Finding Family Through Genealogy

Brother John Beiseigel, a dual member of Green Leaf Lodge No. 561, Allentown, and Abraham C. Treichler Lodge No. 682, Elizabethtown, has aways been interested in family history and his family tree.

“I became the custodian of our family pictures many years ago,” he said. “My mother gave them to me. I’ve held onto them all these years, digitized and shared them with my children.”

A fourth generation Mason, John knew his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all Masons, but he wanted to dig deeper and learn more.

In 2013, John joined Ancestry.com, billed as the world’s largest collection of online family history records. The website helps you build your family tree, understand your genealogy and delivers your DNA results.

“I’d heard about relatives who were Masons and various stories growing up, and I was curious to find out how much of what I learned was true and what was fiction,” he said.

After retiring from his job as a Production Manager for Air Products and Chemicals Inc., in 2014, John, now a resident of Masonic Village at Elizabethtown, began delving into Ancestry.com’s subsidiaries, including Newspapers.com, a 100-yearold newspaper archive used for genealogy purposes, and Fold3. com, offering a premier collection of original military records.

Through Fold3.com, John, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was able to locate military records that showed his great-grandfather had fought in and survived two of the deadliest battles of the American Civil War, Fredericksburg and Antietam.

“Being able to see the military records of when [my greatgrandfather] served was phenomenal,” John said.

“I came to learn that both my grandfathers were Scottish Rite Masons,” he said. “I also learned my great-grandfather was in the York Rite, Scottish Rite and was a Shriner. After moving to Allentown, he started the DeMolay chapter there.”

When he moved to Elizabethtown (from Allentown), John decided to follow in his great-grandfather’s footsteps and belong to the same appendant bodies in different jurisdictions. He joined the Valley of Harrisburg and began his York Rite journey, culminating with the Knights Templar.

The deeper you go with Newspapers. com, the more the site sends you “hints” containing additional data based on the person’s name you’re searching, John said. Through the site, he was able to locate a newspaper article about his grandfather breaking his arm in a car accident. “I was just scanning the articles, and I found it,” he said. “It was fascinating.

“It [genealogy] takes time and patience, and you have to be inquisitive to use these programs, but you can learn a lot of information,” John said. “My research led me to call Cathy Giaimo [Masonic Library and Museum Librarian] to see what lodges my father, both of my grandfathers and my greatgrandfather belonged to. Cathy has been an excellent resource in my quest for knowledge.”

That knowledge continues to evolve, but is more difficult because the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania only has blue lodge membership records. There is no one database that includes all the appendant bodies.

“We have to remember that these records were never meant for genealogical purposes to begin with,” Cathy said. “The only information the record has is on the member himself. The petition does not ask for family information. Years ago, membership was never spoken about openly, and family members only found out about it a generation or so later.”

“From a genealogy perspective, it’s a challenge,” John added. “It took me three years to find York Rite records for my grandfather. There’s an endless amount of information. I want to unearth what offices and what time frame my family members served. I’m just going to keep going. You never really get to the end of the research. I just found articles today that weren’t available a few years ago.”

No matter how long it takes, John is determined to keep learning more. He admits he’s “cursed” with the gene of curiosity and feels compelled to continue searching to preserve his family history.

“My oldest son will be a fifth generation Mason,” he said. “I want to be able to pass all this information on to my children and grandchildren. It’s not a chore going through the records – it’s a fun hobby. It does take time, but that’s part of the fun. It’s like a treasure hunt, and then all of a sudden, there’s that gem.”

“In one of her letters, she said she ‘took a stand with the brotherhood,’” Maurice said. “It was unusual for a woman to write something like that. Women can’t be Freemasons, but there may have been some exceptions made back then. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a Mason, based on her involvement with the church and her husband being a Mason.”

Searching for ancestors can be overwhelming, and Maurice said he learns something new every day.

“Going on Findagrave.com was the first thing I ever did in this journey,” he said. “My great-grandmother died in the flood of 1955. Her mother’s name was Eliza Pearson. I found Eliza’s obituary. Through Findagrave.com, I was able to locate her parents and all her siblings. Then, I used DNA tests to make sure the information was accurate.”

Brother Maurice McGeehan, Barger Lodge No. 325, Stroudsburg, is very interested in genealogy and recently submitted a DNA sample to Ancestry.com to learn more about his grandmother’s past. He also wanted to track his local connections – including Masonic ones – to the community.

“I’ve found a lot of people,” he said. “We had an old [lodge] member who died recently. I went to the funeral and came to find out we had some common relatives.”

Maurice’s family members were Masons who lived in Snow Creek, Virginia. There is a church there where the Masons used to meet. Through his research, Maurice located letters from his great-great-grandmother about what it was like growing up in the early 1800s.

Maurice also learned that through the Virginia part of his family, he is the 14th great-grandson of Thomas Cromwell and a direct descendant of Charlemagne. Cromwell was one of the most powerful proponents of the English Reformation and the creator of true English governance. Charlemagne was the first ruler after the fall of Rome.

“Every once in a while, you get a piece of information that’s mind blowing or you didn’t see coming,” he said. “When I do genealogy, I feel connected to these people and my past. When I find a picture, and it looks like relatives who are alive, it helps to show that although decades and centuries have gone by, we are tied together and part of each other.”

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Brother Jeffrey R. Smith, Mitchell Lodge No. 81, Chestnut Hill, was a history major at the University of Delaware. When he met his wife in 2004, she had a subscription to Ancestry.com. They bonded immediately.

“You don’t give history majors that type of information,” he joked.

“Tracing my family history is a passion because they [my family members] said I couldn’t do it with a last name like ‘Smith,’ which is so common.”

When Jeff got involved with Freemasonry, he wanted to know if any of his family members were Masons. Through his research, he discovered that his greatgrandfather, great-great-grandfather and greatgreat-great-grandfather were all Masons. He was also able to obtain his great uncle’s Masonic ring.

“My grandmother had a drawer of gold items she wanted to melt down and make into gold nuggets,” he said. “I found the ring and said, ‘No, I’m going to keep this one.’ My grandmother was getting ready to throw it out, and inside [the ring], I saw an inscription from the Scottish Rite, so I kept it.

“I also learned that on my mother’s side, I had a greatgrandfather who was in the Kensington Royal Arch chapter. I found out about all of this from an obituary in Newspapers.com. Funeral services are also a big deal in Freemasonry. They always mention a lodge connection in the obituary, even small ones.”

Like his fellow genealogy “searchers,” Jeff said his quest for knowledge is endless. Every day, he is looking up something new. There are always new records or databases to sift through.

“My wife is into it now, too,” he said. “We just completed her Daughters of the American Revolution [a lineage-based membership service organization for women] application.”

Jeffrey helps several lineage organizations, including new potential members for the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, finds eligible ancestors. He spends several hours a week at night working on these projects, in addition to his day job as an insurance agent.

“I do it because it’s fun,” he said. “They [the Society] could probably do the research on their own, but what would take them months I can do in a week or so, so why not? I find it quite enjoyable.”

For people interested in genealogy, Jeff suggests first interviewing family members “while they are still alive to tell their stories.” Once you gather the information, visit Ancestry.com to build the framework for your family tree. Once you’ve got the outline for a family tree, explore DNA next.

“There’s no way to use DNA to its fullest potential unless you have the family tree framework done,” Jeff said.

Just recently, Jeff was able to locate an ancestor who was at the First Battle of Bull Run (the first major land battle of the American Civil War) and others who fought battles in the American Revolutionary War and most of the other American conflicts.

“The most fun I have is finding the [family] scoundrels,” he said. “They are the ones who get the most newspaper coverage. I find them to be the most interesting. I’ve found a few in my own family.”

The real fun in genealogy is peeling back the onion. There’s always more to a story than you think, he said.

“When it’s a family connection, it really brings the history home to you. These individuals shaped important things in our country and our family. It’s important that their stories are not forgotten and some part of them lives on,” Jeff said.