Book Reviews

Book Reviews HANNAH BENNER ROACH Descriptive Inventory of the Archives of the City and County of Philadelphia. By John Daly under the direction of Allen Weinberg, City Archivist. (Philadelphia: City of Philadelphia Department of Records, 1970. x, 545 p. Indices. $10.00.) The long awaited guide to the City Archives has finally made its way into print. It bears little relation to the 75 - page Guide published by the Department of Records in 1957, but does point up the long way the Archives have come since they opened for business in 1954 in the basement of the Old Customs House at 420 Chestnut Street. This reviewer has followed with interest the trail of the Archives from that place to the basement of the now-demolished arcaded Commercial Trust Building on West Penn Square, to one room on the seventh floor of City Hall, and from thence to its present expanded quarters on the same floor. This progress is clearly evident when one compares the 454 items listed in the preliminary 1957 Guide to the 1350 Record Groups in the present Inventory. The early Guide listed the records alphabetically in three categories: City. County, and Borough, District and Township records. The present Inventory retains the same categories, but lists each record series under its agency of origin, each agency having a brief introduction explaining its origin, term of existence and main functions. County records are listed in Record Groups 1 - 42. Here are to be found county commissioners minutes, county assessment and tax ledgers, deeds, mortgage books, partition deeds and sheriffs deed, county court records and naturalization records, to name but a few of particular interest to genealogists. City records are listed in Record Groups 60 - 167. Much of this material deals with the post-consolidation period (after 1854) and the proliferation of city agencies. Of particular genealogical interest, however, are the birth, death and marriage records, apprentice indentures, mayors court dockets, and naturalization declaration dockets. Records relating to the various districts, boroughs and townships of Philadelphia prior to 1854 are included in Record Groups 200 - 223. Non Municipal Records (RG 225 - 231) include the invaluable Warrants and Surveys of the Province of Pennsylvania, microfilmed records, such as the patent books and the 1798 U.S. Direct Tax for Philadelphia City and County, and various published records such as Philadelphia Directories, the Pennsylvania Archives, and various city Atlases. A chronological index of five pages, arranged to correspond to the dates of major changes in the governmental organization of the city and county, lists records series' numbers in sequence. This is followed by the subject index which was set up by a computer program using a limited permutation of a rotating type. While this gives a very detailed listing of the subject matter in the various record groups, it is not an easy index to use, and the searcher most study the organization of the Inventory in order to become familiar with the agencies under whioh various records are listed. The book's loose leaf 7 - ring binder format permits the insertion of new material from time to time. How this will stand up in libraries, where it may be handled by less 74 Book Reviews 75 than tender-loving hands, is open to question. Frequent turning of pages is bound to be hard on the seven holes of each page, and even in its pristine condition, it is not easy to turn a page or group of pages evenly. In spite of such minor criticisms, this Inventory is of prime importance to researchers in many fields. Economists, sociologists, historians and genealogists will find listed in it many "goodies" which are pertinent to their particular areas of interest. Four Pennsylvania German Studies. [Volume III, Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society.) (Breinigsville, Pa.: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1970. vii, 179 p. Illustrations, map, index. $10.00.) This third volume in the new series published by the merged Pennsylvania German Society and the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, in format recalls the publications of the latter Society. It is a great improvement over the first and second volumes of the merged Societies, the first of which was reviewed in this Magazine, Volume XXV (1968), 281. Bound in the Folklore's traditional oatmeal covered cloth, and ornamented with a Pennsylvania German fraktur design in blue on the front board, the merged Society is to be congratulated on its appearance. In the volume under review, the first study, by Dale E. Biever, is "A Report of Archeological Investigations at the Ephrata Cloister, 1963-1966." Students of genealogy will find its capsule history of the Dunker — later Seventh-Day Baptist — community at Ephrata helpful. For those interested in archeology, the description of the "digs" at Zion Hill, the location of the buildings erected in 1738 for the male celebates at the Cloister, is most revealing. This section is liberally illustrated with good photographs of the foundations uncovered during the excavations. The second study, by Preston A. Barba, of "Rachel Bahn, Pennsylvania Poetess," is a biographical sketch also of genealogical interest. It includes considerable data on the eighteenth-century Harbaugh and Bahn families of the Recast Creek valley in York County. Rachel Bahn was been here in 1829, and lived here all her life, dying in 1902. As a young woman she was stricken with a spinal affliction which confined her to her bed for more than half a century. Displaying great fortitude and tenacity, she spent her years writing, in both German and English, pt-me sketches and poems, a number of which are reprinted in the present account. The third study is by Albert F. Buffington: "Similarities and Dissimilarities between Pennsylvania German and the Rhenish Palatinate Dialects." Because of its rather technical presentation, it is of interest chiefly to those familiar with linguistic peculiarities. The fourth study, of especial interest to genealogists, is the translated transcript of the "Parochial Registers of the Indian Creek Reformed Church, 1753-1851." These records were translated in 1921 by the late 'William J. Hinke, and the present transcript is from his translation. It forms a most welcome addition to the list of parochial registers published by the Pennsylvania German Society over the years. In a sense the record is a companion volume to Charles H. Price's published history of this church in Franconia Township, Montgomery County, which Mr. Price published in 1966; his account of the congregation is largely based on these records. The greater part of the record consists of baptisms which begin in 1753 and extend to April, 1851. Marriages are entered only for the years 1782-1797, burials from 17821796, and catechums from 1767-1817. As Mr. Price points out in a note, the first 76 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine pastors either left no marriage records, or they are missing. The same is true for burials. But since Indian Creek belonged to the Tohickon Charge, the records of that church, published by the Pennsylvania German Society in its Volume XICCI (1925), contain some marriages and burials of members of the Indian Creek, or Indianfield Church, as it was sometimes called. It is to be hoped that the present Society will continue to include in its future publications other records translated by the Reverend Mr. Hinke, thus making them more readily available to a wide audience. Their genealogical value is incomparable, and not everyone is able to examine such records on microfilm. 'William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania. By William I. Hull. [Reprint of Swarthmore College Monographs on Quaker History, Number 2, Swarthmore, Pa., 1935.] (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1970. xiii, 445 p. Illustrations, facsimiles, appendices, index. $12.50.) No student of the founding fathers of Germantown and of the early German migration to Pennsylvania should be without this long out-of-print work. It is a study of William Penn's efforts in 1671 and 1677 to convert to Quakerism Labadists, Pietists and Quietists in Holland and Germany, and his efforts in 1686 and later to induce colonists to migrate to Pennsylvania. The author shows the manner in which the small Quaker communities on the Continent laid the groundwork for these visits of Penn, and then the progress of these Dutch and German Quakers who fled from persecution on Perm's invitation to settle in Pennsylvania. He makes clear the fact that these founders were not German Mennonites, as usually believed, but Dutch Quakers, and includes numerous biographical sketches of the men and women involved. It is therefore a valuable source of information to the genealogist whose concern is the European background of these early settlers. Of especial interest are the many transcripts of certificates of removal given the emigrants, and letters written to and by the colonists and those involved in the migration, as well as Appendices B and C. The first of these identifies the Dutch pioneers of Germantown, 1683-1690. The second is a cumulative listing of the Dutch and German settlers in Germantown, 1683-1709. It is arranged alphabetically under each place of origin where known, includes the first known date of appearance in Germantown, and notes family relationships between the settlers. As a basic reference work, this volume is a welcome addition to the growing list of reprints coming out of Baltimore. Rohrbach Genealogy. By Lewis Bunker Rohrbaugh. (Philadelphia: Dando-Schaff Printing & Publishing Co., 1970. 615 p. Index. $20.00.) The name Rohrbach (reed-brook in German) was originally given to persons who lived near a reedy brook or who lived in a village or town of the name. Several such villages are in Switzerland, and others in Germany, Austria and the Alsace area of what is now France. That emigrants from these areas to America assumed variant spellings of the surname is evident from the sub-title of this comprehensive work: "Descendants of Nine Roluback immigrants to Colonial America 1709-1754 and more than One hundred Rohrbach immigrants to America 1825-1900 Including the families of Rohrbach, Rohrbaugh, Rohrabacher, Rohrabaugh, Rohrabough, Rohrback, Rohrbough, Roorbach, Rorabacher, Roraback, Rorabagh, Rorabeck, Rorbach, Rorebeck, etc."! Book Reviews 77 The volume is maudy devoted to the isine men bearing the basic surname or one of its variants who emigrated to America between 1709 and 1754. Mr. Rohrbaugh includes the known descendants of seven of the nine, but carries down only the male lines. For the other two emigrants, Hans Georg Rohrbach of Berks County, emigrant of 1732, and Johann Reinhart Rolubach of West Virginia, emigrant of 1749, only four generations are given since genealogies dealing with them have already been published. The most extensive compilation (215 p.) deals with the descendants of Mr. Rohrbaugh's own ancestor, Christian Rohrbach, who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1743 and died in Codorus Township, York County in 1789. He was not the first Rohrbach emigrant, however; others had come to New York in 1709 (Christian and Johannes), Hans Georg Rohrbach to Berks County in 1732, and in 1739, Christian Rohrbach, uncle of the first mentioned Christian, to Mt. Joy Township, Adams County. The accounts of Rolubach emigrants of the later period (1825-1900), arranged alphabetically by first name, vary in extent from one or two to five generations. This section is followed by one devoted to Rohrbach families in Switzerland. It is based on researches of a Mr. Julius Billeter, a Swiss genealogist who was engaged in the early 1930's, by the Niederhauser Family Association of Utah, to compile complete genealogies of a number of families, including the Rohrbachs, and is supplemented by material received from Dr. Karl Friedrich von Frank of Austria, a Corresponding Member of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. Included are families from Rilegmsberg, Thurnen, Innertkirchen, Erlenbach, from numerous villages in the general vicinity of Zweibriicken and from the German Palatinate. Brief accounts of miscellaneous and unplaced Rohrbachs complete the volume. A good idea of the comprehensiveness of Mr. Rolubaugh's compilation can be seen in the twenty-two 4-column pages of the 58 page index which list all Rohrbachs mentioned in the text. And while there is no documentation for later generations of the various families, since presumably much of that material came to him from various individual members of the families, in his early generations he at least indicates his sources. These include wills, tax lists, cemetery inscriptions and church records, census records and various published accounts. It is unfortunate, but considering the magnitude of his task, understandable, that the female lines have not been carried down. The book is available from Mr. Rohrbaugh, Sea Street, Rockport, Me. 04856. Notes and Queries Historical and Genealogical Chiefly Relating to Interior Pennsylvania. Edited by William Henry Egle, M.D. Index to Main Families, Perscms, Places and Subjects its Egle's Notes and Queries. By Members of the Staff of the Pennsylvania State Library, with Introduction and Bibliography by A. Monroe Aurand, Jr. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1970. [Reprints of the 12 volumes of Notes and Queries and of the Index (Harrisburg, 1894-1901, 1934).] lot and 2nd Series, xi, 496 p., xi, 471 P.; 3rd Series, xiii, 560 p., x, 496 p., vii, 565 p.; 4th Series, viii, 328 p., ii, 365 p.; Annual Volumes, (1896) vi, 239 P.; (1897) vi, 238 p.; (1898) vii, 308 p., (1899), ix, 243 p.; (1900) viii, 237 p.; Index, 81 p. $115.00 the set.) This present offering is one of the mom ambitious projects of the Genealogical Publishing Company, and a noteworthy one. The material in these twelve reprinted volumes originally appeared in the columns of the Harrisburg Daily Telegraph from 1073 78 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine to 1900. Between 1879 and 1894, some of the articles published in the newspaper were printed in pamphlet form, but few have survived. Because of the scarcity of the pamphlets and the inaccessibility of the earliest series which had appeared in the Telegraph, between 1893 and 1896 a series of reprints was published. These were then followed by five annual volumes from 1896 to 1900, and were only terminated because of the death of Dr. Egle in February 1901. Thus, except for the five annual volumes, the present publications are reprints of reprints! The set is divided into a reprint of the First and Second Series, in two volumes, designated in the so-called Index volume as S1-2; a reprint of the Third Series (S-3), in three volumes; of the Fourth Series (S-4) in two volumes, and the succeeding five Annual Volumes (AV). Except for the first five volumes (First, Second and Third Series) which had been hand-set originally, the volumes were first printed directly from the newspaper type, thus producing double-column pages. The variety of material included in these volumes is fantastic. The early Series contain many articles dealing with the history of the Dauphin County area and adjacent counties. Contributors of these include such worthies as Samuel Evans, John W. Jordan, John Blair Linn, George Bucher Ayres and Benjamin M. Nead. There are also hundreds of genealogical notices of families which settled in the central section of the state. None of them are documented, and must be used with caution, but are very useful for providing leads. Interspersed are transcripts of early tax lists, marriage and death records from Harrisburg and Sunbury newspapers, militia lists, and many church registers. Later volumes include tombstone records of assorted denominations in Adams, Berks, Cumberland, Franklin, Northampton, Perry, Union and York Counties. In the Fourth Series, Dr. Egle includes data on Sullivan County and Redmond Conyngham's sketches of Lancaster County. Of special interest might be mentioned the early lists of rateables for townships in upper Lancaster County, now in Dauphin County, in the 1750s and 1770s, many of which are not included in Volume XVII of the Pennsylvania Archives, 3rd Series; marriages and baptisms by the Rev. John Casper Stoever, and the marriage registers of the Rev. John Elder (1744-1791) and the Rev. John Roan (1754-1774), both of whom served central Pennsylvania. Each volume has a fairly detailed Table of Contents which serves as a sort of index. These have been combined in the so-called Index Volume. But as the heading states, it is an index only to "Main Families, Persons, Places and Subject," and is in no sense a "name" index. It is unfortunate that the publishers elected to use black ink, rather than gold, for the printing on the spine of each volume. Superimposed on a dark mulberry binding, it is almost impossible to read. But for a researcher interested in Central Pennsylvania families, many of whom had migrated to the area from the Delaware Valley, this series is a must because of its extensive and varied cavengc.