Honor Roll Project - Merrick, NY

 As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed this Roll of Honor in Merrick, NY to make the names visible to search engines so that family researchers can find them.

This memorial park is located on Merrick Avenue at Lee Avenue, in Merrick, NY. It contains a few monuments. This one is dedicated to all who have served the United States in times of war and peace.

This memorial is in remembrance of the victims of September 11, 2001, and contains steel from the World Trade Center.

This monument honors all the volunteer firefighters who serve the community of North Merrick.

And finally, this memorial honors those who have made the supreme sacrifice for the United States in World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.

World War II

Harold Kenneth Ahlquist

Alfred William Amari

Clifford E. Bahnsen

Walter Edwin Baldwin

Walter J. Burke Jr.

Harry Gregory Chernucha

Edward MacDonald Dobson

William C. Edghill

George Justus Fisher

Norman C. Gianelli

Bernard Peter Helfrich

Walter Edward Johnson

George T. Johnston

Thomas George Kees

Clarence Dexter Lane

Francis Lippold

Roderick A. McDermott

Stanley Michalicki

Joseph Orr

Laurence D. Solowey

Arthur Evans Temple

William R. Wirges Jr.

Korea

Eugene C. Barry

Xavier J. Benziger Jr,

Manuel John Yduate Jr.

Vietnam

Frederick John Burns

Paul William Casey

Paul James Coates

Joseph William Devlin

John Frederick Dugan

Peter F. Gerstenlauer

Roger Edward Huestis

Lawrence George Koch

Donald Edward Kreuscher

Joel Melnick

Robert Gary Piazza

Joseph Ralph Simone

George Frank Sodaitis

George Henry Ulrich

James Francis Westphal

Iraq

Scott Michael Bandhold

A Citation Puzzle for a PA Birth Register

Howard Matthews, photo enhanced with MyHeritage.

Another month has passed without posting. Again, I have not been doing too much active research but I have been able to do something genealogy related every week, I think. Things get a little fuzzy the last two weeks because I've been dealing with the longest bout of sciatica I have ever experienced. Thank goodness that has finally progressed to just enough of a twinge so I don't forget my stretches in the morning.

One thing I have been working on is a citation for a birth register containing an entry for my paternal grandfather, Howard Matthews, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1901, just a few years before they started issuing birth certificates. In 1938 he had a heck of a time proving his birth so that he and my grandmother could get a passport for a work trip to the Near East. Too bad he didn't know about this register.

The PA archives website says these records were kept by the Clerk of the Orphans Court, the microfilmed records on FamilySearch seem to indicate something else and and state statutes indicate that by 1901 it should have been the Board of Health who was collecting these records, even before they began to issue certificates. In the end, what matters most is who provided that information, and that is still a mystery. Under any statute for these records, the information could have been provided by a physician or midwife if one attended the birth, or by a parent, if there were no attendant.  Now that I'm feeling better, I'm going to reread those state statutes and contact the archives to see if I can get some clarification on their part at least. I'll probably never know who provided the information since it was not recorded in the register.

Speaking of those statutes, I'm sure most genealogists are already following Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist. But, in case you missed it, she has shared the wonderful work of Debbie Mieszala who is compiling a state-by-state online law library you can access here at the Advancing Genealogist. This is where I found links to the laws that governed the collection of information for these birth registers in Pennsylvania. As Judy says, you have to understand the law to understand the records.

My next post will be for the Honor Roll project, and then I'll be getting ready to research Donald's family in the 1950 census but I will certainly post my citation once I've done some more digging.