Weather: Scattered Thunderstorms, 60/78F
Route: From New York 172 miles West on 1-78 W to I-81 S to US-11 N
Genealogy: Marysville is a small town on the Susquehanna 7 miles upstream from the capital of Pennsylvania - Harrisburg. There is no reason to stop here except that it is the place of one of the more interesting stories I've encountered on my research into my own genealogy. On June 17, 1863 my great-great-grandmother Anna Elizabeth Alsop was born here. It was quite a time to be born in this part of the world. It was in the middle of the Civil War. On the day that she was born the Army of Northern Virginia under the leadership of General Robert E. Lee was moving to invade the north. His objective was to capture Harrisburg and then move towards other large cities in the north.
Lee was successful in making it into Pennsylvania - getting as far north as Sporting Hill, 2 miles from Harrisburg on June 29th. From July 1-3 the sounds of the guns in Gettysburg, 40 miles south, could be heard from Harrisburg and Marysville, marking the end of the threat. Many citizens of Maryland and Pennsylvania rushed north to escape the invading army in late June. The Alsop's were likely unable to do that due to Anna's birth. But they had another reason to be frightened of the Confederates. The Alsop's were people of color. In the 1860, 1870, and 1880 census records Anna's father Bazel was listed as Mulatto or Black. At least 40 African Americans were captured by the Confederate Army in Maryland and Pennsylvania during this campaign to be sent back south into slavery.
The first record I have of Bazel is from 1860, when he lived in Harrisburg. I even have an address for him in 1860 - he lived across the street from the AME church - a well known stop on the Underground Railroad. I do not know for sure that he was an escaped slave - but he did list Maryland as his birth state - which was a slave state through the end of the Civil War. He moved to Marysville by 1863 to work as a forgeman at a foundry.
So what became of Anna? She grew up in Marysville, but the family had moved to Philadelphia sometime in the mid 1880's. As a young woman she worked at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, one of the first department stores. Sometime in late 1888 or early 1889 her brother Oscar was on a train and met a man Frederick Froelich - a first generation German-American produce dealer who lived in a small town in eastern Iowa. Oscar and Fred got along so well that Oscar invited Fred home for dinner, where young Anna (12 years Fred's junior) caught his eye. They wrote letters to each other after Fred returned to Iowa and by 1889 they were married and Anna had moved out to Iowa. More on the Froelich's in a few weeks when we're in Iowa.
Images:
Young Anna and her brother Oscar.
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