What a handsome little fella ... Hey, If only you were that cute you'd use a picture like that too!

70 or so years later... what the h!!! happened???

A little background, I am most interested in the Busch/Bush; DeLong; Braun/Brown; Haas families (but not limited to) from the Ruscombmanor Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania area and beyond.

I was raised in Shillington and Reading, Pennsylvania and lived there for 40 years until I met the love of my life in Ewing, NJ. Having lived in NJ for the past 39 years I now realize how exceptional the Berks County area was and is! My family has been in Berks County from before 1779 and is extensively intermarried with the founding families of the area. While only a few Bush family members remain in the region, Berks County will always be home!

Disclaimer...

I am NOT a memorial collector, I have no desire to be a big shot here on Find a Grave.

How anyone can manage thousands of memorials is a mystery to me! What I would like to do is gather my relatives from my 8th generation grandfather, Heinrich Busch to the present. Who better to manage them then a direct relative?

I'm a fairly new ( not so new anymore... 56,000 people in my tree since 2005.) genealogist spending many hours photographing headstones in numerous cemeteries.

I have a website you may want to explore : www.buschgenealogy.net, my son Michael has a page on Ancestry : The Busch's of Ruscombmanor Twp. feel free to glean any information you find useful, We're not people who wish to keep it all to ourselves.

I am a stickler for accuracy though, that's not to say our sites are error free, they aren't, if and when you come across an error please waste no time in contacting me for a correction! I love working on genealogy, Michael got me started back in 2004. There are over 56,000 relatives on the Ancestry site, I've pared my site down to around 28,000, give or take a few, so there are bound to be a couple of errors!

Anyhow... Thank you! to all who have helped me get this far.

Keith W Bush

www.buschgenealogy.net

[email protected]

ps.

I'm on a mission to preserve the name of Salem Evangelical Cemetery located in Pricetown, Berks County, Pennsylvania just off the Pricetown Road.

The church it was attached to went defunct in 1895 at which time the property was deeded to St. Paul's Evangelical Church Fleetwood, Berks County, Pennsylvania. There is some confusion among researchers as to where the people buried at Salem actually are interred - St. Paul's or Salem. When the property was deeded to St. Paul's they changed the name of the cemetery to St. Paul's Evangelical Cemetery so on some of the death certificates of people buried at Salem the burial location is listed as St. Paul's Fleetwood, Berks, Pa. and some even have the name Pricetown Cemetery - not to be confused with THE Pricetown Cemetery that exists in Pricetown today.

Several of my direct relatives are interred at Salem including Johannes Braun who was one of three men that built the church. The legal name of the cemetery is St. Paul's Evangelical Cemetery, that is true, It is my belief a piece of history will be lost forever if Salem is forgotten. Unfortunately St. Paul's Evangelical Church is also defunct. There is no one maintaining the cemetery with the exception of Berks County Association for Graveyard Preservation which has cleaned up the overgrowth .

"The BCAGP is working aggressively to preserve any and all evidence of Berks County's early history and particularly these historic graveyards for future generations." taken from the mission statement of BCAGP.

Thank you BCAGP!