January 1991

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

Genealogy is the feature for this January issue. E. R. Van Etten tells us all how to get started with our family histories in his article Genealogy 101. Known by all of his friends as Bim, he teaches just such a course several times a year at Steele Memorial Library in Elmira. He also provides a description of genealogy resources at the Steele Memorial Library and the Family History Center at the Horsehead's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Helena Howard reports on the activities in 1990 of the genealogy buffs who call themselves the Jo-Ho's. Helena is one of the founders of this group that started about nine years ago at a meeting in her house. She keeps the membership records, the name tags the members wear at meetings, and she makes sure there is a place for the next meeting. Mrs. Howard has become the "Elder Stateswoman" for the Jo-Ho's. She brings to each meeting the group's scrapbook that contains each member's ancestor chart and the cross-referencing list of family names that all are working on. The Jo-Ho's have no officers and no dues.

The following short articles have been contributed by members of the Jo - Ho's:

Ed Harris tells how his great-great grandparents came to New York. Another chapter from his Harpending's Corners will appear next month.

Betty Smalley tells of the few times that Seneca Lake has frozen completely over. This is a selection from her Torrey Truth and Trivia. She is historian for the town of Torrey.

Catherine Pierce discovered an old newspaper clipping that tells of early Corning and how family names change.

Jeanette Denson sets down interesting history about her husband's ancestors and relatives, the Bowlby family, that came from Yorkshire, England, and eventually settled near Bath on the location of Williamson's Springfield Farm.

Rev. Robert F. McNamara contributes a biographical sketch about his father, Corning's well-remembered and well-loved Dr. Thomas Alexander McNamara. This is the first of four chapters about a man who was a son and brother, a husband and father and a neighbor who took care of medical and other needs of many families in Corning for many years. Rev. Robert McNamara now lives in Rochester. He was born in Corning, and is professor emeritus of history at St. Bernard's Seminary in Rochester and archivist of the Catholic Diocese of Rochester.

This issue concludes with another chapter from Caroline Kirkland's A New Home. It is a continuation of her narration of an overnight stay in a frontier cabin with affluent travellers.

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