ome years ago, I returned home to

search for my roots in South Beth-

lehem. Now, many years later, I am

searching for the roots of everyone with

ancestors in early South Bethlehem.

Yes, I have other things to do. It’s just

that I never realized the richness of this

Finding Forgotten Souls at St. Michael’s

place until I saw the

world. And much of

the earliest history of

South Bethlehem has

been in hiding until

recently. It’s fascinat-

ing, tragic, and a gift

of wisdom from the

past that resides in

our DNA.

Historians, who

masterfully chronicled the saga of the iron

and steel industry in the Lehigh Valley,

relied on records written by people who

could read and write. But how were we

to know about the immigrants who signed

with an “X?” In 1880, how was the cen-

sus enumerator to communicate with the

foreign woman who answered the door

and pointed to her many children, recit-

ing names whose pronunciation strained

phonetics?

Until I began this search, my own fami-

ly knowledge came from stories my grand-

parents told me about their own lives.

Those stories gave me insight going back

to the early 1900s, but South Bethlehem

existed 50 years before that. Why did my

grandparents never talk to me about their

grandparents? Was I uninterested, did

they never get around to it, or was there

just nothing they wanted me to know?

Fast forward to the present. Every min-

ute, more documents are digitized and

available online. Sophisticated software

helps me re-connect families whose names

were spelled every which way. It’s pains-

taking, but I can piece together pictures of

folks who lived before photography was

widely available, or who couldn’t even

aord to get themselves photographed. I

can picture people by assembling their

census records, naturalization forms,

death certicates, and newspaper ar-

ticles, such as weddings and obituaries.

I can learn how young they were when

they began working, (very), what kind

of work they did, (hard), and how and

why they died. Ancestry.com family

trees made public by others give me in-

Bufngton

formation I can nd nowhere else. Brief,

heartbreaking lines in the newspaper tell

the stories of infants and children who

were lost. For me, it’s as if those children

are reaching out to help me join them

with their parents and siblings.

One focus of my research is nding

people buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery,

the rst place where South Bethlehem im-

migrants were interred. Little exists in the

way of burial records. When you consider

that families staked out areas for their own

burials, and provided their own “perpetu-

al care,” lack of records may not be so sur-

prising. My mother remembers visiting St.

Michael’s Cemetery as a child and clean-

ing out the prickly wild roses strangling

the family graves in the 1930s. She also

remembers hearing of folks, who quietly

buried their dead there in the night with-

out benet of services or permission.

The free website Findagrave.com is

now the central repository for information

on folks buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery.

We’ve linked nearly 8,000 people to St.

Michael’s using some sort of document or

family knowledge. More are added every

week. You can add, too. Until recently, I

would have said that most folks buried

in St. Michael’s had no memorial stone.

Perhaps they were too poor, and wooden

crosses would be long rotted. But given

the work of Ken Bratsch and the “Friends

of St. Michael’s Cemetery, Bethlehem,

PA” volunteers, we are nding stones that

have lain beneath the sod for decades—

many more than I would have imagined.

While these people seemed nearly invis-

ible in life, the words chiseled in their

headstones give evidence they didn’t

want to be forgotten.

So check your family Bible. Look for old

photos. Send images, stories, or thoughts

to Findagrave.com, to me at rcbungton@

bellsouth.net, or to the “Friends of St. Mi-

chael’s Cemetery, Bethlehem, PA” Facebook

page. Crowd-sourcing didn’t exist until re-

cently, but it’s a very powerful resource—

and your ancestors will thank you.

Southern Exposure, the quarterly newsletter

of South Bethlehem Historical Society.

—Rosemary Bortolotto Bungton, a resident

Stuart, Florida and SBHS supporting

member, voluntarily adds interments in

St. Michael’s Cemetery to Findagrave.com.

by Rosemary Bortolotto Bungton