Andreas Hagenbuch in Court
Piecing together family history is rarely a simple task. The further one goes back through time, the less there is to work from. Memories fade, photographs are lost, and documents are destroyed. Precious little...
Tagged: Pennsylvania
The Scheitholt Zither: An Early Pennsylvania German Instrument
Before the invention of sound recordings, instruments and the skills to play them were especially valued. As discussed in the previous article, Music of Andreas Hagenbuch’s Time, there are no historical records of the...
Family Folklore and the Tale of Hungry Sam Miller
Genealogists deal with more than names, places, and dates. They must also attempt to separate fact from fiction when it comes to oft-told family stories. I am always careful who I tell that I...
Sarah Foust: School Teacher in the Early 1900s
On November 1, 1984 Ethel Lillian Bibby, aged 75 years old, died in a nursing home in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. She was unmarried and few of her immediate family were still living. Mark Hagenbuch—Ethel’s second...
Butchering Day Memories from the Farm, Part 1
This two-part article series by Mark O. Hagenbuch was originally published on February 24, 2015, just after Fastnacht Day. Last Tuesday was Fastnacht Day here in our part of Pennsylvania. In our Montour County...
Samuel and Susanna (Hess) Hagenbuch Family
The idea behind this site is to have a mix of genealogy, history, and family stories—and not just those related to the Hagenbuch family that came primarily from Montour County, Pennsylvania. That family, the...
Andreas Hagenbuch Acquires Land in Berks County
Andreas Hagenbuch (b. 1715) and his family landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 18, 1737. They spent that first winter in or nearby the city. As spring approached, Andreas Hagenbuch visited the Pennsylvania Land...
Christmas for the Hagenbuchs in Berks County
This article was first published in the December, 1982 issue of “The Beech Grove.” We all have fond memories of Christmases long ago. The snow seemed deeper, the stoves in our homes warmer, and...
Music of Andreas Hagenbuch’s Time
Music can reveal a great deal about people and their culture. This is true whether those people are from the present or the past. Andreas Hagenbuch was born in 1715 in Grossgartach within the...
One Silver Dollar
This story was told to Mark Hagenbuch around 1963 by his great Uncle Perce (b. 1880) and corroborated in 1972 by his father’s first cousin, Bruice Hagenbuch (b. 1913). Francis Eugene Hagenbuch—Uncle Gene—was the...
