The Mystery of Tillie and Elias Reichard
Matilda “Tillie” Hagenbuch was born on October 20, 1849 in Columbia County, PA and was the daughter of William (b. 1807) and Rebecca (Muffly) Hagenbuch. Tillie was married to Elias Reichard and is buried...
Category: History
Locating Christian Hagenbuch’s House and Distillery
In 2016, I stumbled upon the plans for Christian Hagenbuch’s (b. 1747, d. 1812) house within the Joseph Downs Collection at the Winterthur Library. The plans were drafted in 1783, and I suspected that...
In Search of Hagenbuch History
Recently, my father, Mark Hagenbuch, and I spent the day visiting a number of sites within Northampton County, Pennsylvania. We were there in search of Hagenbuch history and had high hopes of uncovering new...
Letters From the Past: Part 2
In September of 2017, I wrote an article about the hundreds of letters I found that had been received when I first began working seriously on genealogy in 1978. As mentioned before, these letters...
Henry Hagenbuch Meets Ichabod Crane
For many people, the name Ichabod Crane conjures images of a lanky schoolmaster being chased through the night by a headless horseman. That is, after all, the premise of Washington Irving’s well-known story “The...
On Reunions and Summer Picnics
The 74th Hagenbuch Reunion, held at Oak Grove Lutheran Church a few weeks ago, got me thinking about other reunions of the past. Not only the previous 73 reunions whose attendees were primarily descendants...
Rethinking Andreas Hagenbuch’s Family: Part 2
Our understanding of Hagenbuch family history is a work in progress. Discoveries shed new light on the past and sometimes rewrite what we thought we already knew. Earlier this year, several changes were proposed...
Rediscovering Joseph Hagenbuch’s Family and the United States Hotel
One of my goals through genealogy is to reconnect forgotten branches of the Hagenbuch family tree. During the past year, while researching the family of Christian Hagenbuch (b. 1747), his son, Joseph, was rediscovered....
News From 1892: Elopement of Minnie Hill and Harry Hagenbuck
Old newspapers can be a great source for uncovering family history. Recently, while searching through an online database of periodicals, I found mention of an elopement—that of Minnie Hill and Harry Hagenbuck in 1892....
The Book, Part 5: The Facts
My obsession with Johann Arndt’s Wahren Christentum (True Christianity) began in July of 2015 when my son, Andrew, wrote an article about Andreas Hagenbuch’s will. I learned at that time that Andreas had willed...
