Right before the COVID19 Pandemic, I had PLANS.
The successful busting down of one of my genealogical brick walls led me to believe that following a similarly focused path would lead to another victory. So in the last summer of the Before Times, I made a goal and began to relentlessly pursue it.
That goal was to utilize DNA to figure out the origins of Sarah Tuttle, wife of Philip Hess Bender, Sr.
Being born on a leap day is so uncommon that I’ve only ever found one of my confirmed direct line ancestors to have been so.
Today would have been Araminta Rebecca “Mintie” Brown’s 140th birthday.
If you have a German-American ancestor who was residing in colonial Philadelphia, it might be worthwhile to check the Lord’s Supper guest register for St. Michael and Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1755-1763.
It can be found online via Ancestry.com’s Pennsylvania and New Jersey Church and Town Records, 1708-1985.
Illegitimacy often poses serious challenges to tracing one’s roots. This is the roadblock I face with the third of The Three Sarahs.
Sara Rebold/Sarah Raybold, wife of Godfrey Bender, was born 6 Sept. 1765 in Germantown township, Philadelphia.
Her death date is listed in the church registers of St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germantown. From the exact age in years, months and days recorded at her burial, I could easily calculate her birth date.
But finding a baptism record proved tricky.
A sketch of the Dramatic Hall as it looked circa 1880. [detail from newspaper sketch, originally published in The North American, Philadelphia, May 1, 1904]
Wheatley Dramatic Hall (so named for actor William Wheatley whose troupe, the Wheatley Dramatic Association, took up residence at the theater in the 1860s) was a building with its own impressive and colorful history. Its name was shortened during the seven years Peter was in charge.
Sarah (Tuttle) Bender’s death certificate contains erroneous information.
Continuing on about my brick walls, The Three Sarahs, let me introduce the next Sarah.
She has eluded me for years.
Sarah Tuttle, the wife of Philip Hess Bender, Sr., was born 7 Apr. 1831 in Pennsylvania, according to her death certificate and this date roughly matches her age given in census records.
She died in 1914, nearly a decade after Pennsylvania began requiring civil registration. So finding out the names of her folks should have been no problem, since parents’ names, if known, were recorded.
But, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that.
I have been in the process of writing my first ancestor profile all week. I’m a first-time mama to a very busy toddler and a freelance journalist, so time to compose comes in bite-sized chunks of a few sleepy minutes here and there.
But it was a discovery of a newspaper article containing some bit of scandal that has really caused the delay. Because such a find, of course, always leads to more research.
What can you do when the records that surely would contain a wealth of information about your ancestors no longer exist?
My 4th great-grandfather, Charles Bender, has long been one of the more elusive members of my family tree.
One of the big reasons why is that the church he joined as an adult is defunct and its records seemingly lost.
It’s always wise to periodically conduct a Google search on your ancestors. With more and more records, old books and other potential sources of information being digitized each day, you never know when you might find something new.
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