For over thirty years, I have researched my family history. My father’s parents were Jewish immigrants that came from Moldova and Belarus in the early 1900s. Many of their relatives perished in the Holocaust, including Auschwitz. My mother’s family are either Pennsylvania German or came from Scotland. My Pennsylvania German ancestors came from the Palatinate (Pfalz) area of Germany in the early eighteenth century and were farmers. After the Civil War, they migrated to Ashland, Schuylkill county, and then on to Philadelphia. I have two Scottish lines. In 1776, my fourth great grandfather, a Highlander, arrived in America with the Black Watch to quell the Rebellion. He was subsequently captured, switched sides, and served in Hazen’s Second Canadian Regiment under General Washington in many American Revolution battles. In 1892, my great grandfather, a Lowlander, emigrated to Philadelphia from the village of Clackmannan near Edinburgh. I am also descended from Timen Stiddem, who emigrated from Sweden in 1638, and early German families that settled in Philadelphia’s Germantown in the 1680s. I am also a descendant of the Cox (Quaker) family in Whitemarsh. Much of my family are on my Find A Grave website.
