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Jim Rader's Web site www.rader.org |
Hosensack PREFACEWHY THIS BOOK ? My consuming interest in the Roeders of Hosensack began more than 20 years ago when, I copied the diaries my grandfather, Samuel Marsteller Roeder kept from 1871 through 1878. . . his years at Franklin and Marshall College and Lancaster Seminary. I wanted to know more about his family and to see Hosensack where he grew up. On my first visit I started exploring cemeteries and old church records. Over the years I found many descendants of the Hosensack Roeders who still live in Hosensack, Geryville, East Greenville, Pennsburg and other nearby communities. I have made 19 annual trips, each time finding more Freindschaft (or kinfolk), always cordial and welcoming, whether 2nd or 5th cousins! HOW TO READ THIS BOOK Nothing is more frustrating (or boring?) than reading genealogies. . . . all those names and dates! Every genealogist works out his own num-bering system. It makes sense to him, but baffles everyone else. Start reading about your own family and work out from there, but don’t feel you must read it all! I have told where families lived, describing locations in considerable detail so that, if you are familiar with the area, you can visualize the places I am talking about, and perhaps find them yourself. NUMBERING SYSTEM Bracketed numbers, such as [2-3], give each man his place in the family. The first is his generation, the second, his own number within his generation. Usually I have not assigned numbers to men who have no children or for whom no de-scendants are known. (I am not absolutely consistent in this.) Since girls do not carry on the Roeder name, I give them their generation number only. This symbol + indicates that that person’s children are listed somewhere below. The numbers should guide you back and forth. Good luck! I don’t give complete information for 9th and 10th generations. At this point individual families can start their own genealogies. Record the dates of your children and grand-children; gather pictures and favorite family stories and they will be grateful! THE HUMAN SIDE Names and dates are only a skeleton which I tried to "flesh out" by telling what I know about the early Roeders, a bit here, and bit there, where they lived, what they did, how they are remembered. PICTURES The pictures are the frosting on the cake! To know what these long ago peo-ple looked like, almost brings them back to life and to see homes and churches gives us a sense of their place. I hope you will enjoy and treasure them as I do. OUR PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN HERITAGE I have tried to touch on the unique culture these Germans developed over their long years in America. That is why I have written about their customs,their churches, their language, the way their neighbors viewed them. It is exciting that so much remains of what they built, not only of their farms and homes but their ways. In the relatively unspoiled countryside around Hosensack and other villages one can almost experience (or at least visualize) what their lives were like. It is not like visiting deliberately reconstructed "historic" villages to know that the people who gave us our lives and genes as well as many of our values and ethics, worked and lived right where we can still stand. Far more Roeder girls than boys grew up to have families, so that, today, not many people bear the Roeder name. One might say the family is "daughtered out." But descen-dants of those daughters are proud to claim their Roeder heritage. I am one of them myself! |