Starting point
My dad said he was born in Lenni, PA.
When he was born it was customary to use the name of the postal district
to indicate one's place of birth. My dad's place of birth was actually in the Crozerville
section of Aston township in PA. This meant I should have been looking at census records of Aston, PA instead of Lenni. Lenni is a section in Middletown
township; not a town. This meant there would not have been a Lenni census. People said my grandfather Yarnall's place of birth was
Lenni. They told me his name was Grant instead of GEORGE GRANT YARNALL. I could not find a Grant Yarnall in the census records
for Lenni or Middletown. I thought I better find a census with my dad's
name in it. I found my dad's name in the 1920
Aston census records. What I discovered.
Helpful map
I found a map of the Chester Creek area (circa
1870 - 1875). This map shows Middletown post offices
of Darling, Lima, Lenni, and Glen Riddle and
Aston post offices of Ivy Mills, Chester Heights,
Wawa, and Aston Mills. There was no Crozerville post office. The closest post office to that area was the Lenni post office. WHEW!
Important churches
Two of the churches in Aston township were St Thomas (in the Ivy Mills or Chester
Heights section of Aston) and St Francis (in the Crozerville section of
Aston). Because there are family graves in the St Francis cemetery, it seemed like Aston might be a good starting place for my searching. I went to the two churches,
St. Thomas the Apostle (1729) and St.
Francis de Sales (1894) because I thought they might have some helpful
records about baptisms, marriages, and deaths. St. Francis had my dad's
baptism record. St. Thomas had some Yarnall marriage and baptism information.
Documentation Dizziness
Confusion was caused by the use of the section names instead of the town names, the missing 1890 census records, and the name evolution
for my grandfather (George to Grant). This all created a complex research puzzle.
I used the microfilm records at the NARA office in Philadelphia to work my way backward from my
dad's census record through the census records of 1910, 1900, 1880,
and 1870. That is how I discovered my grandfather's name was George
G (Grant) in his youth. My searches led me to the census records of Middletown in Delaware
County. I finally found a record of my great grandfather in the 1880
census. He was listed as William. The 1880
Middletown census records listed his residence in Middletown's
Glen Riddle section. His family included a wife and nine children. He worked
in a cotton mill as did a son John (age 18), a daughter Anna (age 15),
and a son George (age 12). George was my grandfather known to me as Grant. The 1870 Aston
census indicated William H. was a farmer and his middle initial
was "H". I have yet to find him in any 1860 census. He was
in the 1850 census for Middletown.
It listed him living with a Webster family with an erroneous age of 12. He was there because he was sent to live with his aunt, Agnes Yarnall Webster, at about the age of 2 or 3 years old when his unmarried mother died in 1843. He was probably about 10 years old during that census.
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