“That’s how it’s gonna be, in my family
From the biggest branch to the smallest leaf
Still you’re gonna see similarity…
In my family, that’s how it’s gonna be
Family- It’s like any other family
Big and small- It’s like any other family”
- Sparks (1974)
I’ve always been fascinated by genealogy. When I started researching my family tree back in the 1980’s, it was primarily a manual process, writing many letters to obtain records and searching microfilm in the National Archives. Nowadays, it’s much easier to just go online to Ancestry.com and you can find a treasure of information about your family roots. While my dad’s grandparents all came from Germany, several branches of my mom’s side of the family tree have deep roots in America. In a previous post (The Man in the Mirror, June 8, 2024), I mentioned my slave-owning descendants on my mother’s side of the family. Today I’d like to review another interesting branch of her side of the family tree.
William Waters was born in 1719 in Anne Arundel, Maryland. He married Mary Harris in 1735. They had one child during their marriage, Jonathan Waters, who was born in 1750 in Hunterdon, New Jersey. Jonathan married Mary Snyder in 1766 in his hometown. They had one child during their marriage, Samuel Waters, born in 1785 in Pennsylvania. Samuel married Catherine Knappenberger in 1810 in Pennsylvania. They also had one child, George.
George Knappenberger Waters was born in 1814 in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. As far as I can tell, when he was just 13 years old, George and his 15-year-old girlfriend, Elizabeth Pensinger, had a son, Samuel, born on October 14, 1827. (Yikes- I think I was still playing with matchbox toy cars when I was 13!) Multiple sources verify their age and birthdates, although I did find conflicting ages on a census one year, so it is possible that there was a typo (or a lie) somewhere along the way. It does appear that in 1830, when George turned 16, he and Elizabeth got married. They went on to have 8 children. This young stud, George Knappenberger Waters, was my great-great-great-grandfather.
George’s son Samuel was also born in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. Sam married Caroline Matilda Richards in 1855, when he was 28 years old (a more reasonable age than when his father got married, in my opinion). Sam and Caroline had four children, including my great-grandfather, Jerry Waters, born on September 29, 1857. Four years later, as the Civil War was breaking out, Sam enrolled in the Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, 35th Regiment, 6th Reserve. On March 1st, 1963, Sam was wounded at Bethesda Church, Virginia.
“The regiment was deployed as skirmishers, and had gained the Mechanicsville Road near the church, when it was attacked by an overwhelming force and compelled to retire with considerable loss. It then threw up a rifle pit, upon which the enemy impetuously charged. Retaining its fire until the approaching foe was sufficiently near, it poured forth a volley inflicting most serious slaughter. Although but about one hundred and fifty strong, the sixth captured one hundred and two prisoners, and buried seventy-two dead Rebels in its immediate front. Colonel Ent and Captain Waters were wounded, and nineteen men captured.” (from Bates’ History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, Volume 1)
The gunshot wound to his left knee disabled Sam from military duty, and he was unable to continue his work as a carpenter. He remained on disability the rest of his life. Sam and Caroline ironically moved to the former confederate state of North Carolina in 1870, where Caroline subsequently passed away. Sam remarried three years later to Mary Owens.
As I mentioned, Samuel’s son, Jerry, my great-grandfather, was born in 1857- exactly 100 years before me. At the age of 13, Jerry moved to North Carolina with his parents. In 1883, at the age of 26, he married Ella May Woodley, and they had four children. I’m not sure what happened to Ella May, but Jerry got married a second time 1903, to Lydia Banks. There is no record of what happened to this wife either (I assume both wives had died), but in 1908 at the age of 50, Jerry married again- this time to 19-year old Laura White, with whom he had another six children, including my grandfather Edward Waters. Six kids after the age of 50- I can’t imagine! Some time after the children were born, the family moved back north, to Philadelphia.
My grandfather, Edward Waters, was born to Jerry and Laura on June 16, 1908. After moving to Philadelphia, Ed met and married Margaret Judge, and they had one daughter, my mother, Dolores, born on October 27, 1933. Ed and Margaret were happily married for 58 years.
And that is the story of the Waters family tree – a group firmly rooted in the Pennsylvania region (with a branch temporarily growing in North Carolina), with young guys having kids, old guys having kids, and a Civil War hero. “From the biggest branch to the smallest leaf… Big and small- It’s like any other family”. What’s your family history?
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