A Look Back at Modern Memoirs Publishing Interns

Interns have often been part of the inner workings at Modern Memoirs over our 30+ years. We don’t have an intern currently, but I am sure we will host them again in the future—perhaps even next semester—and in the meantime, I’ve been reflecting on how rewarding it’s been to engage with them in the past.

“My own internship experiences in college and graduate school had been greatly important to my professional development, and I hoped to provide the same sort of experience to students here.”

Company founder Kitty Axelson-Berry supervised several interns and volunteers during her time leading Modern Memoirs. When my husband, Sean, and I bought the company in 2019, I knew I wanted to do the same. My own internship experiences in college and graduate school were greatly important to my professional development, and I hoped to provide the same sort of experience to students here. I also enjoyed mentoring interns and teaching assistants during my previous nonprofit, library, and academic positions, so I knew I would get personal satisfaction from welcoming undergraduates and graduate students to Modern Memoirs.

As a parent of teens and twenty-somethings working hard to make their way in life, I made a commitment that each internship here would be funded since I wanted young people working with us to have the clearest possible indication of our business’s investment in them. Modern Memoirs is located in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a region home to the Five College consortium (comprised of my alma mater, Smith College, as well as Mt. Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and UMass-Amherst), so I knew there would be a large pool of internship applicants. In the fall of 2019, I set my sights on hiring someone the following year.

The pandemic put the brakes on that aspiration, however. Director of Publishing Ali de Groot and I shepherded the business through remote work arrangements, then we moved to new offices in summer 2020, I hired Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg to join our staff that fall, and my two youngest children spent afternoons in the office for remote schooling. Internship plans were decidedly on the back burner.

Lauryn Small

Then, in late spring 2021, I received an email from a Smith College student, Lauryn Small, hoping to work with us that summer. It was an easy decision to give her an internship, and she set the bar high for all who followed. The initiative Lauryn displayed in reaching out to me carried into her performance at the office, where she helped us launch our monthly newsletter, aided me in managing social media, worked with Ali to write a blog post, and also supported the staff in many client-facing tasks.

When Lauryn left to return to Smith for her senior year, I focused on recruiting not another intern, but a new staff member, Book Designer Nicole Miller, who joined Modern Memoirs in November 2021. She fit right into our team, with marketing expertise to boot.

Emma Solis

Given the positive experience we had with Lauryn and the full plates I saw my growing staff managing, I decided to recruit another intern in summer 2022. Like Lauryn, Emma Solis joined us with funding through the Smith College PRAXIS program, which required them to complete over 200 hours of service. We found plenty of work for them to do! One of Emma’s first tasks was to process our summer solstice mailing, and we quickly realized that she was ready for more substantive work, as well. Her strong writing chops made me encourage her to contribute to our blog, and her eagerness to learn about all parts of the business allowed her to support staff in tasks related to all phases of the publishing process—editorial, design, production, and marketing. We were very sorry to see her go at summer’s end.

Charlie Mark

In the fall of 2022, students from two different schools applied for internships. Charlie Mark was finishing up high school in an alternative program called Light House, based in nearby Holyoke, while Cori Garrett-Goodyear was enrolled in Bay Path University’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. Both started in January 2023—and the timing couldn’t have been better! That was the month Sean and I decided to move offices again, and I honestly don’t know how we would have managed the move without help from Charlie and Cori, who packed up and then reshelved our entire library of client books, and much more.

Cori Garrett-Goodyear

Once we were all set up in our new digs, both interns threw themselves into any task we sent their way. Though they had more limited hours per week than either Lauryn or Emma did as PRAXIS program students at Smith, they helped with administrative, client-facing, and marketing tasks, while also contributing to our blog. Particularly memorable is Cori’s mature, can-do attitude. In one massive book project,  she assisted Ali de Groot with the complicated structural edit of a manuscript, turning our conference room wall into a veritable map of pages as they refined the sequence of vignettes and images to the author’s supreme satisfaction.

Modern Memoirs conference room wall with mock-up

I had planned to hire a summer 2023 intern, but just as Charlie and Cori were wrapping up their time with us, former intern Emma Solis contacted me for advice about her post-college plans. As we sat together over lunch, she shared that she had decided to stay in the Amherst area, and I couldn’t resist asking her if she might be interested in working with Modern Memoirs again—this time as a full staff member, not as an intern. How lucky we were that she said yes! She already knew our systems and our staff, and we had great confidence in her abilities. Her too-short tenure as Publishing Associate was a bright spot for Modern Memoirs. (Here she writes about lessons learned before moving on to New York City in October 2024.)

Olivia Go

Another Smith student, Olivia Go, joined us for a fall 2023 internship while Emma was still here. If you haven’t read Olivia’s blog posts, I hope you will take the time to do so—she truly has a gift. Like all of her predecessors, Olivia displayed great eagerness to engage in all parts of the business, and she worked closely with Emma to update our photographic archive of client projects while also cheerfully helping with any task passed her way. In fact, I offered to extend her internship through the spring 2024 semester. Happily, she agreed.

Lily Fitzgerald

I did not hire a summer 2024 intern, instead setting my sights on recruiting someone who could work with us for the full 2024/2025 academic year. Olivia’s continuity with the business had been a real help, and I wanted to replicate that stability with a new publishing intern. UMass-Amherst senior Lily Fitzgerald fit the bill. A student in the university’s Honors College, Lily brought a passion for writing and marketing know-how to her role. Her support around social media postings and a revival of our LinkedIn presence were especially helpful. I also always knew I could count on her for runs to the copy shop or FedEx box—once she pulled up just in the nick of time to meet the delivery person’s truck with an urgent, time-sensitive delivery. She texted me triumphantly after the handoff, “Just made it! It was kinda exciting. I felt like I was in a movie! (laughing-crying emoji).”

Cecelia Allentuck

Our most recent intern, Cecelia Allentuck, was home for the summer of 2025 after her first year of studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Cece’s sunny enthusiasm filled the room when I interviewed her, and she brought that attitude into all she did. She offered great support in boosting our social media presence, and she seemed to especially delight in working with me on her blog posts.

My teaching background makes me grateful for the chance to work with student interns, especially when they are interested in writing blog posts and newsletter content for Modern Memoirs. Helping them home in on a topic, editing their drafts, and then seeing them get to share their work with readers is greatly satisfying. In that way, working with interns dovetails nicely with the editorial work I do with Modern Memoirs clients. What a joy it is to help people find their voices and share their stories, whether they are people I hire, or people who hire my staff and me.

Do you know a student who might be interested in a spring 2026 publishing internship with Modern Memoirs? If so, send them my way!

Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Margaret Marcus, Part 2

Margaret Marcus is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first memoir, entitled Windows Aglow and Other Stories from My Mother’s Life, was published in 2019, and her second memoir, entitled Suddenly Upside Down: Recollections from Pandemic Years 2020 and 2021, came out in 2022. The first project took five months to complete, and the second, just four months. In this two-part blog series, we ask Marcus to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her books with others. In Part 2, below, we discuss Suddenly Upside Down.

1. What inspired you to write this book?

Margaret Marcus: In April of 2020, my cousin Elizabeth and I found ourselves wondering about our paternal grandmother, whom we had never known. She had been a victim of the 1918 flu epidemic. Or so I thought. Elizabeth wasn’t sure about that. But, we agreed, considering the great pandemic to which our present situation was already being compared, wouldn’t it be interesting to know what life was like for our grandmother and her family during that time, whatever the circumstances of her death?

“I know what I’m going to do,” Elizabeth announced. “Record things related to life during the pandemic for my grandchildren.”

“What a good idea,” I said. “I believe I’ll do that, too.”

Thus the beginning of Suddenly Upside Down.

“The writing process is life-affirming for me. It requires time and reflection and focus, and it inevitably brings about perspective.”

2. In an early chapter you say, “The pandemic darkened our world, but in its wake, it brought along surprisingly bright consequences.” What was the brightest consequence of all?

Margaret Marcus: As soon as schools shut down in March of 2020, I began teaching language arts to my elementary and middle school grandchildren. Our Zoom encounters continued throughout the rest of that school year, and in one way or another, I remained involved as their schools and teachers came back online in a more organized way that following fall. I loved designing lessons for each of the children, and I proudly made a mess of my command center, the dining room table.

3. What did the pandemic reveal to you about teaching and learning?

Margaret Marcus: I had an opportunity to discover the differing gifts of my grandchildren—and to know them as learners, each in his or her own unique way. I consider myself lucky to have had this opportunity.

4. You detail the many ways in which everyday life was turned “suddenly upside down” by the pandemic and other events in 2020 and 2021. How did the writing process help give you perspective on all that happened?

Margaret Marcus: The writing process is life-affirming for me. It requires time and reflection and focus, and it inevitably brings about perspective. Knowing that I’ve created something by evening that didn’t exist that morning makes me happy. During the pandemic, when so much was stalled and uncertain, the writing process energized me.

5. What artwork did you choose for the front and back covers of your book? Why did you choose those pieces?

Margaret Marcus: The artwork on the front cover is the reconfiguring of a design my grandson Samuel, age nine or so at the time, did in school and which got put on a coffee mug for me. I sent off a photograph of the mug, and Modern Memoirs’ talented book designer took it from there. How she did it so creatively, I have no idea! Meanwhile, I asked a good friend to do a painting of an amaryllis for the back cover. “Amaryllis” is the title of the last chapter in my book, and I looked at it as a bright symbol of hope for getting things turned right-side up again.

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Margaret Marcus, Part 1

Margaret Marcus is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first memoir, entitled Windows Aglow and Other Stories from My Mother's Life, was published in 2019, and her second memoir, entitled Suddenly Upside Down: Recollections from Pandemic Years 2020 and 2021, came out in 2022. The first project took five months to complete, and the second, just four months. In this two-part blog series, we ask Marcus to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her books with others. In Part 1, below, we discuss Windows Aglow.

1. This book is written about your mother in the third person, with quotes and excerpts by your mother throughout. What sources were available to you in reconstructing the story of her life?

Margaret Marcus: I was very lucky to have some of my mother’s journals, the remarkable scrapbooks she kept during university days, letters written by or about her during important times in her life, and wonderful photographs. For years all of this was stored away in my brother’s house and then in mine, and it wasn’t until I determined to write a memoir about her that I investigated these materials. I was thirty when my mother died, and now I was in my seventies.

2. You noted that your mother “carefully preserved memories” in these materials. How did you go about preserving her memories further, in your own way?

Margaret Marcus: My challenge was to design a story of my mother that included what I learned from these materials, most of it relating to her life before I was part of it, but that also included my own memories of her. Over a good number of years, I had written sketches about her, not in any kind of order, and how would I now structure a memoir to incorporate all of this in a meaningful way? In the end, I created sections, each one having its own chapters. The end result is hardly a chronological record, but more of a collage.

“I imagine farmhouse windows aglow that winter night…” with “lamps lit and life simple, all warm and secure.”

3. In cases in which your mother supplied no commentary with these materials, what did you do to flesh out the details of the events in her life?

Margaret Marcus: I did a good bit of detective work. I had been aware of the rough contours of my mother’s life, but how did what I discovered among her disparate materials fit together? What did I learn about her that was new to me? I asked myself lots of questions, and while it’s satisfying to know that I found answers for a good number of them, still others remain. They, too, appear on the pages of my book.

4. How did writing this book help to shape your understanding of your mother? Have you heard feedback from family members who knew her (or didn’t know her) as to their understanding of your mother after reading these stories?

Margaret Marcus: Writing Windows Aglow was a wonderful experience. Without a doubt, it broadened my understanding of and admiration for my mother. My children and friends who had never known her were thoughtful and generous readers, but above all else, it was my brother, cousins, and family friends who did know and love her for whom the book was most meaningful. After all these years our bonds tightened because of it.

5. Why did you select Windows Aglow as the title?

Margaret Marcus: Towards the end of my first chapter, I describe a scene on the farm in Vermont where my mother spent her childhood. I found myself writing “I imagine farmhouse windows aglow that winter night…” with “lamps lit and life simple, all warm and secure.” Aha, windows aglow! That would be my title!

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Genealogy Errors: Are Your Ancestry Records Accurate?

While doing his own family-history research, a client of ours logged onto Ancestry.com and found the 1900 U.S. census record for his great-grandfather. He contacted me, puzzled over how the census listed his forebear’s occupation. “It says he was a ‘capitalist bender,’ whatever that is!” he told me.

I was puzzled, too, and so I looked on Ancestry to see what was going on. The client was right. When you click on “View Record” in the search results list, the first screen you come to, which is a transcription of the census record, lists the occupation as “Capitalist Bender,” as shown below:

Transcription of census record

But when you open the image of the original census form itself and read the actual handwriting, though it is messy, it lists the occupation as “Carpenter & Builder.” That makes a lot more sense! (I confirmed it by matching the census taker’s writing of “carpenter” with other letters and words on the page. I also checked the later 1910 census, where the client’s great-grandfather was again listed as a “builder.”)

Original census record

Original census record

Mystery solved: “Capitalist bender” was a transcription error.

“Does that mean Ancestry isn’t an accurate source?” the client asked me.

My answer to that question has two parts. First, it is important to understand that Ancestry is not a source, it is a repository. Just as a library holds books, Ancestry holds records, and it is the records that are the sources.

Second, there are two types of sources on Ancestry: original and derivative. The original sources are images of actual paper records created at the time events took place, like birth certificates, marriage registers, and passenger lists. These are the real thing! The derivative sources are “derived” or created from the original sources by transcribing them in their entirety, or by extracting or abstracting portions of information from them.

“The lesson to be learned is to slow down when using genealogy websites.”

As we clearly saw from the example above, derivative records are prone to error. Since that’s the case, why do they show up first on Ancestry when you select an item from a search results list? This happens because it is the derivative record that allows you to find the item in the first place. Search engines do not search original records themselves because they are images. Instead, information is transcribed from the images—by people or AI—and entered into a database for the search engines to access, errors and all.

The lesson to be learned is to slow down when using genealogy websites. It is tempting to quickly scoop up an answer and move onto the next question. But we need to take the additional step of carefully examining original records in order to get an accurate representation of what the records hold.

Who knows what the person who erroneously transcribed the term “capitalist bender” was thinking when they entered that term on Ancestry? (Or was it an unthinking machine that did it?) But thanks to the extra, necessary step of researching the original census record, our client now knows that his great-grandfather worked as a carpenter and builder, giving him new information for the construction of his family tree.

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

How Poetry Slams Set Me Free as a Writer

A blog post by
Cecelia Allentuck, Publishing Intern

Performing in “New Britain's Got Talent” as a guest poet (c. 2023)

Writing has always been a source of comfort for me, a way for me to work through feelings and share myself with others. Like any person, I have my flaws. My drive to win can sometimes be a great tool for achieving success, but it can consume me in little moments, like when I am playing a board game, or switching lanes on the highway. When I first started competing in poetry slams, I was a bit concerned about the potential downside of injecting competition into the comfort zone of my creative life. I didn’t anticipate how writing for a judge would actually make me more accepting of my competitive spirit.

A poetry slam is a competition with scores based on both writing and performance. Oftentimes, you must prepare three poems (sometimes more, sometimes fewer) and deliver them in under 3 minutes each—with a 10-second grace period. In my experience, the topic of each poem can range from politics to perfume marketing to stubbing your toe. Anything goes!

“Am I good enough? Am I receiving better scores? Will I ever be as good as the other writers are?”

The first time I competed, I was just 15 years old, and I had no idea what I was in for. I had performed at open mics, so as I entered my name into the waiting list of performers, I thought, “What could be so different?” I was excited to perform the same way I always had, only this time there was a monetary prize, plus bragging rights attached to the opportunity.

All of the other poets were professionals. They had done this so many times before, they could do it in their sleep! There I was, on stage, with a printout of my poem that I read off to the crowd. “Mmms” and “ahhs” and “oohs” and finger-snaps clicked their way around the room... and then I was eliminated, first round.

So I worked harder. I watched slam poets perform, studied their movements, listened to the way they twisted words to mean multiple things at once. I wrote and wrote and sang and performed in my kitchen night after night.

Top 3 youth poets (I’m 2nd from left) with host and organizer LyricalFaith (3rd from left), at 2023 Northampton (MA) Academy of Music Regional Youth Poetry Slam, where I won second place

I wanted to win! I wanted to show the world—and myself—that I was the best. My next slam... I was eliminated, first round. The following slam, however, I made it to bout 2. Then bout 3. Finally, it was going to happen! That champion title was going to be mine! And... I got second place.

2024 Academy of Music Regional Youth Poetry Slam, where I won first place

The following year, I returned to the same slam competition. This time, I was not going home without a win. My legs were shaking as I waited for my turn and listened to the other poets. Everyone competing was so talented, and I was sitting there wishing I could write the way he did, or project my voice the way she did. My competitive side was eating away at the part of my brain that loved to write and perform. To my delight, I left that night with the win I had worked for. It felt great. But I also realized that what felt even better were the personal connections, the friendships I had made in a single night.

A year after winning that slam, I entered an even bigger one as part of a team. My team was phenomenal, with poets who continue to inspire me even months later. But even on a team, my competitive side made me question, “Am I good enough? Am I receiving better scores? Will I ever be as good as the other writers are?”

Slowly, I noticed how these thoughts were chipping away at my creativity and contributing to a negative mindset. I began to push against these thoughts to recognize that inspiration from other poets did not diminish my own writing. In fact, it only affirmed that I was creative and talented because I could notice and appreciate other people’s gifts.

At right, with University of St. Andrews Slam Poetry team, competing at UniSlam 2025 in Birmingham, UK. We made it to semi-finals, achieving third place in our bout.

When I fully accepted these truths, my competitive spirit stopped working against me. Instead it began to help me write poems that felt true to me and could impact an audience of judges, with the understanding that not everything I shared would connect with every reader, judge, or audience member. Maybe I’d go home with a trophy or two, but I came to accept that the point of writing, practicing, performing, losing, and trying again was to challenge myself and others. To find inspiration and make lasting connections. To become the best version of myself, even if there was no medal to name me a winner.

And so, I embraced being competitive without being against anyone—whether it be the judges, other poets, or even myself. I learned that when you go on stage and share your truth, you must be ready for someone not to understand it in the way you do. Your truth is your own, and sometimes their truth tells them something different. That is OK—in fact, this may be the whole point of writing in any capacity: to share your thoughts and feelings and memories and ideas, and then let go, allowing those who encounter your words to make their own meaning with the poem you’ve given them.

Cecelia Allentuck is the summer 2025 publishing intern for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Put Your Family History in Writing

““Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.””
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

One gravestone, silhouetted in the sunlight between two trees, invites us into the Denlinger Cemetery

In 1999, my maternal grandfather’s brother, Granduncle Paul Ahlers, wrote a family history that provided details about something my cousins and I heard many times while we were growing up—that we are part “Pennsylvania Dutch.” In his book, Paul includes a copy of “The Denlinger Family,” a well-researched and well-documented article written by distant cousin Ralph E. Denlinger that appeared in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage magazine in July 1980. In it, Ralph tells the story of our common ancestor Michael Denlinger, who left with his family from Ibersheim, Germany in about 1715 and came to East Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to begin farming on Pequea Creek.

The Denlingers were Mennonites, a branch of the Anabaptist movement originating in Switzerland in 1525. Persecuted for their beliefs by religious and political authorities, Mennonites left Switzerland for other parts of Europe, including the Palatinate region of southwest Germany. Then, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “Beginning in 1663, Mennonites emigrated to North America to preserve the faith of their fathers, to seek economic opportunity and adventure, and especially to escape European militarism.”[1] The Denlinger family’s arrival in Pennsylvania in 1715 marked the beginning of a four-decades-long “Great Migration” of Palatine Germans to the state.

In his article, Ralph identifies the land on which the Denlinger family settled, including the names of the present-day roads that run through and around it. He also references the Denlinger Cemetery, which was located on the homestead. According to a footnote in the article, “Michael and his wife, Frances, are believed to be resting here in unmarked graves. Their two sons and several other descendants are buried here. The oldest dated stone in the cemetery is 1776.”[2]

According to Ralph, the first three generations of my ancestors stayed in the East Lampeter Township region. A member of the fourth generation, my 4x great-grandfather, moved west to Blair County, Pennsylvania, and several members of the fifth generation “traveled” or moved to Iowa in the 1850s. Ralph’s account matches Paul’s account (and my subsequent research) of the origin of my 3x great-grandfather Christian Denlinger, who came from Pennsylvania to Iowa in 1854, as did two of his brothers around the same time.

East Lampeter Township in an 1851 map of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Born in Iowa and never having been to East Lampeter Township, I was eager to explore it. For years I pored over old maps and compared them to current satellite images on Google Maps. I dreamed about driving the roads and seeing the land today. I especially wanted to visit the Denlinger Cemetery. Finally in 2025, the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism and the year of my 60th birthday, I knew it was time! And so my wife and I began to plan a trip.

To prepare, I read Real People: Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania by A. Martha Denlinger. Martha, a member of the Mennonite church, originally wrote the book in 1975 after years of working at the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster. In it she answers many of the questions that tourists commonly asked her. I researched her background to figure out how she and I are related, and I hoped to meet her. Sadly, she died in 2024, and I would never get the chance.

I also researched the Denlinger Cemetery, which I intended to make the focal point of our trip, and was helped by an information page posted on the Find A Grave website. It alerted me to several facts:

  • This cemetery is on private property. Before going out to it, stop at the property owner’s house and request permission.

  • There is no public road access, you have to walk about 120 yards along the edge of the field to a stand of trees in the northeast corner of the property.

  • Many of the stones are worn/broken.[3]

The website also included a hand-drawn map of the cemetery made by Ralph Denlinger, featuring the location of stones and the list of names and dates carved into them.

We were ready to go!

The John and Frances Denlinger family Bible at the Mennonite Life Archives and Library in Lancaster

I cannot describe how transformative it was to immerse ourselves in that area for just a couple of days. Everywhere there were lush, green farms with fields of tall corn, yards with lines of clothing drying in the sun, and farmstands loaded with everything from tomatoes to honey. From Martha I had learned, “The Amish today and their less conservative neighbors, the Mennonites, often live and work together in the community. But they worship separately.”[4] The Amish farms had carriages parked in their driveways; the Mennonite farms, pickup trucks.

In the restaurants and shops we visited, Amish and Mennonite workers very kindly and peacefully attended their customers, despite the hot temperatures, crowds, and amusement-park vibe of nearby attractions. If we were lucky, we occasionally caught snippets of their conversation among themselves, spoken in Pennsylvania Dutch, a language related to German that has been kept alive since the late 18th century.

We first made our way to the Mennonite Life Archives and Library, where the staff generously pulled a Denlinger family Bible from the shelves and set it on a table for us to view. John Denlinger, who “was born the 5th of January in the year of our Lord 1827, Constellation the Aquarius,” as the Marriages page states, was not an ancestor of mine, but he was a distant cousin. Calligraphy on the title page claimed the Bible as “The Property of John and Frances Denlinger” and was surrounded by colorful illuminations of birds and flowers. Being in the presence of this book connected me directly with these people and this place across centuries, like a hand extended for me to hold for a moment and express my gratitude.

The gravestones of John and Anna Denlinger in the Denlinger Cemetery

And then it was off to the cemetery. We knocked on the door of one farmhouse but found no one home, so left a note of explanation under the windshield wiper of our car and ventured onto a path at the edge of their cornfield. But soon we hit the edge of another cornfield and had to turn around. Driving to a road on the opposite side of the cemetery, we drove up the driveway of another house and found the owner at home. She pointed us to a patch of woods at the end of her lot but said that we might have trouble finding our way because an older man used to take care of the cemetery but hadn’t done so for years. Walking along the edge of another cornfield, we came to a tiny grove of trees, overgrown with shrubs and vines, and with no obvious entryway. Then my wife spotted a gravestone and headed toward it, shouting out to me that there were several more, everywhere! We climbed around in the sweltering heat for about a half an hour, finding one stone after another, and reading their inscriptions. Again, we found no evidence of my direct ancestors, but we knew we were walking on the family’s hallowed ground, and we were so deeply moved. A pilgrimage completed at last.

To others the Denlinger Cemetery may be just a jumbled mix of broken and still-standing gravestones hidden in a tangle of trees and weeds at the far intersection of four cornfields in rural Pennsylvania, but this place felt sacred to me. And as we stood there, I couldn’t help but think: I wouldn’t have known about any of this if someone hadn’t written it down.

Dear descendants of Michael and Frances Denlinger, thank you for carving names and dates on these stones!

Dear John and Frances Denlinger, thank you for keeping a family Bible!

Dear Ralph Denlinger, thank you for writing your magazine article!

Dear Martha Denlinger, thank you for writing your book!

And especially, dear Granduncle Paul Ahlers, thank you for recording our family history in the first place, the original piece that led me on this journey!

I hope that this reflection inspires every reader to begin recording their genealogy. It must be written down, or it will be lost. It is as simple as that. Some people don’t begin writing because they feel like they haven’t completed their research yet. Let me tell you, it will never be done! Start it now, share what you know already. Give others a foothold to take steps from there. Write it down! Write it down! Write it down!

[1] “Mennonite,” Encyclopædia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com)

[2] Ralph E. Denlinger, “The Denlinger Family,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1980), p. 12

[3] “Denlinger Cemetery, East Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA,” Find A Grave (https://www.findagrave.com)

[4] A. Martha Denlinger, Real People: Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1993), p. 14

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

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