Our Family / The Chronicle
The stories
we carry.
A few accounts deserve to be told in full. Some trace events that changed a family; others preserve an unusually personal glimpse of an ordinary life. The rest of our research lives alongside them, in the family biographies and archive.
Browse stories by family
Explore both collections together, or focus on one family’s stories.
Showing stories from both families.
01 / In focus
Stories that stayed.
A few accounts deserve more space: events in the wider world that became deeply personal to the people in this family.
The brother who didn't come home.
Before the war, Joel Norman Ritter worked at Lehigh Box Company. At eighteen, he served in Company K of the 8th Cavalry Regiment. His regiment was caught in the fighting near Unsan; he was very likely captured there and later died in captivity. This was world history lived by one family.
The tavern where the rebellion gathered
Martin Ritter's tavern hosted a gathering before Fries's Rebellion. The event shaped the region; his personal participation has not been established.
The tavern and the uprising ↗
A seventeen-year-old crosses the Atlantic
Wasyl Dwornik crossed the Atlantic at seventeen with twenty dollars, a ticket and a brother waiting in Northampton.
Follow an immigrant journey ↗
When history turned.
War, upheaval and loss reached even the quietest communities. These stories trace the moments that unsettled families and the people who lived through them.
Four lives lost. Six children left behind.
A train struck Francis and Olga Kennedy's automobile near Roebling, killing them and two of their children. A later census reveals how the surviving siblings continued together.
The Kennedy family story ↗
The soldier who remembered Readington
At eighty-five, Joseph Ramsey recalled British patrols, local militia service and a wounded neighbor. His pension preserved the testimony of the daughter who carried his family into the Kline line.
Mary Amanda’s life after loss
Mary Ann Amanda Giering endured repeated losses and helped establish a lasting community in Coopersburg. Her story deserves more than a sensational headline.
Where we came from.
More than a list of nationalities: different homelands, languages and generations that eventually became one family.
A woman unnamed: the Price tradition
The original 1926 genealogy records both the Indigenous marriage story and descendants who denied it. Follow what survives—and what does not.
A house built to outlast them
Johannes and Mariah Katrina built a stone farmhouse in 1752. The story of its construction survived in a family history—alongside unforgettable household legends.
From Galicia to Elm Street
A family photograph, a railroad career, and the obituary and death certificate that preserve the life Basil and Sophia made in Pennsylvania.
Land, work and community.
Mills, railroads, churches, farms and the many everyday choices that helped families put down roots.
A house at the crossroads
An old New Jersey house, a Revolutionary War lieutenant, and the records that tie the Clifford family to a place near Pattenburg.
From Klinesville to Flemington
Miller and Mary Kline, their daughter Cornelia, a son in the Civil War, and the Roberson sisters whose lives remained connected.
The sermon that split the congregation
Tunis Melick interrupted his pastor in defense of a visiting Methodist preacher. He lost his church office—but helped build another congregation.
The orchard that survived
When a devastating insect threatened the family's peach trees, Walter Melick made a costly choice.
The moments that remain.
Small gestures, family records and extraordinary personal lives. Not every lasting story made the history books.
The Bible that remembered a family
Her husband's Bible records their children, their fifty-one-year marriage and a second ancestral line reaching Don through the Kline family.
Seventy-five flowers
William Wainwright's children sent him one flower for each year of his life. Ten days later, Evelyn's grandfather was gone.
The man who could fix anything
Dale's hunting, fishing with grandchildren, his rescued squirrel Oscar, and the antique clocks he brought back to life.
Lives from Meghan’s family.
From Ontario farms and English childhood records to Philadelphia working lives, these stories follow people in Meghan’s family.
One life. Two armies.
Walter Mitchell’s service records follow him across an ocean and into a life in Ontario. A dancing-girl tattoo connects the young British soldier with the Canadian father who enlisted years later.
Follow Walter’s journey →
Catherine Ayre: a life between records
Born in Durham, Catherine later made a life in Ontario. Her early years and possible 1904 crossing leave moving questions beside the surviving documents.
A signalman across the Pacific
Follow Frank across the Pacific through the 27th Signal Company’s records, then return to his life with Regina.
Elizabeth Curran and the Shirtwaist Trade
Elizabeth’s census entry records her as a shirtwaist operator, placing her work within Philadelphia’s garment industry during a period of labor unrest.
The Wurst Household in 1910
Barbara, her six children, and the different trades recorded together on one Philadelphia census page.
Frank and Regina, 1942–1950
A school yearbook, draft registration and census trace two young Philadelphians from separate addresses to a shared household.
Emily Louisa Mitchell: A Life in Beaverton
A marriage, a household, and wartime papers preserve the life of Mary Mitchell's mother.
One Philadelphia family, many beginnings
Mary Leonard’s household, the Wurst siblings’ working lives, and the records of Frank and Regina bring several generations of Philadelphia life into view.
The Work That Sustained a Family
Farming, a planing-mill carpenter, and two generations of everyday work in King Township.
A Hilliard history in Ontario
Marriage and birth registers connect recent Hilliard generations. The older Thomas Hilliard identities remain carefully separated while records are compared.
Meet Meghan’s four grandparents ↗Explore Meghan’s archival collection ↗
Not every record needs its own story.
Many photographs, family connections and small discoveries belong in the ancestor profiles, grandparent biographies and archive rather than in a separate feature. They remain part of our history, even when they are not part of this selection.