#2-2020. Favorite Photo. 52 Ancestors in a Year
As the recipient & keeper of many, if not hundreds of family photos, it was very hard to choose just one favorite photo. So I chose 2 related photos.
Yes, I really do have lots of family photos and luckily most are identified. Thanks to my grandfather, John F. Shaffner and my cousin, Donnee Shaffner Stibal, most are identified in the Shaffner family line.
My mother, Helen Lloyd's family also had many family pictures and most are labeled. In both sets of inherited collections there those unlabeled ones that I am always looking for clues on.
This is picture is favorite because it is the only picture I have of my great great grandmother, Margaret Maria Fetter Shaffner. The plus to the picture is her holding Walter Ruskin Shaffner, the youngest brother of my grandfather.
Margaret was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1820 and died 10 November 1903 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at 83 years of age.
Walter Ruskin Shaffner was born 7 September 1899 and his mother died 17 November, 1899.
I believe the picture would have been taken about 1900-1902.
Margaret Maria Fetter Shaffner, daughter of Jacob George Fetter III & Margaret Maria Ernest (or Ermet) married Gabriel Shaffner in 1845 in Pennsylvania. Their son, John Martin Shaffner, born 15 July 1855 married Elizabeth Deborah Fletcher in 16 September 1880 in Whitesville, New York.
I suspect that Margaret helped out raising Walter Ruskin until his father remarried.
John M. Shaffner married Emma Reamer, but she did not like his children. The younger children all went to live with older siblings.
Walter Ruskin Shaffner went to live with his sister, Cecelia and her husband, Richard Daggett in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. He died December 1916 at the age of 16. Probably from appendicitis, but the death certificate said acute indigestion.
His older brother, John F. Shaffner, intended to bring him to Montana. He always regretted that and named his 2nd son, Walter.
This is the Shaffner Family Bible that my grandfather, John F. Shaffner, took from his Pennsylvania home after his mother died. Emma was not happy about that according to Grandpa. But what a treasure it is.
Included in the Bible was Margaret's family history which I believe are in her handwriting due to the old style of cursive script.
Don Shaffner, my father, holding the Shaffner Family Bible
