Family memories and basic sources such as census records at the
main library in Miami allowed us to trace much of our paternal
ancestry back some 150 years. Genealogy librarian Renee Pierce has provided
excellent guidance to the library's vast resources.
That we have made further progress quickly is due to the research previously done by others. Some of the more important among them:
Maxine Hobbs gave us the first hints on the background
of John (1818) Gamber's wife Maria Jane, and the whole
Beeler/Bigler/Summersgill connection.
Rick Gamber
started us on the
study of the Wilbert Gamber line.
Rebecca Pauley provided the key to Bumgarner, and,
eventually, to the home site of the Bumgarners maintained by Jim
Bumgarner. Becky has also maintained a sharp eye for Gamber information,
feeding us items we might not have otherwise found.
Claude Schauber provided information from his study of the archives in Gambsheim, Alsace.
Mme Chantel Mangeot of the civil records section of the commune Saint-Mihiel, Meuse,
Lorraine, France, is the model "can-do" bureaucrat. She, and the information she kept at her desk, made researching the Rut(t)an(t) family incredibly easy.
Our American Rutan information depends heavily on Jim Keagan, who has been building on the work of J Robert Meachem, who built on the work of J Frank Rutan and others.
Joe Rhea is the prototype research addict, spending thousands of hours and months of travel each year in the search for a complete inventory of everything Bedell in the US.
Katherine Traynham has gathered extensive information on the descendants of Jacob H Gamber of Lancaster county.
In a more general way, the
Southwestern Pennsylvania Genealogical Society (Washington) and
Cornerstone Genealogical Society (Waynesburg) have collected
resources of enormous value to families in Washington and Greene counties.
Ruth Craft at Cornerstone has provided copies of
our family's records contained in their archives.
The staffs of the Orphans Court archives of Greene and Washington Counties, PA, and in particular Ms Pat Stavovy of Washington, have been of immense value in helping me learn a complex record system with a logic all its own.
To these, others
named in the sources, and other genealogy researchers not named (not known), our
heartfelt thanks.
And a special thanks to Fred Krebs, who has taken the time to read and critique my essays. (Others are invited to do the same.)
Deena & Dan Gamber
last update 25 November 2002