Clarion County, Pennsylvania, Since 1818, Were Lutheran
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May 2020 GSP NEWSLETTER Finding your Pennsylvania Ancestors Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania Newsletter In this issue: as board secretary but continues as a member of First Families Corner ················································ 2 the GSP board, and we share the position as GSP If you could sit on this Bench ···································· 2 webmaster. Nancy Nelson continues as First Vice- The Delo(e) clan of Pennsylvania ······························· 3 President and Jane Benner joins the EC as 2nd Flora the Dog ·························································· 5 Confined ································································ 6 Vice President. We also welcome new board Spanish Flu ···························································· 7 members, Tina Lamb, Mary Phalan and Kathryn Surveyor General Records ······································· 8 Donahue. Data Collection························································ 9 We enjoy hearing from you. Check out our Featured County Clarion ·········································· 16 volunteer opportunities and continue to send us About GSP ····························································· 17 your interesting family research stories and suggestions. We welcome submissions to the A Message from the President newsletter These times they are a changing, and it is unlikely Stay safe in these trying times. we will experience life as it was just a few months Nancy Janyszeski, President ago. As board members, we are successfully attending virtual meetings from home. This has The GSP online digital newsletter the potential for virtual meetings and programs in Our office is currently closed, but our website is the future. How great that our membership will be open at https://www.genpa.org. able to attend no matter where they live. We look forward to when we can continue with The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania has a holding events, scheduling programs, answering new executive board, and I would like to thank questions, and being a source of information to past President, Carol Scheaffer, MD, for amazing our membership. accomplishments in just a few short years. I look forward to the coming year and continuing the The GSP team is monitoring emails and programs and goals that she has initiated. Carol membership status (expirations, renewals, etc.). worked endless hours, both in the office and Some of us have participated in virtual meetings virtually. She coordinated events, such as the using different software options. GSP has signed annual Ulster Event, programs, special interest up with ZOOM to host meetings, and we are groups, book sales, newsletter articles and family excited about the prospect of virtual research inquiries. Carol is continuing as a presentations. member of the executive board in the Treasurer’s position. Our special interest groups such as DNA and Angie Indik is now the Genealogical Society of Research will now be available for anyone to Pennsylvania’s Secretary. Angie has been an attend. The goal is to have speaker presentations active board member, and we welcome her as our on genealogical topics, such as Genealogy 101 new Secretary. Valerie Lutz has stepped down and special interest research. 5/9/2020 The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania 1 May 2020 GSP NEWSLETTER Finding your Pennsylvania Ancestors Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania Newsletter FIRST FAMILIES CORNER GSP’s First Families of Pennsylvania program has just had its biggest year ever! Even so, many prospec- tive FFP-ers have put off submitting applications because they want to qualify based on their earliest possi- ble Pennsylvania ancestor. While this is a noble goal, it can lead to indefinite procrastination. There is a solution to this common dilemma. After your application has been approved, if an earlier date is found, or an earlier ancestor in the same direct line is discovered, we will adjust the dates on the applica- tion and send out a new certificate, at no additional cost. We recently processed such a request from GSP member John Richardson, of California. John had proved his ancestor back to 1782. He then discovered documentation that his ancestor was in Pennsylvania in 1779. In another case, an application that had been on hold since 2014 has been approved because new information was uncovered. So, get started today! Print out the application instructions on our website and refer to them often. Gather your documentation and start filling out the FFP application. Although we don’t do the actual research for you, we are here to answer questions and make suggestions. Let’s make this year an even bigger success for our First Families of Pennsylvania program. If you could sit on this bench If you could sit on this bench for an hour with one of your ancestors, which one would you invite to join you? What is the person’s name, relation to you, and dates (ballpark) when he or she lived? What ques- tions would you ask? Email your response to [email protected]. 5/9/2020 The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania 2 May 2020 GSP NEWSLETTER Finding your Pennsylvania Ancestors Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania Newsletter The Delo(e) clan of Pennsylvania By David M. Delo I could tell you the earliest-discovered ancestor of the surname Delo(e) was my gr-gr-gr- grandfather Michael Matthew Deloe (1746-1782), killed and scalped by Indians at Fort Dilloe, near his Fort-stockade in Washington County, Pennsylvania. But that would not be true. To set the record straight, the earliest recorded ancestor of the family was Henri Deloe who worked in Brittany, France, as early as 1232 A.D., as an “undertenant” for the Duke of Rohan, a forerunner of one of the military leaders of the French Huguenot army in the late 1500s. Yes, all of the Delo(e)s were Huguenots, and Lutheran, not Calvinist, an assumption I made since nearly all of the Delos who settled in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, since 1818, were Lutheran. Our surname made it through the 38 years of the Wars of Religion in France, and if we adhere to statistics, 25% of Delo Huguenots fled France for the Netherlands, England, and perhaps Germany, before or immediately after King Louis XIV of France--in an attempt to eradicate “heretical” Protestantism from his kingdom--issued the Edict of Revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes (1598). The record for the largest number of French Delos of the 1500 and 1600s was found in the town of Sedan, France, near the Belgium border. The French records I translated from data in a French genealogy site, said: The Delo or De Lo family is an old family of Sedan. The home of Henri De Lo (1612-1676) in 1657 was on the corner of La Place d’Armes in front of the Chateau of Sedan. In the police files, of June 17, 1657, Henri possessed “Sixteen Quarters.” That meant he had the Coat of Arms and possessed knowledge of his 16 ancestors to his great-great- grandparents. “Seize Quartiers” in those two centuries, meant proof of nobility. Hmmm. In England I discovered the earliest Delos resided, not in Kent County, on whose shores they originally landed, but in London in the early-1600s where they most likely were weavers of cloth. The vast majority of Huguenot refugees who arrived in England between 1550 and 1720 were artisans, and they not only brought their weaving skills from France, they destroyed their French looms in disgust and revenge before they fled. Michael Matthew’s only identified son (there were two) was George Deloe (1774-1820) who married near Pittsburgh and traveled with wife and child in 1818 to what is now Clarion County. That is where our American line filled out. Like all good farmers, George needed lots of children to help out. Well, large families were also necessary because 20% to 80% never made it to their teens. George had ten children by his first wife, remarried a woman who brought four of her own, and then they had another six. I do not exaggerate when I say George had 110 grandchildren. 5/9/2020 The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania 3 May 2020 GSP NEWSLETTER Finding your Pennsylvania Ancestors Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania Newsletter I researched and created a 115-page genealogy of the 14 lines of the Delo(e) family. Our ancestors were present in every war from the French-Indian War (1756-1763), the Revolutionary War (Michael Matthew at Fort Pitt), and the War of 1812 where George was mustered in, and then the Civil War in which two dozen Delo(e)s fought for the North, including three Lutheran Chaplains, each of whom attended seminary school at Wittenberg College in Ohio. My gr-gr-grandfather, (David Michael like this author) served the Northern Army at the Wheelwright’s Shop in Franklin, Tennessee. When he left, his peers gave him a silver watch dated January 1, 1864, and spelled his name David De Loe. He was one of the first Delo(e)s to leave Pennsylvania, but not the last. Just after the Civil War a group of my great-uncles and great-aunts left for Elkhart, Indiana where the families dispersed and fizzled out around 1900. I believe about half of all current (2020) Delo(e)s still reside in Pennsylvania. When I first researched our family in America (1968-1970) I didn’t pay much attention to the surname Dillow. I probably should have, for I later understood that the surnames Delo(e), Del(l) on(e), and Dillo(w) were interchangeable in the 1700 in the four colonies from which the names first appeared: PA, VA, WVA and NC. Michael Matthew Delo was a Dillow, and early eastern Pennsylvania Delons were spelled a dozen different ways including Dillo and Delo. I finally figured out that census takers were among the few literate individuals in colonial days. When they recorded a family name, they wrote it phonetically. They also filtered the sound through their family origin: an Englishman might spell Delo as Dello, Dellow, Dillo or Dillow; if he was a Frenchman, he might spell it Deloe, De Loe, or Delon; and a German would most likely spell it Delo or Dello.