Finally! My Journey Through Ruth Connell's Merner Genealogy Is Complete

Back in mid-April, I happened upon a book compiled by the late Ruth Merner Connell on the Merner family genealogy. Ruth's effort to produce the book must have been enormous. 

The book, published in 1976, is about 600 pages long, all hand typed (no computer word processing software available in those days) and includes old family photos and an index of the 2000 Merner family members that Ruth was able to document.

Ruth Merner Connell is my wife Ellen's third cousin, once removed. Their common ancestors are Ellen's 3X great grandparents, Jacob Emanuel Merner and Susanna Schluchter. It is these common ancestors that Ruth Merner Connell used as the focal point of her family research, essentially setting out to identify and document all of the descendants of Jacob and Susanna.

Ruth did not enjoy modern social media opportunities, no Facebook page, no Tweets, and no email. She completed her project through 'snail' mail and numerous trips to cemeteries and archives.

When I found Ruth's book, I undertook to enter the information she had compiled into my genealogy software database. Now, some two and one half months later, I have finished the task. Entering all of the information into my database is not without risks. It's a bit like copying someone's public family tree, like those found and much maligned, on the Ancestry.com site. I not only entered Ruth's genealogy information but ran the risk of entering all of her mistakes and fact errors as well.

In order to mitigate this very real risk, I checked her facts as I entered the information by taking advantage of using online databases and record collections. Certainly I found some errors in dates, for example a birth or death date being incorrect by a day, but for the most part Ruth's information is accurate. She received the information she published directly from the family members that she was documenting. Ruth also cited her sources although certainly not in the citation form that would be preferred today. On each page Ruth listed where she obtained her information; from family members, family bibles, cemetery records, etc.

As a result of completing my task of entering the Merner family information, my database has swollen to 15,763 people in 5105 families. And, perhaps most importantly, I have entered the source of the information for each and every fact that was entered. I have uploaded this updated family tree to Ancestry.com as a public member tree.

The sad note on the Merner genealogy that Ruth published is that on page 272 of her book, Ruth lists Ellen's great great grandparents, Anna Merner and Jacob Staebler. There is also a note from Ruth on the page: "No contact has been made on this family." The result is that Ellen's family is not included in the book beyond the information about her great great grandparents.

This may be remedied though as there are efforts underway to update Ruth's book. I hope to do my part in assisting in those efforts in any way that I can or may be asked.