania, I of course missed a few I knew of, and then there were all the confirmed discoveries in the last year as I’ve worked the line. I have tried to add memorials on Find A Grave for the families as I found them.
Of note has been Ralph Satterfield, who has claimed almost every photo request that I put up on Find A Grave. Throughout January, Ralph has made repeated trips to Elderton and Plum Creek Presbyterian Church Cemetery to photograph the tombstones of the Beatty, and Shaffer clan. His photographs have been incredibly helpful as he often provides a close-up of the dates. It is a combination of his photos and mine that you have been seeing on the tombstone posts about this family. No doubt, he will be photographing more stones as I move on to working the Olinger and Yount lines. Thank you, Ralph. I appreciate all your hard work.
For those of us who research seriously, it’s an incredible pleasure to bump into someone who sources the information they put online. Diana Roche’s extremely well sourced tree for the Isaac LeFever/LeFevre family appears on Rootsweb and was instrumental in clarifying the family of Eximnia “Minnie” (Shaffer) LeFevre (1849-1897). Her work also provided me with information on two new sources, which I can now explore in hopes of finding more information on members of the Shaffer line. Thank you, Diana. It’s always a pleasure to see quality work.
I have also enjoyed help from Beatty researcher Cynthia Joyner. She is one of the contacts on the Beatty 2000 project for our Line #84, the line of Andrew Beatty’s descendants. As with most genealogists, she was generous in sharing her research with me.
Thanks go out to all the folks on Find A Grave who were kind enough to respond to my requests to either transfer memorials or add dates, bios, and family links. I’m happy to add and update these memorials as we go along.
We don’t “own” our ancestors, but for those of us who do this, we have a responsibility to ensure the information we post is as correct as possible. We also have a responsibility to provide our sources to other researchers and not repeatedly copy unsourced and possibly incorrect information without noting that the material is “for research only” or at least documenting where it came from. Thank you all for helping me work toward making the information provided on our common line as correct as possible.