I made a research trip to the Beaver County Genealogy & History Center in Beaver, Pennsylvania[1] on July 2, 2016. They have great records: books, maps, microfilms, tax records, and vertical files. In the vertical file for the surname GORRELL, I found several queries and submitted genealogies. To my surprise was a letter written by my husband’s aunt, Ada Thomason, in 1975. I knew she was interested in family history but I didn’t know she wrote letters of inquiry.
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| 1975 Letter from Ada Thomason to Beaver County Historian |
Actually the letter was written to the historian, county
clerk, or other official in Beaver. Beaver is the county seat for the county of
Beaver in Pennsylvania.
She stated the information about the family as she knew it:
parent’s and children’s names, birth, marriage, and death dates, and then asked
a specific question. She wanted to know if there was an epidemic in 1841 that
caused the death of the four oldest children.
A copy of the reply was also in the file.
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| 1975 Letter to Ada Thomason to Beaver County Historian |
Margaret Ross, the Director of Genealogy, answered the
letter, stating that there was no official historical reference to an epidemic
in 1841, but that some of the older
persons around told her it was probably a diphtheria epidemic since this was
quite common about that time.
It was pretty cool to find documentation that Ada Gorrell
Thomason had done some genealogy research.
[1] 250
East End Avenue, Beaver, PA 15009; http://beavercountyhistory.org/
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
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