Market Day at the Circle

Schools of Easton

Taylor School at 4th & Ferry Sts.

Wolf School at 2nd Street

Lafayette School at Porter & Parsons Sts.

Flood of 1903 Photos by Lewis E. Boyer

The State Theater

In Memory of Those that Served

In Memory of Those that Served

In Memory of Those that Served

Northampton County Lawyers

J. Fred Osterstock, manager of the State Theater. Also who the Freddy Awards are named after.

The former Easton High School on N. Second St.

Happy Easter

Easton Hospital at Wolf Street near 7th

Easton Hospital Nurses Class of 1908

Easton Hospital

Easton Hospital School of Nursing

"Car of the future" 1970 at Lehigh University

Boyd Theater (1970) on North 3rd Street . Now a parking lot

 

                                                        

Northampton St. looking west

Winter scene of downtown Easton

Photo Memories...

The Bowers/ Majestic Hotel in Bangor, PA. Razed in 1976

Market St. Bangor, PA

Photo Memories

Scene of Bushkill Creek at Locust St. with Veiles Brewery in background

Photo Memories

Bill Herman's Barber Shop at NE Corner of Centre Square

Pennsylvania Death Certificates

 

            One of my favorite places to look for information is in the Pennsylvania Death Certificates database on Ancestry.com.  I consider the PA Death Certificates to be a real jackpot for family information. (Ancestry.com is available for use free in the Marx Room.) Death certificates for the state of Pennsylvania are available between the years 1906 to 1963.

            The Pennsylvania Death Certificate form is usually completed by someone who was close to the deceased named an informant. This doesn’t always mean that the information put down by the informant is necessarily to be taken as 100% correct. Plus some questions may be left unanswered because the informant just doesn’t know.

            The following are some of the items of information to be found on Pennsylvania Death Certificates.

 

Place of death/ address where death occurred

Deceased person’s name

Usual residence of the deceased

Age at death                         

Cause of death

Date and exact time of death

Person’s date and place of birth

Race of person

Date and place of burial/ disposition of cremated remains

Details about the length of illness if that is relevant

How long in this country or location

Maiden name of deceased if it is a woman

Marital status at the time of death

Name of spouse, whether alive or deceased

Name (and sometimes address) of informant, frequently a surviving spouse, child or other close relative

Name and location of funeral home

Names of parents and birthplaces if known

Occupation and/or name of employer

Religious Affiliation - It may not say exactly but at times it can be deduced from the information recorded.

Signature of attending physician

 

            There can be vast differences between one person’s certificate and another depending upon the informant, even whether there was an informant.

Here is some of the interesting information I’ve found by looking at the PA Death Certificates:

 ~ One of my great-grandmothers, Anna McGrath died at Homeopathic State Hospital, Allentown, PA from erysipelas. I always thought she died in New Jersey because she lived in New Jersey. Her father’s name was listed as O’Connor, which I knew. What I discovered was her mother’s maiden name was Ward and they are listed as both being born in Scotland.

~ My grandfather, Thomas McGrath’s little sister, Lavina Catherine died in Glendon, PA from cardiac exhaustion - excessive muscular exertion while skipping rope at age 7. She disappeared after the 1900 Census. No one knew what had happened to her. The death certificate revealed that she died in 1907.

~ A stillborn baby born March 3, 1934. We knew my grandmother Helen McGrath had several babies who were stillborn or only lived a few months.

~ Another baby boy, William was born January 31, 1921 and died March 5, 1921. My father and I would visit the cemetery when I was small and bring peonies in coffee cans. (I always got to run the spigot at the cemetery!) I would see William’s grave and wonder about him, what had happened. He had died from acute gastroenteritis which is more curable today than it was in 1921.

 

            Use the database in different ways to get the full benefit of what it contains. Search by last name only; search by parents’ names; if the first name is unusual, search by first name only and county. Mix it up and you may come up with information you might not have found in a conventional way.

            Additional death certificates from the following places are available at Ancestry: Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Philadelphia, PA, Missouri, Washington, Vermont, Utah, and Oconee County, GA. The years available for these locations vary. Some have an actual view of the death certificate; others are a brief list of the information from the death certificate. If a word or name does not look quite right it might be because the document was converted using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). OCR is certainly helpful but not infallible. Take a look at the copy of the original document and decide for yourself what was written on the page.

            It would be great if more years and death certificates were added for Pennsylvania in the future. In the meantime, take a look at this wonderful resource and see what new information you can discover about your own family.

A favorite store on North Fourth St. and Church St.
The building no longer is in existence.

Photo Memories..

Easton Public Library

PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH TREAT

The Annual Publication of the Pennsylvania German Society

 

Stand in front of the books on the shelf. The spine label reads 974.8 P413Gp. The volumes number 1 through 47. Choose one and riffle through the pages. Now stop. What do you see?

 

•A photograph of a stone, slate-roofed summer kitchen near Germansville, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

•A sample of penmanship from the year 1802

•A colorful cutwork Valentine, hand-drawn and lettered, c. 1803

•Church records from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania – 1730-1744

•A recipe for Machadunki Fettkuche from Emma L. Yoder’s (1873 – 1961) grandmother, of Hegins, in the Mahantongo Valley, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania

 

These are the wonderful things I saw when I looked through the Annual Volume Series published by the Pennsylvania German Society of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania German Society was founded in 1891. The Society is a non-profit, educational institution dedicated to the preservation and study of the Pennsylvania German people, their culture and their long history in America.

 

Here is a sample of titles in the series:

s Farming Always Farming:  A Photographic Essay of Rural Pennsylvania German Land and Life by H. Winslow Fegley.

s Plain Women: Gender and Ritual in the Old Order River Brethren by Margaret C. Reynolds.

s PA German Broadsides by Don Yoder.

s Die Pennsylvaanisch Deitsche / The Pennsylvania Germans by Earl Haag.

s Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking by William Woys Weaver.

 

The Annual Volume Series has been published regularly since 1891 and covers an enormous array of information about the Pennsylvania Germans. It is an invaluable resource for the historian, genealogist, folklorist and general reader.  It’s also just plain fun to read if you have any interest in the Pennsylvania Germans or “The Pennsylvania Dutch” as we say around here.

 

Did you wonder what the recipe for Machadunki Fettkuche was for?  That translates to Mahantongo Diamond Doughnuts and you can find that recipe in Volume 27 of the series, Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking!

 

For more information about the Pennsylvania German Society go to: www.pgs.org