Social Media and Genealogy Research

I violated the one social media rule that I lived by when I worked, and it was regularly making updates to blogs.  My Monath family genealogy blog was severely neglected, and, honestly, I have reasonably sound excuses.

• After one false alarm and the real deal, we became grandparents to our 5th grandson.
• Helped two sons move into their new homes.
• Our home vegetable garden is now done for the season, and weeds pulled where they once rooted in my flower gardens.
• Most importantly of all, I am realizing that the Monath family descendants are slowly dying out and difficult to find.  

I began and started this project so often, and this past July got serious enough to stick with it.  While preparing my research list for a trip to the Maryland Archives, I took another look at the newspaper clippings (obituaries), and to my surprise found a living Monath descendant on Facebook.  So I sat and deliberated over 'do I or don't I contact this lady' and 'will I regret not contacting this person later'?

So, I will take a chance and hope that this person is also researching her family roots, and will contact me when she sees this picture that I found among my parents' photos.

This is one picture of my mom and dad's photographs that I thought was really cute!  On the back, the name Phillis (aka Phyllis) M. Monath is written with the date of 24 April 1938.  That is all that I knew for a long time.  Until today.

Using U. S. Federal Census reports and newspaper clippings that were found at the York County Heritage Trust, I am 99% sure that her name is Phyllis M. Monath-Emgee, daughter of William Wesley Monath and Mary Elizabeth Sullivan-Monath.  Grandparents would have been William H. Monath and Ida May Yingling.

So, I think that I will sit on this for a bit and hope that the lady who is on Facebook might see this and make the first move.  I by no means am posting this photograph for no other reason but to make a connection. 


Finding two bits of information, no matter how small or insignificant, makes for a satisfactory day of research.

Thanks for reading!