Randy’s Memories: Our May, 2004 East Coast Vacation

I wrote several Genea-Musings posts about our vacation travels all over the United States and some foreign countries, but they are all in my "Engineer-speak" and "Just-the-facts" writing style. 

One of our most memorable trips was to the East Coast in the spring of 2004.

I wondered if my AI-assistant Anthropic Claude could turn my "Engineer-speak" story into an engaging story about our 2004 vacation trip to the East Coast. 

Here is Claude's version of the story:

Chasing Ancestors and Creating Memories

A 2004 Journey Through Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario, and Maryland

The Southwest Airlines flight from San Diego descended toward Baltimore, and I felt the familiar tingle of anticipation. Ahead lay sixteen days in May, two thousand miles, and a dual mission that perfectly captured my twin passions: celebrating family in the present while pursuing the mysteries of family past. My wife Linda, who loves shopping and finding treasures, and I were about to embark on a journey that would take us from my cousin’s golden anniversary celebration to the spray of Niagara Falls, from dusty genealogy archives to the hallowed halls of baseball history.

I’d spent weeks preparing, posting requests on Rootsweb message boards, printing maps from Expedia, and organizing genealogy reports in my notebook. But as I would soon learn, even the best-laid plans leave room for surprise -- both the disappointing kind (locked cemetery gates) and the thrilling kind (unexpected documentary treasures).

A Golden Beginning in Easton

Our first stop was Easton, Pennsylvania, where my first cousin John Charles “Jack” Wood and his wife Joan were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. The party was everything such a milestone should be -- warm with laughter, rich with stories, and populated by generations of family and friends. We’d visited Jack and Joan at their home in Milford, New Jersey, back in 1998, and over the years we’d exchanged letters about our Seaver and Richmond family history. Seeing them surrounded by their children and grandchildren, all gathered to honor five decades of marriage, reminded me why genealogy mattered in the first place. We weren’t just names on a chart or dates in a record book. We were living connections in a chain that stretched backward and forward through time.

After the festivities, though, I was eager to get on the trail of some ancestors who’d proven far more elusive than Jack and Joan.

The Locked Gates of Newton

Newton, New Jersey, was home to my Knapp and Auble families from the 1820s through 1865. I knew that William and Sarah (Cutter) Knapp were buried in the Newton Cemetery, and I’d marked it carefully on my map. When we pulled up to the cemetery, my optimism deflated like a punctured tire. The older stones, they told us, were in the Old Newton Cemetery -- behind an auto dealership, accessible through a locked gate.

“Oh well,” I muttered, making a mental note that my planning hadn’t been quite as thorough as I’d thought. “On to the library.”

The Sussex County Public Library, northwest of Newton, more than made up for the cemetery disappointment. The genealogy section was a researcher’s dream: books, manuscripts, microfilm holdings all meticulously organized. I found a volume of cemetery inscriptions that gave me what the locked gate had denied. But my real treasure was an 1860 plat map showing the names and locations of Newton’s residents, including “W. Knapp.”

Then came the discovery that made the whole stop worthwhile: sixteen microfilms containing the research files of Francis Crawn. These vertical files included notes on an Abigail Knapp, born in Dutchess County, New York, in 1769, who married William Hill and lived near Newton before 1820. Crawn had hypothesized that William Knapp might be Abigail’s sibling or cousin. It wasn’t proof -- not yet -- but it was a lead, and in genealogy, a good lead is sometimes worth more than gold. [Alas, it didn't pan out!]

A Pilgrimage to Cooperstown

From Newton, we drove north to Cooperstown, where a very different kind of history waited. The Baseball Hall of Fame is a shrine to America’s pastime, and we spent a glorious morning wandering its galleries, cameras in hand. My friends know that I’ve been a San Diego Padres fan since my childhood. I lingered especially over the exhibits for Ted Williams -- a San Diego boy whose legend my mother had brushed against in her youth; Dave Winfield -- originally a Padre; and Tony Gwynn, Mr. San Diego Padre himself. There’s something about baseball history that mirrors genealogy: both are about connection, legacy, and the stories we tell to remember who we are and where we came from.

The Phantom Fireplace of Watertown

By evening we’d reached Watertown, New York, in Jefferson County. Here I hoped to find traces of Ranslow Smith (1805-1873), who lived in Henderson Township from 1830 to 1843, and the James Bell family (1777-1836), who settled there after 1812. Before I found out differently, they were my third great-grandparents – Ranslow and his wife Polly Bell adopted my second great-grandfather Devier James Smith in about 1840 (I found that out in 2011).

The Flower Library in downtown Watertown proved to be another goldmine. The public genealogy section opened first, where I pored over maps, and then at noon the closed section opened, revealing even more riches. Volunteers from the Jefferson County Genealogical Society brought out eight folders of Smith data and one of Bell materials. The folders overflowed with newspaper obituaries and correspondence from other researchers -- though sadly, none searching for my Ranslow Smith. Still, I scored a copy of an 1864 plat map for Henderson and some Bible records for a Lyman Smith family.

At the South Jefferson Historical Society in Adams, I found alphabetized surname listings for cemetery records and handwritten family group records gleaned from county histories. Everything was pointing me toward Henderson and the Ranslow Smith house, which supposedly bore the carving “R. Smith 1839” in its fireplace mantel.

I found the house. I took pictures. But nobody was home. The fireplace mantel with its carved date would have to wait for another trip, another day. In genealogy, as in life, you can’t win them all.

Above the Falls, Below the Spray

After Watertown, we crossed into Canada, driving southwest along Lake Ontario’s shore to Toronto. That evening, we dined high above the city in the CN Tower restaurant, watching the urban sprawl glitter below us as the sun set. 

The next day brought us to Niagara Falls, where we experienced one of nature’s most magnificent spectacles. The day was cool and misty -- perfect waterfall weather. We photographed the cascades from above, feeling the rumble through the stone beneath our feet. Then we took a boat ride below the falls, where the spray soaked us (in rain coverings, of course) and the roar drowned out every other sound. It was, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the kind of moment that burns itself into memory and becomes part of your own family story.

Carringer Country in Mercer

From Niagara Falls, we drove south through Buffalo and Erie to Mercer, Pennsylvania, home to three generations of Carringer families, the Daniel Spangler family, and the Cornelius Feather family from 1800 to 1860. I’d identified two repositories: the Shenango Valley Public Library in Sharon and the Mercer County Historical Society.

The Sharon library surprised me with an entire rack of notebooks containing newspaper obituaries, one volume for each year since around 1950. I also found 1864 and 1878 plat maps that helped me identify the location of the Carringer homestead, established in 1795. After dinner, we drove out to Perry Township, though the houses at the old homestead location had been replaced by modern buildings. The past, it seemed, had been paved over.

But the Mercer County Historical Society more than compensated. For a small county, they maintained an excellent collection. The highlight for me was the floor to ceiling wall map of the County from the 1864 plat map –awesome! I reviewed manuscript and vertical files, discovering newspaper articles about the first settler, Martin Carringer, and the probate records for Cornelius Feather. These weren’t just names anymore -- they were people with property, possessions, lives that left traces in the historical record.

Georgetown’s Hidden Connection

Our journey south took us through Pittsburgh, Bedford, and Frederick, finally landing us at a hotel in Greenbelt, Maryland. We met up with friends -- Paul and Kathy, Paul's mother was part of our church community back in Chula Vista -- for dinner and catching up.

The next morning, I made my final research stop at the Prince Georges County Public Library in Hyattsville, just north of Washington, D.C. My wife’s McKnew and Pickrell families had lived in Prince Georges County and in the District itself. The library’s special history and genealogy room had no manuscripts or vertical files, but I worked through cemetery records, newspaper collections, and vital record books.

My small success came in the form of a revelation: Benjamin Pickrell had lived in Washington, D.C., from 1820 to 1830, along with several other Pickrell families. It struck me as funny that I’d never seriously considered D.C. for this family line -- though of course, Georgetown had been part of Prince Georges County before 1790. Sometimes the clues are hiding in plain sight, just waiting for us to shift our perspective slightly.

What We Found, What We Learned

The next day, we flew back to San Diego from Baltimore, our suitcases heavier with my photocopies and Linda’s angel treasures, our minds richer with discoveries. Had I made major research breakthroughs? Not exactly. But I’d gathered valuable material on several family lines, visited two ancestral homesteads, and learned important lessons about preparation and persistence.

More importantly, the trip reminded me that genealogy isn’t just about the past -- it’s about the present too. It’s about standing in Jack and Joan’s living room, surrounded by their descendants, understanding viscerally that we’re all part of an ongoing story. It’s about feeling the spray of Niagara Falls and knowing that my ancestors, too, once marveled at the natural world. It’s about the thrill of finding a Francis Crawn research file or an 1860 plat map and recognizing that someone else cared enough about these names to preserve their memory.

As for those locked cemetery gates and that elusive fireplace mantel? They’ll have to wait -- thankfully, there is Find A Grave! In genealogy, there’s always another trip, another archive, another mystery to solve. And that’s exactly how I like it.

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  Here is the AI Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story:  

Claude followed my blog post very well, and also added some interpretation and description to the narrative.  

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Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.

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