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Both of my parents were raised in Berks County, Pennsylvania, though they had settled in the Baltimore area before I was born. Trips back and forth from Baltimore to Berks county were frequent when I was growing up, and the Hiester farm near Morgantown was always a wonderful place to spend time as a child. With 20 acres of field and forest, a huge barn filled with an amazing assortment of antiques and collectibles, and the most fascinating attic I had ever seen, there was never a shortage of adventures to be had on the farm. My grandfather, Albert Edwin Hiester, spoke fluent German and particularly enjoyed dickering with the Amishmen at the local fairs and markets. Always quick to spot a good deal, it was no wonder he managed to fill a large barn with the wonderful 'bargains' he found, though I'm not that my grandmother would have agreed with our opinion. It was this fluency on German that led me to believe as a child that my grandparents had not been in America for very long, so, needless to say, it was quite a surprise to discover in the course of my research that the family had arrived in Pennsylvania in the early part of the 1700's! My research would have gone much smoother had I started while there were still family members around to fill in the facts for me, but I didn't start looking into my roots until after my father and both of his parents had passed away. What little I knew was what my mother could tell me about Dad's side of the family, and there was precious little to go on. I knew only that my grandfather, Albert Edwin, had been the eldest son of twelve children. Finding out that there had been Hiesters in the Reading area from very early on was the easy part; what was difficlut was figuring out how my Hiesters connected to the early lines. Working full time and being a single mother limited my ability to do any sort of long-distance research, but, luckily the internet became a wonderful resource for the would-be family historian. I posted queries all over the place, hoping someone would be able to tell who my great-grandparents were. It was a long wait, but eventually, the answers came. In the spring of 1999, I was contacted by a fellow Hiester descendant named Jim Fair as a result of a query I had posted two years earlier on the Berks county PAGenWeb Site. Not only did Jim know who my great-grandparents were, he had the whole line back to the 1730's! What a wonderful thing the internet has been for genealogy buffs! Since then, I have met several other folks who have been able to add to the information on my line and it's been great helping each other answer the many questions that always arise in this type of research. Toward the end of last year, my brother told me that he had been contacted by another researcher named Bud Hiester from California who had been tracking all the family lines and, after tallking on the phone to my brother, had sent him a copy of our direct lineage. His data helped flesh out some of the holes that were left in the early generations and are a wonderful addition to my collection of Hiester details. Bud has been working with quite a few of the Hiester descendants and has amassed an incredible amount of data. Thoguh this site will concentrate, initially, on my direct line of Hiester descent, I am hoping that I will be able to fill out the other lines as well as time goes on. If you are a Hiester descendant and have information you would like to add to the growing collection, please let me know!
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