Old Stuff

Just who is Jonas Tyson?  Is he Tom's great, great, great, great grandfather? Is he really Susanna's father?  We know she is his great, great great grandmother.

Tom has been working almost exclusively on that question in his genealogical research for the last two years.  We hoped for some answers today.  While there is still not a definite answer, we did get a bit more evidence to the affirmative.  And he did find the marriage notice in an old Reading,PA newspaper confirming a marriage. 

We spent the morning here, where Lisa was an enormous help in finding material we could use.  Here we did the more basic research, and made several discoveries.

We spent two hours in the afternoon here, where we confirmed what we had found, and cleared up a few mysteries   We now have information to enable us to visit a church that probably figured in the history of this family line.

All of this is new to me, but I helped search records for names and dates.

Getting to these places took us into historic Reading.  We did a short walk about to see a church we had been reading about all morning.

Across the street and all around were old row houses, and more church steeples.

                                     Yarn bombing.

 The Genealogical Society is located in this building, which we were calling the "Google" Center, until  we were corrected in the gift shop.  It is an old "goggle" factory, makers of protective eye ware, and is now a center for arts.

I was very pleased that we still had time to make it to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.  I do love following those brown national park signs!

 Butterflies floated and fluttered and landed on the flowers outside the visitor's center.

Hopewell Furnace was established in the early 1770's as a charcoal fired smelter for iron for making cast iron.

Wood from the forests was harvested and burned down into charcoal.

The charcoal was hauled to the furnace in wagons.

It was cooled and stored.

Workmen hauled it to the furnace mouth where it was dropped down into the fire along with Iron ore and limestone.

At the bottom, the slag was channeled off and the molten iron was ladled for casting in molds.

The water wheel worked the bellows to add air to the fiery mix.

The iron master lived in luxury.

 Two major products of the furnace - cannons and cast iron stoves.

Tonight we are in our hotel in Reading, not historic this time, but adequately comfortable.