Excerpt from Heinrich Gernhardt and His Descendants: Historical Facts and Musings; Cogitations on Interesting Genealogical Problems; Records of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of All Branches of the Family; Brief Sketches of Many of the Members; And Some Interesting Reminiscences of the Great Civil War

This book, the reader is reminded, is published only for pri vate 'circulation, though perhaps hardly anybody outside of the family will want to read it. I would say that my father died when I was but ten years old, \and that I lived to be more than threescore years old with but slight knowledge of my ancestors and kindred. I saw my paternal grandparents only a few times, when I was a small boy, and when.i had no more interest in our family history than in the nebular theory of the astronomers. All that I knew respecting my great-grandparents of the Gernhardt line before beginning to gather the data for this genealogical fabrication was their names, that they had several children be sides my grandfather, that they had once lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and that from thence they had migrated - before my father's time - to some part of Northumberland County. When and where they were born, what their social and pecuniary condition was, when and where they were married, where and under what special circumstances they commenced and spent their domestic life, when they settled on the West Branch of the Sus quehanna River, when and where they died, and where they were buried, how many children they had, and what became of them all, were matters of which, after my hair had turned grey, I still remained as ignorant as everybody now is of the pro - historic ages and origin of the North American Indians.

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