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Scattered areas of traffic congestion should do little to slow the morning commute

AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST

<p>Genealogists tracing their Wyoming Valley ancestors from afar suffer something more than just the usual distance-related difficulties of accessing information.</p><p>There&#8217;s also the problem of interpreting and untangling our plethora of place names. Some, of course, describe the usual cities, boroughs and townships. But many, many more apply to sections or even neighborhoods within communities, and lots of local folks have a habit of identifying themselves not by town but by named section of town.</p><p>Luzerne County, for instance, has 76 municipalities, some with &#8211; believe it or not &#8211; the same name (two Plymouths, etc.), and nearly all of which have two or more sections with their own names. So it&#8217;s 76 plus a couple of hundred more to bedevil the family researcher out in Illinois or New Mexico.</p><p>Those sectional names are rooted in local history and tradition. One of my favorites is the &#8220;Rolling Mill Hill&#8221; section of Wilkes-Barre. Here&#8217;s how the name came about, according to 19th-century historian H.C. Bradsby.</p><p>In 1842 a steel rolling mill opened on Parrish Street, just up the hill from South Main Street. The mill was apparently large and impressive, for Bradsby said that crowds turned out to see the big furnaces and engines fire up that first day.</p><p>The mill was bedeviled by equipment problems and was never much of a success, Bradsby said. But before long people were referring to the hill running up from South Main as the Rolling Mill Hill. As it became a prosperous and attractive residential area, people grew proud of the name and used it to denote their beloved part of town.</p><p>Here&#8217;s the bottom line: an out-of-area genealogist could be bamboozled by our place names and could waste time in a fruitless search for, let us say, the &#8220;West Nanticoke Municipal Building,&#8221; when in actuality West Nanticoke is simply a section of Plymouth Township &#8211; which does have a municipal building.</p><p>If you are a local genealogist reading a message board, try to help the out-of-towner struggling with our confusing place names. If you&#8217;re an out-of-towner looking for ancestral family here, research local history as best you can. Start with the Luzerne County Genweb, which has not only the complete text of the Bradsby book but also a clickable history for every community in Luzerne County. In any case, be aware of the place name pitfall.</p><p>Genealogy Society News: Don&#8217;t forget the regularly scheduled open house at the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Thursdays 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and on the second Saturday of the month, noon-4 p.m. If you&#8217;d like to learn how to test your DNA to determine either your own ethnicity or your family relationship to someone else, check out the society&#8217;s DNA Interest Group, which meets at 6 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month. Headquarters is in the caretaker building of the Hanover Green Cemetery, Main Road, Hanover Township.</p><p>News Notes: The research library of the Luzerne County Historical Society will reopen March 1 after its annual February closure. It&#8217;s available free to members and to the public for a small daily fee <strong>noon- p.m. Tuesday-Friday</strong> and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Research your Nanticoke-area ancestors via www.nanticokehistoryonline.org. The Nanticoke Historical Society offers research for a modest fee.</p><p>Congratulations to the Plymouth Historical Society for joining in preparations for celebration of the borough of Plymouth&#8217;s 150th anniversary this year. Go to www.locallivinghistory.com.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TOM_MOONEY-3.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out on a limb: Wyoming Valley names pose challenges for out-of-town genealogy researchers