Daniel Good

One of my favorite activities is digging out documents to correct false information on a family that has been published and widely circulated or a family that is basically unknown. One of those fell into my lap about two weeks ago and I've been having a lot of fun digging. I'm not finished but the story is beginning to emerge.

It began when I saw an original 1793 deed on an Ebay auction. After checking the deed index, I decided it is an unrecorded deed related to a Daniel Good family of Cocalico Township in Lancaster County. (Unrecorded means there is no record of it in the courthouse and the original is the only one in existence.)  Little is known about this family and I was sure the deed would reveal some unknown facts. How it got to California is hard to tell but I thought it should come home where it belongs. I put a bid on it and won.

 

 

I transcribed the deed the day it came and sure enough! It did reveal some new information on the Daniel Good family. He was married to Christina (not Elizabeth as has been published) and had five children: Henry, Elizabeth, Sarah, Daniel Jr. and Christian (two of whom were previously unknown).

Further research has shown that Daniel and Christina were householders of the Ephrata Cloister. That means they were members of the group but lived on a farm as a family rather than in the Cloister compound where only celibate members lived. However, daughter Sarah was one of the celibate sisters in the Cloister.  Elizabeth was married to Andrew Weiss and was baptized into the Lutheran church as an adult. I'm still working on tracing the sons.

This Daniel is of particular interest to me because he may have been a brother of my ancestor Henry Good. I would love to find something to confirm his identity. One of my history friends recently told me, "I like to work on the hard ones. Anybody can get the easy ones." This is one of the hard ones. I'm sinking my teeth into it and gnawing like a dog with a bone.