It has also led me to genealogical programs that can create charts and preserve information--and can present the result to everyone electronically.

The work is far from done. Just as was the case of Henry Meyer 120 years ago, I will need the help, resources, photos and stories of other members of the Fry, Hershberger, Myers, Snyder and Burgner families.

Note, of course, that I have given equal space to the family of my mother, Frieda Mae Snyder. The story of her family, Pennsylvania Deutsch who came to America between 1720 and 1750, runs parallel to the story of my father's family; likewise tracing its roots from southern Germany, Switzerland and the Swiss-German portions of Alsace Lorraine; to Pennsylvania in the 1700s; then on to Northeast Ohio in the early 1800s. More recently, the migration has proceeded to Indiana, Illinois and California; and East to Connecticut and Florida.

It is as necessary to do the work now, as it was for Henry Meyer to do so in his day. Henry Meyer records, for example, a Simon Myers, son of John Meyer and Sarah Yearick (and second cousin of author Henry Meyer); but gives no further account of him. We know from our own historical recollection (with the aid of the "Portrait and Biographical Record of Portage and Summit Counties, Ohio," 1898); of another Simon Myers, whose daughter, Mary Ellen Myers, married our great grandfather, James Smith Fry. Were they the same Simon Myers? We are now close enough to that history to establish that link. It may be more difficult 120 years from now.

Now is the time to connect our own stories to the stories recorded in the books of the historians and genealogists of 120 years ago; for the benefit of our children 120 years in the future.