I help genealogists research their ancestors in Pennsylvania through books, workshops, and a membership community.
Your PA ancestor was alive when America turned 50. Here's how to find them.
Where was your PA ancestor in 1826?Reader, We just spent the spring on 1776. But your ancestor lived through every American milestone after it — and each one left a different paper trail. Over the next six weeks I’m walking the anniversaries: 1826, 1876, 1926, 1976, and then two posts on what makes Pennsylvania research genuinely its own animal. We start with the hardest one. In 1826, the country turned fifty. On July 4 — the exact half-century mark — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other, and Pennsylvania newspapers read it as providence for weeks. Your ancestor was somewhere in that country. The problem is that the records from the 1820s rarely name them. Pennsylvania kept no statewide birth, marriage, or death records until 1906. And the federal census before 1850 named only the head of household — everyone else is a tally mark in an age column. So how do you find a wife, a child, an aging parent in 1826? The record most researchers skip: county tax lists. The census comes around once a decade and names one person. Pennsylvania’s county tax assessments were taken almost every year — and they place your ancestor in a specific township, show whether he owned or rented, name his trade, and mark the year a son turned twenty-one and first appears as a “freeman.” When a man vanishes from the list and his widow appears in his place, you’ve found a death window without a death record. Pair the tax lists with church registers (your real vital records before 1906) and recorded deeds (which name wives and children the census never will), and 1826 stops being a wall. I wrote the full method — tax lists, church records by denomination, land records, and how to read the 1820/1830 census anyway — on the blog: Where Was Your Pennsylvania Ancestor in 1826? Let’s discover your Pennsylvania ancestors. —Denyse P.S. Church records carry the weight in this era, and Pennsylvania was the most religiously diverse state in the country — which register you need depends entirely on your ancestor’s community. Pennsylvania Vital Records Research walks through the vital records and their substitutes denomination by denomination.
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Hi! I'm Denyse Allen, Founder of PA Ancestors
I help genealogists research their ancestors in Pennsylvania through books, workshops, and a membership community.
Your PA ancestor in 1976 Reader, We’ve walked back through 1826, 1876, and 1926. This week we reach the anniversary you may have lived through yourself. In 1976, the country turned two hundred. The tall ships, the flags on every porch, the bells rung across the country on the Fourth — for millions of Americans, the Bicentennial isn’t a research problem, it’s a memory. Pennsylvania was at the heart of it, with events around Independence Hall and a new home for the Liberty Bell. And that...
Your PA ancestor in 1926 Reader, In 1926, the country turned a hundred and fifty, and Philadelphia threw another World’s Fair — the Sesquicentennial International Exposition in South Philadelphia. You’ve probably never heard of it, and there’s a reason. It rained on 107 of the 184 days it was open, drew about 6.4 million of the 10 million visitors planners expected, and lost more than twenty million dollars. An honest civic flop. But here’s the thing: the fair flopped, and your ancestor’s...
PAancestors.com Free this week: immigration records for your PA ancestors Hello Reader! If you have an immigrant ancestor who landed in Pennsylvania, the arrival record is one of the most useful documents you can find. It often names the ship, the port of departure, the date, an age, sometimes a last residence or a relative waiting in the States — the bridge that carries your research back across the ocean. MyHeritage keeps a number of these collections free to search and view. I went through...