Grandma's Granny's Family Album

How many Johns do you know?  Probably a lot, since it is the most popular first name in the US today, with 5,298,362 males (total, not new babies).   How many ancestors do we have named John?  ( 🙋 Quiz - answer at bottom).   A lot also, because 5.8 million Johns have been born since 1530.  Add to that the cognates of John in other languages - Johann, Juan, Jean, Sean, Giovanni, Jovan, Ivan, Evan, Ian, Yannis, Jens, Jan - and you know why genealogists groan when they find a John to research.   So it is not surprising that although our ancestor John B. Acker (see Acker Pedigree Chart, see Acker Family - Ester Crank and John B. Acker Descendant Chart) was the only man of that name when he lived in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, there were quite a few men named John or Jan Acker or Ecker in his hometown of Philipsburgh Manor, New York Province.  Jan, pronounced YON, is the Dutch form of John, and Ecker seems to be the preferred version of Acker b...

I assumed my great-grandparents Gertrude and Theodore Zoeller were partners.  His life was remarkably successful.  Arriving in 1845 as a teenage farmer responsible for 2 younger siblings shell-shocked by the recent death of their mother onboard ship, he became a prosperous business owner and politician.  From at least 1857 to 1859, he rented a store for his cabinet-making.  It appears he specialized in elaborate furniture of mahogany carved with deer and fruit, representing the plenty that newly rich immigrants could afford.  Theodore owned a $100 watch ($2000 in today's money) and a $200 piano - during the Civil War when the government needed money, they got $3 by taxing both. $3 could pay for a far sadder thing than piano taxes - an infant's grave at Calvary Catholic Cemetery. In Queens, Calvary was an easy ferry ride away from the 17th Ward of Manhattan, where most immigrants lived.  A contemporary wrote that funeral processions were constantly going up ...