My granddaughter, Kali Martin, approached me about joining the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. I was elated that one of the younger generation was interested in joining a group in which I am so involve. It didn’t take long for me to get started on her application. I started with the most interesting ancestor, John Slaymaker, that I knew was related. The Slaymaker home is still occupied and is known as White Chimneys, Lancaster County, PA.
The Slaymakers are well known in Lancaster County, so what could be so hard to prove this ancestor. Ah, but for some punctuation, it was not accepted. The only proof that I found connecting the dots to the correct line was an Orphan’s Court record that names all the children and grandchildren, but used no commas to delineate who belonged to whom. Instead of beating my head against the wall to find another document, I took the easy route and found another ancestor.
This time, I researched the Eby’s, another familiar name in Lancaster County. Plenty of Eby’s, so one of them had to provide service or pay taxes in support of the revolution. Without too much effort I was able to prove that Christian Eby was a Private in the Revolutionary War and is also eligible as a patriot for paying the Pennsylvania supply tax in 1779. It is also her grandfather’s middle name. Wahooo! Kali Martin, Junior Member NSDAR. I hope she gets as much out of being a part of the largest, wholly owned and operated by women organization, as I have. So many women who have God, Home and Country as their service motto. We have almost 200,000 members and hope to reach our goal of 250,000 members by the time the United States celebrates our 250th anniversary.