Join our private Facebook page

The MMMM 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. I also frequently contribute content to the National Younkin Younken Youngkin Family Reunion page on Facebook, which ended the year with 378 followers.

Our companion social media platform, the Minerd.com Blog, published 13 posts in 2025. This led to 1,613 pageviews from 1,065 visitors during the year, an increase of 228 pageviews and 39 visitors from the previous year.

Monthly Minerd.com Blog visitor statistics in 2025

My article in the Custer Battlefield publication

In other public-facing updates, the Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Association published my article in its Proceedings of the Brian C. Pohanka 37th Annual Symposium, held in 2024 in Montana. My piece is entitled "Tommy of Tontogany: The Little-Known Son of Thomas Ward Custer," and is based on my presentation at the 2024 symposium about General George Armstrong Custer's nephew of our family. It contains more than 40 rare images and more than 30 endnotes. Download the 23-page article reprint here [PDF, 4.0 MB]

A blogger with the Irish Genealogical Society International (IGSI) wrote this in August: "Take time to check out minerd.com. Way more than names and dates on a family tree! You may discover you’re connected to the extended Miner/Minerd family. Lots of Irish and Scots-Irish emigrants among the biographies in the database." Full text>>>

Daily website visitor statistics, showing the spike upward in early November

A Family YouTube Channel? For years now, I’ve been envisioning a day when we could do more family history-telling via video. That time may come in 2026. With Facebook discontinuing its archiving of “Live” videos, the opportunity exists to create a family YouTube Channel where they could be re-posted, and more could be added over time. This might also be a venue for old home movies that have been converted to digital formats. 

Continuing Research and Relationship Building – I didn’t do as much research travel last year, but the trips I did make were exceedingly fruitful. Twice in early 2025, I traveled to Ohio to obtain more than 100 cousins' news obituaries at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library, a very impressive facility with a knowledgeable staff eager to be of help.

Archivist Jennifer (Baer) Hurl and cousin Linda Marker and I spent several hours visiting in the Meyersdale (PA) Public Library last fall, discussing the opportunities and challenges of archives and collections management in today's digital realm.

After photographing the grave of Civil War veteran Jacob Hull of the 14th Pennsylvania Cavalry, near the old Wharton Iron Furnace site in Fayette County, PA, I took a deep dive into research to identify as many of Hull's descendants up to the present day as possible. It was a huge undertaking and required many weeks. As a measure of how large his family headcount has expanded today, I logged the deaths of 99 of his and his wife's direct descendants and their spouses occurring between the years 2000 and 2025.

Page from Allen Harbaugh's manuscript history

"Mountain Poet" 1800s Genealogy Manuscript - Allen Edward Harbaugh, the famed "Mountain Poet" of Fayette County, PA, kept a unique, handwritten genealogical record of our family in this fill-in-the-blank booklet published in 1888. Allen used this notebook to keep handwritten detailed records on other branches of his and his wife’s families. It also covers pioneers in his own Harbaugh, Rowan, Leonard, Eicher, Kern, Cramer and Beeher lines, as well as his wife's people, the Williamses, Galloways and Hannas. His self-taught calligraphy adds to its charm. The portfolio has been handed down to a fourth generation and continues to be a treasured heirloom. Thanks to Allen's great-grandson Rev. Dr. William "Bradford" Harbaugh, guest speaker at our 2025 national reunion, the notebook was professionally scanned and placed online for all to enjoy and study. View the entire record [PDF, 85.9 MB]

Leading the "seated tour" of old stained glass windows memorializing Younkin cousins

Family Reunions - At the National Younkin Reunion in July, it was an honor to lead a "seated tour" of the stained glass windows memorializing long-ago cousins at the Church of God in Kingwood, Somerset County. This tour was broadcast on “Facebook Live” and I hope to re-post it to YouTube. Many thanks are owed to reunion president Kay Lynn Younkin and retired church pastor Rev. James Monticue. See this website's Younkin-Younken-Youngkin Feature Pages and Biography Table of Contents. 

And thanks to the invitation of Julie (Gary) Kreger and others, I attended the Jacob and Minnie (Miner) Gary Reunion in Kingwood in July. In doing so, I had the privilege to connect with that couple's last surviving child, Edna (Gary) Tressler (a granddaughter of a Civil War soldier), and to make a few remarks to the assembly.

In November, having attended the Leonard family reunion a few months earlier, I was privileged to be part of their tour of family sites at Meadow Run near Ohiopyle, PA. We got to see the ruins of where the Christmas and Reuben Leonard families lived in the 1830s and where they operated a chair rail shop. The contents of that shop are today on display in the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg, and the old business ledger also preserved there. With a group of Leonard cousins, we hope to tour the museum early this year and ascertain the museum’s interest in scanning the ledger front-to-back as a unique research asset. I am so grateful to Mindy Leonard, Rusty Leonard, Brandon Leonard and David Schaefer for including me.

Group photo of our 2025 national reunion at historic Camp Christian in Mill Run, PA

National Reunion – Some 57 cousins from 10 states and 11 Pennsylvania towns attended the 2025 national reunion of strangers in southwestern Pennsylvania. Cousins traveled from as far away as California and Texas in addition to Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia. The Friday evening activity involved a dinner with 14 cousins at Out of the Fire in Donegal, PA. Saturday was a picnic in the Chapel of Camp Christian in Mill Run, PA. The activities involved a group photo, lunch meal, a raffle and remarks by Rev. Dr. William "Bradford" Harbaugh, as well as regular live broadcasts on our private Facebook page. Family heirlooms and photo albums were on display for all to enjoy. The hat was passed to help offset costs. Total income for the day was $1,057.33, and total costs were $1,020.66, for a net gain of $36.67. Reunion treasurer Sue (Colbert) Martin reported that our checking account balance now stands at $1,504.53. Sunday morning was spent at a worship service at Indian Creek Baptist Church in Mill Run.

Some of the rare books and manuscripts I added to the family research library in 2025

Expanding the Research Library - During the year, I added these books to my research library, all authored by or significantly mentioning our cousins: The Little Bandwagon of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania by Cynthia (Minerd) Moringiello -- The Bright Side of the Mountain by Rev. J. Frank Peoples -- God’s Servant by Irene Koontz -- 1973 Confluence Pennsylvania Centennial Souvenir Book -- Old Farm by Ettie Prichard -- My Two Cents Worth by F.T. Gaumer -- Custer and the 1873 Yellowstone Survey: A Documentary History by John M. Lubetkin -- A Book of Life: A Hartzell, Hertzel, Hirtzel, Hirzel Family History & Genealogy by George Turner Hartzell -- The Story of the 116th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers by St. Clair A. Mulholland -- From a Window by Dr. Edward Skiddy Quintard -- Harbaugh History by Cora Bell (Harbaugh) Cooprider and Joseph Lewis Cooprider – and Playing With Fire: The True Story of a Nurse, Her Husband, and a Marriage Turned Fatal by John Glatt. 

A rare manuscript that entered the archive in 2025 was an original handwritten petition signed in 1873 by more than 100 residents of Confluence, PA (including three of our cousins), urging county officials to fund a bridge over the Upper Youghiogheny River near town.

A Personal Note - I’m now in my third year as a board director of the Beaver County (PA) Foundation, an organization with more than $15 million in assets which reinvests in the community each year in the form of scholarships, community renewal and development initiatives. I’m learning a lot about the ins and outs of philanthropic giving and how that work is administered, and am helping it raise its public profile.

As well, I wear three hats within the Beaver Area Heritage Foundation governance team as a board member, chair of the board of trustees of the Beaver Area Heritage Museum and on the operating committee of Beaver Station Cultural and Event Center. In 2025, this organization again was ranked in the Pittsburgh Business Times list of the "Top 25 Largest Pittsburgh Area Museums and Attractions," as measured by admissions, and the largest in our county. Our plans for 2026 are to take on a higher arc of relevance by focusing on a capital campaign to support two major initiatives – celebrating our Revolutionary War Fort McIntosh, the first home of the First American Regiment, and the installation and transformation of a donated CSX Railroad caboose into a first-class center for rail and streetcar history. Among the museum’s accomplishments last year were strengthening the roster of our weekend docents so we could re-open on Sundays for the first time since Covid. We also rebuilt our student field trip education program with our local public school district as well as agencies serving at-risk, disadvantaged and minority students.

She told me that she was making this gesture because I was the eldest son of the eldest son of her elder brother Odger Miner, that I carried on the family name and was the only one to have looked at and asked her questions about the album at the reunion. Jessie's instructions were short and clear: "Go find these people someday." In making this gift, she changed the trajectory of the teenage nephew’s life, and he embraced the task with passion and vigor. Over the years, he contacted many distant cousins, made research discoveries, traveled widely and reported back to her about the findings. As a result, Jessie's loving inspiration is reflected far and wide on this website. And what she did not know, and could not have envisioned, was that thanks to the power of the internet and search engines, her instructions would be flipped, as most of the followers of this site over the years have found us instead. Thank you, beloved aunt, for your gift to us all.

--Mark A. Miner
Founder, Minerd.com
Jan. 27, 2026

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