Annual Review 2023
A Higher Sense of 'Belonging and Community'

34,019 total visitors

up 15.1%

33,266 new visitors

up 16.3%

89,744 page impressions

up 16.3%

955 Facebook members

up 20.7%

164 new Facebook members

up 138.68%

377 Facebook page posts

up 17.8%

9,972 Facebook reactions

up 41.1%

12

Photos of the Month

303 Photos of the

Month since inception

99 military casualties

up 5 

59 workplace deaths

up 5

296 water/fire/vehicle
casualties - up 61

109

Cousin/ spouse deaths
occurring in 2023

5,609 

Known cousin/spouse deaths since July 2000

1,390

Minerd.com Blog
pageviews  

A greater sense of “belonging” and “community” were the essence of Minerd.com and its Facebook page, blog and national reunion in 2023, catalysts that connect thousands of perfect strangers to each other through shared family history and story.

An upswing in visitors came to our sites this past year as, emerging from the shackles of Covid-19, I believe more and more people sought a meaningful link to previously unknown family over long distances and remote relationships and environments. Our sites originally were created as an information repository but have become trusted centers were people can meet and unite.

Cousin Debra Cyphert made the profound comment that our website and Facebook page “bring many people happiness and provide connection – something that is so very needed. If we could all embrace a love for family and adopt a deep respect for those who paved a way for generations who followed, we too could perhaps make our world a bit better and our families a lot happier.”

Join our private family page

Cousin, historian and genealogist Linda Marker of the Rockwood (PA) Historical Society said that “You are writing a mighty history of Somerset County, and the movement to other areas. This will be invaluable someday.”

Joseph Iamartino, of the Thompson (CT) Historical Society, after sharing a wealth of family photographs of 19th century millionaire-cousin Norman Bruce and Caroline (Putnam) Ream, wrote that the site does "such a great job. No one has anything like this!"

The statistics of engagement are proof of this appeal to the public's immense "longing to belong.”

At the 2023 Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor Reunion in Mill Run, PA. Courtesy Chip Frederickson

Selfie at the Little Big Horn Battlefield

Helping to drive Minerd.com’s search engine popularity is the ongoing, relentless research and pursuit to document all of the known names sprawling from 10 to 12 generations of our enormous Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor, Gaumer-Gomer-Garmer and Younkin-Younken-Youngkin family trees. During 2023, as in years past, the site was updated nearly every day. Like-minded, serious cousins find us when they Google their family names and then engage and that’s the model on which this site originally was built.

During the year I returned to the National Archives in Washington, DC to copy hundreds of pages of original Civil War pension records of newly discovered cousin-soldiers. I also had the privilege of traveling to the Little Big Horn Battlefield in Montana and touring other General Custer battle sites at nearby Pompey’s Pillar and Pease Bottom and then going to Johnson County War museums in Wyoming to gather knowledge about cousin-connections who took part. Much more will come this year on the family’s role in the Wyoming cattle war of the early 1890s and the conflict's reflection in American film, television and print.

Judge at National History Day at Pittsburgh's Heinz History Center

A number of fascinating cousins were discovered along the MMMM research trail -- Fox News founder Roger Ailes -- television entertainer and Gold Record musician Rusty Draper -- Oakland A’s pitcher Bill Mooneyham -- and two newly discovered Civil War veterans.

A deep dive into the life of German immigrant Johann “Herman” Youngken led to the identification and biographies of his eight known children, 32 known grandchildren, 111 known great-grandchildren and 271+ known great-great grandchildren. Some of the offspring were prominent in the Union Army during the Civil War, while others dwelled in the South, owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy. Among Herman’s offspring were "Lincoln’s railroad man" Col. Henry Haupt -- Dorsey Syng Baker, who built the 32-mile Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad in Washington State -- John Franklin Boyer, who co-founded the Baker Boyer Bank of Walla Walla -- Charles E. Pennock, whose mill rolled the iron plates used on the U. S. ironclad Monitor in its famous duel to the death with the enemy Merrimac -- Dr. Jefferson Church of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and dear friend of abolitionists John Brown, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison -- Abraham Piesch, a Philadelphia shipping merchant who lost everything during the War of 1812 -- Capt. Donald Byal Bradner, buried at Arlington National Cemetery for his work on chemical warfare -- Hugh Bradner, PhD., who helped J. Robert Oppenheimer to set up the atomic bomb lab at Los Alamos, NM -- Joseph Brevitt Townsend, chancellor of the Law Association of Philadelphia and co-founder of Philadelphia's prestigious Union League and his son Joseph Jr., who in 1978 merged their law firm into the Pittsburgh-based giant Reed Smith Shaw & McClay. You can’t make this stuff up.

Our “In Lasting Memory” page helps us remember those we’ve lost and gives a sense of how many of us are “out there.” Since we began counting on July 1, 2000, some 5,609 known cousins and spouses have passed away, a number that surely will increase as more research is done. Well over 1,000 of these deaths were discovered during the past year. Over the span of the 23.5 years, we’ve averaged a loss every 1.53 days. And at some periods of time, the frequency has been one every 1.31 days. On 13 particular dates, we lost five cousins in a single day.

After postponements the previous two years, we held our national reunion in 2023, marking the 110th anniversary of the first gathering in 1913. Some 60 cousins from seven states and 17 Pennsylvania towns attended from as far away as California in addition to Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia. Together, we celebrated the 110th anniversary of the inaugural Minerd Reunion held in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1913. The Friday evening activity involved a dinner and Saturday was an all-day picnic at historic Camp Christian in Mill Run, PA. Not only was the camp a perfect fit for our group, but also had the historical significance as the site of our clan’s reunion in 1914 in the days when it was known as Killarney Park. On Sunday, we worshipped at the Indian Creek Baptist Church. I shot some Facebook Live videos which are posted on our reunions webpage to try to capture the sense of family, history and peace that our reunion tries to be.

Click to see and hear the cheery Facebook Live greeting from your cousins at the 2023 reunion

Our private Facebook page is the voice of the sprawling, diverse MMMM family as can best be gathered. It was launched on April 20, 2019 and in the first year grew to 449 members. At the end of 2022 we had 791 and at year-end 2023 that number jumped to 955. We hope to reach our 1,000th early this new year and then keep going.

It is so gratifying to see that many of the members form Facebook friendships within and comment on each other's posts. It's also fascinating when cousins see longtime friends on the page and say, "I didn't know we were related!" This is the true magic of the work.

The Facebook page is a forum for sharing genealogy information, discoveries, heirlooms, photos, stories, obituaries, queries, prayer requests and more. Members know that all posts must be reasonable and civilized -- with no libel, defamation or rants about specific individuals -- and absolutely no political debate. 

One of our most prolific content posters is Tom Beck, who regularly pens essays of reminiscence of a kinder, gentler and quirkier era of America. Heather (Miner) Dandy used the page to solicit family recipes and then distribute the resulting cookbook in print and digital formats, Meinert Essen Buch. Cousins are encouraged to share photos in celebration of Mother's Day, Father's Day, Veteran's Day, graduations, marriages, new babies and Christmas holiday gatherings. We regularly post obituaries of cousins who have passed.

Thank You's – So many cousins stepped up to help or expand connections in 2023. I want to especially thank Bobbi Marzullo for the invitation to her Ravenscroft/Ravenscraft Reunion of the Rankin/Addis branch at Hutchinson near Uniontown, PA, and to Craig Falkenstine who met over lunch in Morgantown, WV.

Ravenscroft/Ravenscraft Reunion at Hutchinson, PA

Michael Patrick Connelly shared his encyclopedic knowledge of his Younkin/Pringey/Liston branches and writings for publication on this site. He also helped identify the unmarked 1840s burial site of our ancestors Nicholas and Dorcas (Settle) Hartzell of Humbert, PA, co-founders of the Jersey Baptist Church of Ursina, the oldest church west of the Allegheny Mountains. Amy Nichols provided a number of vintage photos of her branch of the fam. And there were many more. 

To our reunion advisory team, including new secretary Cindy (Mayle) Devine, new treasurer Sue (Colbert) Martin and member-at-large Chip Frederickson, and others including Peg (Grimm) Mansberry, Jill (Channing) Aird, Barb (Holly) Minerd and Tom Beck, the event simply could not have taken place without your passion and hard work.

Laurel Foster, Hoofprints of the Past Museum, Kaycee, Wyoming, with the spurs of a cousin who was a cattleman and shootist in the 1892 Johnson County War

Laurel Foster of the Hoofprints of the Past Museum in Kaycee, WY and Jennifer Romanoski of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, WY met with me and graciously shared their voluminous knowledge, photographs and documents related to the Johnson County War.

Longtime reunion treasurer Doris (Sands) Hawker

Victoria (Smith) Gunderson shared her memoir about a memorable trip she and her sister Lorri took to Ohio. Many kind strangers on the FindAGrave.com website graciously consented to use of photographs they had made of cousins’ final resting places across the nation and in Europe.

We gained access to important images through agreements with the Wyoming State Museum, Nebraska State Historical Society, Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball, Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Penn State University All-Sports Museum, Thompson (CT) Historical Society and Johnson County (WY) Library. The Confluence, Pennsylvania 101 and Fayette County Historical Society/Abel Colley Tavern & Museum Facebook pages both used Minerd.com images in their posts, and vice versa.

Sadly, in June, the angel of death swept away our longtime reunion treasurer Doris (Sands) Hawker. She diligently served in this role from 2001 to 2019 and was so enthusiastic about discovering her family roots. Rest in sweet peace, friend.

A Look Ahead to 2024 and Beyond  - One of the goals I did not reach in 2023 was to complete all of the MMMM web-biographies up to the present day. I started this push at the start of 2022, hoping to get the site into a shape where someday I could hand it off to someone else with confidence. At the end of 2023, there were still 37 biographies that were woefully incomplete and not current. It will take much of 2024 to finally finish this task.

The Johnson County cattle war in Wyoming in 1892 was not on my radar at the start of last year. But after learning of a cousin’s role as a cattleman and shootist in that event, I made a commitment to delve deeply into this important story and absorb the many tentacles and branches. It's been the single most time-consuming research project I've worked on for more than 20 years. This has included reading some 15 books and watching four Hollywood films, among them Michael Cimino’s beautiful but epic failure Heaven’s Gate as well as Shane starring Alan Ladd and Jack Palance. This year I plan to finalize my lengthy essay on our cousin and the Johnson County War and publish it on this website. 

For more than 20 years, I’ve studied the fascinating life and death of General Custer’s brother Capt. Thomas Ward Custer, a two-time Medal of Honor winner who fathered a son with one of our cousins and perished at the Battle of Little Big Horn. I’ve been invited to present at the 2024 meeting of the  Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association in Hardin, MT and for my paper to be published in its Symposium Book. The CBHMA is a group interested in the history of the Custer battlefield, the battle itself and the study of the Plains Indian Wars. 

Having been a longtime member of a similar Custer-focused organization, the Little Big Horn Associates, I joined its membership committee in 2023. The LBHA is a global community of learners seeking to better understand the complexity of General Custer, his times and the events before, during and after the famed battle. I’m working with a team of talented, accomplished historians affiliated with such groups as the World War II American Experience Museum, the U.S. Army and Bismarck Parks and Recreation District. Hope we can move the LBHA’s membership objectives forward in 2024.

As I wrote in last year’s Annual Review 2022, a time is coming when Minerd.com, family research library and archives either need to be retired into oblivion or kept intact for future generations. I spent 2023 as the first in a five-year process to identify what steps are needed to make this happen and surround myself with trusted advisors who can provide guidance. The solution needs to be well-funded through an endowment. It must find the right people who can keep our website and social media assets online and up-to-date. It must include a secure facility for housing, curating and accessing physical archives which could also serve as an exhibit and meeting space. I've been inspired by Andy Warhol’s “Factory” in New York, and artist and photographer Peter Beard’s opulent, three-dimensional murals, and can envision the archives being used in a creative studio suite for advanced storytelling of videos, documentaries, books and articles, podcasts and visul creations that create excitement and generate revenue. To support that aim, I was honored to be elected to the board of directors of the Beaver County (PA) Foundation which reinvests each year with scholarships for students and community renewal and development initiatives. I want to learn more about family foundations, donor-advised funds and fundraising in general. The possibilities seem to extend beyond the horizon… as does our extended family. But who can help me make it happen?

Sincerely,

Mark A. Miner, Founder, Minerd.com
January 9, 2024