One of the more frustrating things about doing an online search for genealogy information is dealing with the vast quantity of garbage that is out there, but this morning was over the top. I was looking for a particular link about Montgomery County and the results included a likely looking link. When I clicked on it though it brought up a page full of ads about computer virus problems. The only way to get rid of the page and its popups was to kill off my browser completely. Had I been running a Windows machine, it probably would have caused more of a problem.

No, not the cartoon dog, but Marmaduke Burr, several of whose children were buried at St. James Perkiomen. One of the ongoing frustrations of researching genealogy is coming across records that are just plain wrong and give limited, if any, sources for the information. Marmaduke’s record is an example, as many online trees list his parents as Joseph Burr and Mary Sloan, based on the marriage of that pair in 1798 at Newton MM in New Jersey. Yes, Joseph did marry Mary Sloan, but she died in 1801, making it rather difficult for her to be the mother of Marmaduke who was born in 1806. Her death is noted in the records for Haddonfield meeting in New Jersey.

After Mary Sloan died, Joseph was remarried, on February 10, 1803, at Rancocas MM, to  Mary Hilyard, noted in the Hinshaw records for New Jersey.  Marmaduke L. Burr married Rebecca Casselbery, daughter of William and Catherine and they raised a family, several of whom were later buried at St. James. Marmaduke and Rebecca, however, apparently moved elsewhere as they are not found among the record of burials at St. James.

The first day of the new year was a productive day here as dozens of new records were added to the Virtual Graveyard - we have lots more to go in this group for St James Perkiomen and will have hundreds before we’re through.

Registered users on this site can add their own graveyard records too - registration is fast and easy and free!

Montgomery County has a rich history, so part of the process here will be to get as much as possible of it online. Right now, that means working on getting Bean’s History of Montgomery County up on the site. The project is underway and several chapters are up already under our new Documents and Book section. These are fully searchable, so take a look around!

I’m gathering data and transcribing records for this site, but it will be a little while before there is much to see here, so please come back often to check on things!