Annual Review 2022
A Look Back, a Look Ahead and a Five-Year Plan for the Minerd.com Website, Social Media Properties and Archives

77,170

Page impressions

29,551

Total visitors

28,606 

New visitors

20

New biographies

1,957

Total biographies

791

Facebook page members

320

Facebook page posts

7,065

Facebook page reactions

12

Photos of the month

94

Military casualties

all-time

55

Accidental work deaths in mfg/mining/metals all-time

296

Casualties of water, fire/shock,  vehicle accidents all-time

110

Known cousin/spouse deaths occurring in 2022

4,577

Known cousin deaths
occurring since July 2000

14

Minerd.com Blog
posts in 2022

Civil War soldier records copied during my 2022 research trip to the National Archives

Our award-winning Minerd.com website, social media properties and family research archive are nearing a crossroads to determine their future. Either these assets will be retired into oblivion when I can no longer maintain them or be kept intact and endure for future generations through a bold plan of action. After much thought and prayer, my choice is to pursue the bold plan. Maybe I’m just crazy. 

Thus in 2022, I began a five-year process to identify what steps are needed to make this happen. It will take a combination of factors that must function together in harmony. The solution needs to include all aspects of keeping our website and social media assets online and up-to-date and a facility to house and curate the physical archives where people can gather and mine the material for new discoveries. The solution also will require funding to assure proper stewardship and a team who can expertly curate long-term upkeep and public-facing engagement. 

The intellectual backbone of the website is the archive, comprised of hundreds of books, thousands of photographs and hundreds of thousands of documents, impossible to re-create. The benefit to the family at large is the permanent preservation of their family history documentation, accessible to all someday, in a way that will elude the ravages of time and disinterest. It may also heighten one's sense of satisfaction at knowing that her or his family is worthy of having its own place/museum/library. 

At the 2022 Shroyer Reunion in Connellsville, PA. Courtesy Mia Lizzy Photography

With cousin Shawn Shroyer

The first step I took last year was to begin to make sure the website is as complete as possible. In real terms, that meant identifying more than 200 biographies that were not current in chronicling the lives of descendants up to the present day. It involved an upgrade to software that dramatically has sped the editing process – the hard work of research to uncover the lives and stories of thousands of unknown cousins in the extended clan – and the writing and illustration to bring forgotten generations back to life. Out-of-date coding needed to be removed from the back end of several thousand existing pages, and each page given a proper title for optimal search engine optimization. Working nearly every day, I got about halfway through the biography updates, and am continuing full-speed now into the new year. It will take all of 2023 to get this done, if not longer. 

We now live in a culture that values digital versus actual antiquities, especially true among our young people who are addicted to their smart phones but who are our future audience. Maybe three-dimensional books and manuscripts and photographs are passé – out of fashion in this era. But as many cousins have entrusted me to preserve their irreplaceable original treasures. My own life has been dedicated to accumulating the rare, otherwise unavailable research materials that provide unique content for our reunion and website. So I’ve made a commitment and it’s what I’m planning to do, with God’s help.                 

Photo-scanning visit with Debra M. Kemp

One of the most disheartening feelings is when a cousin says he or she is discarding paper research accumulations of many years’ work because their children don’t have an interest and no one else wants it. Sometimes they have entrusted the material to me. Sometimes they don't, or it's too late.

A burning and ongoing question is whether the traditional book, photo or document as a physical object will disappear in the future and that the 100-percent transition to electronic formats is inevitable. Google Books, for example, has scanned and posted more than 10 million old books online in searchable formats, but only if the book is out of copyright or the publisher has given permission.  A burning and ongoing question is whether the traditional book, photo or document as a physical object will disappear in the future and that the 100-percent transition to electronic formats is inevitable. Google Books, for example, has scanned and posted more than 10 million old books online in searchable formats, if the book is out of copyright or the publisher has given permission, and not always including self-published books, small press runs or other more "epemeral" works of authorship.  

I view our archive over a very long-term as a hedge against evolving technology, a hedge against a fragile electrical infrastructure and a hedge against copyright infringement issues. As well, I see it in terms of completeness, the tactile sensation with the patina of age and the importance of the quality of original visuals. One example is from several summers ago when I was researching in a county courthouse, I asked to see files from old lawsuits of the 1800s. I was shown digital versions on microfiche, scanned several decades ago, but was told that the originals were in cold storage and that the retrieval fee was pricey. The county’s budget would not allow re-scanning using the latest and greatest technology for better legibility. So I spent several hours squinting at fuzzy and small images and in many cases could not decipher the early 19th century handwriting. I came away dissatisfied and convinced that technology had failed me. For more, see my 2016 Minerd.com Blog post, "The BBC News Asks If There's a Need to Collect Books."

2022 Research and Travel -  In September, with the facility now full re-opened to the public following Covid-19, I revisited the National Archives in Washington, DC to examine and copy original Civil War pension files for 31 newly discovered soldiers. 

During that trip, I returned to Arlington National Cemetery to photograph 16 cousins’ military grave markers. We now know of 225 Civil War veterans in the MMMM family, and 169 in the Younkin-Younken-Youngkin, with six more having been found since then and needing to be researched in the future. This intensive focus on the family’s interaction with the war is a singular theme of our website, and the archives behind this knowledge are voluminous. 

Then in October, my wife Liz and I made a weekend fall foliage getaway to Jim Thorpe, PA, formerly known as Mauch Chunk, where some of our cousins settled in the early 1800s. Much to our surprise we found the family name in an exhibit in the Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center, citing cousin Elias Miner who in 1845 co-founded the old Mauch Chunk Iron Works.

Elias Miner named in a Mauch Chunk Museum exhibit, Jim Thorpe, PA

Among other fascinating research discoveries during the year was of a cousin killed in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 – a cousin whose husband lost his business in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 – an Younkin cousin Louis O. Kelso of the Herlinger/Wolfe branch who founded the concept of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), now widely accepted in our economy. So too the count increased of cousins who lost their lives in railroad and streetcar accidents and in the manufacturing mining and mineral industries.         

These other Minerd.com pages also were updated with new finds -- Remembering Pearl Harbor: Honoring Known Cousins in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 – Gaumer-Gomer-Garmer Biography Archives -- Younkin-Younken-Youngkin Feature Pages and Biography Archives -- and Honor Roll: 94 Military Casualties.

Save the Date! -- 2023 Reunion Plans – This year's National M-M-M-M Reunion will be held the weekend of June 9-11, 2023 in southwestern Pennsylvania. More details to follow. Watch our Minerd.com homepage and Facebook page for updates.

We need to fill the open elected positions of reunion treasurer and secretary. While neither job is particularly difficult or time-consuming, the roles need to be filled, and just cannot go on without dedicated team members. 

Your reunion advisory committee includes Peggy Grimm Mansberry, Kristen Murphy Krieg, Jill Channing Aird, Barb Holly Minerd, Sharon Jo Sheldon Kern and Doris Sands Hawker.

In Closing - On a personal note, I was honored that Shawn Shroyer invited me to the Shroyer Reunion in Connellsville, PA on Labor Day and that Debra (Minerd) Kemp opened her home to me to scan old family photographs in January 2023.

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed your voice and your own family's trove of family heritage stories, images and paper. This site is for you, and would not be possible without you.

Sincerely,

Mark A. Miner, Founder, Minerd.com
January 19, 2023

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