Review of the Year'S Activities

REVIEW OF THE YEAR'S ACTIVITIES During the past year the Society, by an amendment to its bylaws, has established a new class of non-voting membership. Designed to include outstanding genealogists in foreign countries, these members are designated Corresponding Members. On 20 March 1962, Dr. Fritz Braun, Dr. Heinz F. Friederichs, Dr. Friedrich Krebs, all of West Germany, and Dr. Karl Friedrich von Frank of Austria were duly elected to this class of membership. The following month on 17 April 1962, Sir lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, of Scotland, and Sir Anthony Richard Wagner of England, were also elected corresponding members. Dr- Braun of Kaiserslautern, is director of the government-sponsored organization, Heimatstelle Pfalz, the Home Quarters of the Palatinate District, which is engaged in the study of immigration to and emigration from the Palatinate. A member of numerous German historical and genealogical societies, he is co-chairman of the board publishing the magazine Pfiilzische Familien- und Wapbenkunde, now in its eleventh year, and edits the "Mitteilungen zur Wanderungsgeschichte der Pfalzer," or "Information for the History of Palatinate Migration," appearing in that publication. He is the author of numerous articles dealing with Palatinate emigration to America. Dr. Friederichs, of Frankfurt on Main, chairman of the German Cooperative Association of Genealogical Studies, and of the Center for German Biography and Genealogy, now located in West Berlin, is also a member of the Commission on the History of Nassau. He has written some forty pamphlets devoted to research on Hessian families, is editorin-chief of the series Deutsches Fenn;lien Archiv, published since 1940, and is editor of the periodical Hessische Eamilienkunde, devoted to Hessian family history and genealogy. Dr. Krebs is director of Pfalzisches Landeskirchenarchiv, the Archives of the State Church of the Palatinate at Speyer. Author of more than thirty articles dealing with emigration from the Palatinate which have appeared in both German and American periodicals, two of his better known works are "A List of German Immigrants to the American Colonies from Zweibriicken in the Palatinate, 1750 - 1771," published in the Yearbook of the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, Volume XVI (1951), and Emigrants from the Palatinate to the American Colonies in the 18th Century, in collaboration with Milton Rubincam, published by 276 Review of the Year's Activities 277 the Pennsylvania German Society in 1953. Similar lists have appeared in The Pennsylvania Dutchman, volumes IV ( January, 1953), and V (May, June 1953). Dr. Karl Friedrich von Frank, of Lower Austria, has been active in genealogical research since 1910, and has accumulated a remarkable library of 20,000 genealogical and heraldic volumes. In addition he has a card index of some 3,000,000 references, and has assembled about 10,000 files of genealogical records. His genealogical work is outstanding, and has helped hundreds of Americans to locate their ancestral homelands. In 1928 he published Alt- Oesterreichisches Adels-Lexikon, in 1930 the Kress Family History and in 1936 Die Kressen, a handsome German text of the earlier work. Since 1951 he has owned and published the Senftnegger Monatsblatt fiir Genealogic. nod Heraldik. Sir lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk is the most eminent Scottish genealogist of the present day, and an authority on Scottish families who settled in America. Member of the Faculty of Advocates (the Scottish bar), he has been Unicorn Pursuivant of Arms in the Court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, H. M. Register House at Edinburgh, since 1955. He is the author of many articles on genealogy and heraldry in Scottish and English periodicals, as well as such works as Simple Heraldry (1953), and Blood Royal (1956) . Sir Anthony Richard Wagner, the eminent English genealogist, is Garter Principal King of Arms, and chief executive officer of the College of Arms, the official agency of the British government charged with matters heraldic and genealogical. Editor of the Society of Antiquaries' Dictionary of British Arms, he is the author of Historic Heraldry of Britain (1939), Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages (1939), Heraldry in England (1946), and the recent English Genealogy (1960), as well as many genealogical articles. On 17 April 1962, Mr. Milton Rubincam was elected a Fellow by the Board of this Society. Editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly since 1956, Mr. Rubincam was president of that society from 1942 to 1944 and from 1946 to 1948, and was elected president of the American Society of Genealogist in the fall of 1961. A native of Philadelphia, his long interest in the study of genealogy and devotion to sound methods of research are especially commended. During the past season Dr. Wallace Evan Davies, member of this Society's Board, organized a series of adult education lectures on "Controversial Issues in Recent American History" for the Germantown Friends School, leading the first of these discussions on the Civil War era. On 30 278 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine November 1961, he gave a talk in his own inimitable style, before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, on "Three Silent Women—of the Screen." In April he addressed the Pennsylvania Council of Social Studies Teachers at Valley Forge, speaking on "The Civil War and Reconstruction Reconsidered." The same month he presided at a session of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association in Milwaukee, Wis., which was devoted to discussion of "The American Press in the 19th Century." During this past summer he taught United States history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Mrs. F. Spencer Roach, also a member of the Society's Board, was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists at a meeting of that Society on 18 November 1961, Mr. Francis James Dallett was speaker on 20 November 1961, at the opening Genealogical Workshop sponsored by this Society. His subject was "Research Sources and Opportunities in France," and included discussion of Roman Catholic Church records in Philadelphia. Mr. Dallett, formerly librarian of the Philadelphia Athenaeum, is currently assistant to the director of the American Museum in England, housed in Claverton Manor, Bath, England. Dr. John Insley Coddington was the speaker at the Society's Seventieth Annual Meeting, held Tuesday, 20 March 1962. His subject, "Early Philadelphia-European Marriages," was both entertaining and instructive, presenting as it did some of the less familiar and more unusual of those alliances contracted during the nineteenth century. Dr. J. Bennet Hill was elected President of the Genealogical Society, succeeding Mr. Norman Joy Greene who had declined renomination. Mr. Greene, a Life Member of this Society, had served as Director from 1952 to 1955 when he was elected Vice President, and became President upon the retirement of Dr. Roy Franklin Nichols on 15 October 1957. Mr. Greene's generosity to, interest in, and untiring efforts on behalf of this Society will always be remembered with grateful appreciation. Miss Mildred Goshow was elected to succeed Dr. Hill as Secretary of the Society. Also a Life Member, her most recent genealogical study, "The Family of John Cornman, Sugar Baker of Philadelphia," is presented in this issue of the MAGAZINE. Mr. Dale Fields, of the Philadelphia Municipal Archives, on 10 May 1962, discussed at the last Genealogical Workshop of the season the function of a governmental archival repository, as distinguished from a library, and gave a resume of accessions of genealogical interest now deposited in the City Archives.