Tyrone area residents Karen K. Morrow and Aileen C. Fulcomer are distantly related. Both have roots in Sinking Valley.
Two years ago, the ladies began researching into their family histories, and what started as a hobby, has now turned into a passion.
“Our goal now is to find more people who have a common ancestor,” said Fulcomer. “We have discovered a lot starting when William Penn owned the land and through his heirs, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions there. We’re trying to fill in the gaps.”
According to Fulcomer, the purpose of the Sinking Valley Family Tree Project is to collect, compile, preserve and distribute genealogy information, pictures and family stories about the early landowners in Sinking Valley, Tyrone Township, then in Huntingdon County, but now in Blair County.
Fulcomer said 45 individuals originally purchased land in Sinking Valley from the Penn heirs between 1787 and 1813. In addition to those, Fulcomer and Morrow have been compiling a list of subsequent landowners.
“We’ve put together quite a bit of information,” said Fulcomer. “There are obviously gaps in the information that we have to share and there are probably also inaccuracies. For example, we do not know if all of these landowners actually lived for a long period of time in Sinking Valley.
“It’s pretty tough to find the things we need when there’s really no single place to go. The Tyrone Historical Society, Huntingdon Historical Society and Blair County Historical Society have been great tools, but there’s not a Sinking Valley Historical Society where we can research.”
Morrow claims the advances in technology have really helped their cause.
“Marriages between these families resulted in a complicated web of relationships that can be a challenge for the modern researcher to sort out,” said Fucomer. “With the increasing use of powerful search engines on Internet-based genealogy sites, there is the potential to link he descendants of Sinking Valley for the purpose of sharing information on common ancestors.”
According to the women, although there are gaps in the research, they said they know the Morrow and Crawford lines fairly well. They said the Stewart (sometimes seen as Stuart) and Moore lines contain less information and they are working to find out more about the early ancestory of these families.
Fulcomer encourages anyone in the Northern Blair County area who may be able to help fill in some of the gaps to contact either her or Morrow. She said the best was to get in touch with them is through the Internet – Morrow at kkmorrow111@hotmail.com and Fulcomer at remocluf@pennswoods.net.
“While Internet-based research has great potential, there are privacy concerns,” said Fulcomer. “Therefore, care will be taken to prevent personal information about living individuals from being distributed over the Internet.”
Fulcomer also noted that residents who have old photos of families from Sinking Valley should share these artifacts. She said technology allows them to scan the photos in without damaging them at all. She also encourages residents to contact either her or Morrow if they want to view the photos they already have in their collection.
“We’re not just looking for who’s mother is who and who’s father is who,” said Morrow. “We’re looking for more than that – what people did, which churches and schools they went to. Those kinds of things.”
As more information becomes available to these women, more thoughts pass through their heads of someday establishing a “historical society”-type organization in the Sinking Valley area.
