Ancestry Saturday: The Albany-to-Elsewhere-to-Albany Geographic Loop

As I wrote last week, my Dad never knew his family tree led to a Revolutionary War Patriot buried nearby his office in Albany, New York. 

The Jeremiah Shontz-to-John Platt story has ironic east-to-west-and-return twists that bring this family tree in a geographic full loop from Albany to elsewhere and back to Albany.

Jeremiah would have a son, John, who would end up further west in Crawford County, Pennsylvania where his daughter, Miranda, would live her whole life. Miranda would marry and have a daughter Mary Ann who would have a daughter Grace. Grace would migrate still further west.

Grace Smith Platt's son, Richard would end up as far west as California where he graduated from UCLA in 1936.

The return East began in 1937. Richard would have a son, John, in Ohio in 1943.

My Dad, that's John, would live 53 years in Ohio but end up spending the last eight years of his life back in the same Albany, New York area where that branch of the family had begun in this country almost 300 years earlier.

Ironic.