The Ever Elusive George VanBilliard

This past weekend was going to be a busy one. On Saturday I was going to the Family History Event in Luzerne County Pennsylvania. It was a joint event by the Genealogical Society of PA and Northeast PA Genealogical Society. So I thought I would go up on Friday and get some research done. I mostly wanted to get a marriage record for my Great Grandparents, George VanBilliard and Susan Haas. I have a transcription of their newspaper announcement in the Bethlehem newspaper.

  "Bethlehem Daily Times: Name[Van Billiard, George Name[Haas, Susan Beckel_Index[George Van Billiard of South Bethlehem MARRIED Miss Susan Haas of Bethlehem, September 19, 1885 in Bethlehem by Reverend Isaac K. Loos"

 I called the Northampton County Orphan's Court in Easton last week to see if I needed to order the record ahead of time but was told that I could just look for the record when I got there. Problem was that when I got there on Friday, I was told that they were having computer problems and they were going to be shut down in 15 minutes for 2 hours so we had to hurry. So the person helping me went over to the index book to see if they had the record but they did not. When I told her about the newspaper announcement saying they were married in Bethlehem she said that maybe they went to Lehigh County since a part of Bethlehem is in Lehigh County. She gave me their number to call them. I told her that I wanted to see if they had my grandmother's birth record. She pulled out the book it should be in but did not find her in 1900. She did find her sister that was born in 1902. So she took the information to put that in the computer quickly so I could get a copy of that. While she was putting it in the computer I did a transcription of the record. She was able to get it in and get me a copy before the computers went down. The transcription is:

  "book 2 page 276, Register of Births of Northampton County. Date of Record: December 11, 1902, Name of Child: Margurette VanBilliard, Date of Birth: June 14, 1902, Female, White. Place of Birth: South Bethlehem, Father of Child: George VanBilliard, Mother of Child: Mrs. George VanBilliard"

Well it is good that I did the transcription because when I got the record home and looked at it real well, in her hurry she put the year of the recorded date as 1903 instead of 1902.

 So after the court house I stopped at the Signal Museum in Easton. The Northampton Genealogical Society is in the Museum. I wanted to see what information they might have on the VanBilliards. As it turned out I had lots more information then they have and it was decided that I should write up what I have and get it to them for their family files.

 I still have so much more I need to find out about all my VanBilliards and like George, they do not make finding things easy! So I will keep on hunting down the facts.