The Good, Bad, and the Really UGLY....., 10/9/20

Some recent investigation into the Penington Chart, the chart that started it all, has turned up some bad news.

Additional information on Joseph G. Stonesifer, 8/27/18

I received correspondence with additional details about Joseph G. Stonesifer. It's difficult to update Joseph's page on my site so I'm adding the information as an article and linking it here.

Kris' Special Section, 2/1/02

As some of you know, my son Kris was a U. S. Army Ranger.  He was deployed to the USS Kitty Hawk in October 2001 as part of the Enduring Freedom campaign.  On October 19 he was killed in a helicopter accident in Pakistan during operation Rhino.   This operation parachuted about 200 Rangers into a small airfield southwest of Kandahar, Afganistan.

I've created this special section mostly for my family but also for others that have expressed an interest.

Hyland Tombstone Trip, 7/4/01

I had the opportunity to visit a private Hyland cemetery on the Dilks family farm, near Elk Neck, MD.

Maryland Pennington Notes, 3/29/01

If you are researching the Pennington line in Maryland, you will be astonished at all the information available and how confusing it is.

There are countless papers copied and recopied in the family folders of Maryland historical society libraries. Some of the information is well documented. A lot is theory and conjecture. Even Peden's Colonial Families of the Eastern Shore Vol. 6 has inaccuracies.

See how my research is going in this article.

How I Got Started, 7/2/00

Twenty years ago, my mother handed me a genealogical chart depicting Peningtons from "Robert - a merchant in London" to my great grandfather Franklin J. Penington. I thanked her but with two sons to raise, I put the chart in a file and promptly forgot it. By the time my sons were out of the house and my interest in the chart revived, everyone that could have shed any light on it had died.
"How do you know any of these people are actually your relatives?" That was the question posed to me by a friend that started me on this odyssey.

Minner Mystery, 7/2/00

It is hard to believe that your own mother did not know the name of her father’s parents. But this was the case in our family. Finding the parents of Eugene Minner became on of my first research goals.  The search, while circuitous and serendipitous, had a happy ending.

Journal in the Box, 7/2/00

I discovered a wonderful journal in a box at the Odessa, DE Library. The falling apart journal had a title page that caught my eye….. "Susanna Elizabeth Vandergrift lineage". I thought this would be a great find for the Vandergrift family, but not for me since at first glance the names were not related to my family.

I decided to copy the pages and enter the names in my PAF program to preserve this long labor of love. Little did I know when I started, what I was getting into or that several of my ancestors would show up.

Early Delaware Voshells, 7/2/00

When I started the quest for my Voshell roots, my project was to focus on my direct line. I quickly found that the different branches of the Voshell family used and reused only a few given names. I’ve had to gather much detail in order to separate the various Williams, James, Johns, etc.

Perhaps you have some information that will help me sort out my various theories.

Frank J. Penington 1862 Diary, 7/15/00

This small book is a wonderful insight into the life of my great grandfather at age 13.  It is full of weather reports, summer activities, and the after school detentions for misbehavior. It accounts the chores he performed on the farm and the fun he had as a boy. There was an important reference to the death of his Uncle Martin Ball. This was the link to unlocking a wealth of information on the Port Penn families. With out the reference to his Uncle Martin by name the Ball, Craven, and Stewart connections to the family would have taken much longer to discover. There are a few references to the Civil War activity drilling and playing the fife. However, for the most part, it shows that times do not really change. The aftermath of the rainstorms still affects the farms and communities. Moreover, 13 year olds of that period enjoyed the millpond known as "Silver Lake" for fishing and swimming, just as my brother and I did, growing up in Middletown, DE.

The Stonesifer Story, 8/1/00

My father in law, the late Frederic Austin Stonesifer was in correspondence with Doyle F. Wildasin from Hanover PA in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Mr. Wildasin was in the middle of a rather lengthy research of the Stonesifer, Yingling, and Bankert surnames. He contacted every Stonesifer in the book, interviewed them, and collected the valuable genealogical information. He worked for nearly 12 years to complete a wonderful book on the descendants of John Daniel Stonesifer from Eiserfeld, Germany.