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There has been extensive work done by others of the Anstine family that originated in the Southern Pennsylvania area. This tree extends this information mainly to the offspring of Emanuel Anstine and their families. Emanuel Anstine and Elizabeth Markel Anstine's son, Chester and others of the fourteen siblings, left Pennsylvania and moved to Baltimore in the 1800's. Chester married Dorothy Ida Bruckner and they had two sons, Clarence Leroy Anstine and Earl Chester Anstine.
Also being researched are the families of the Peters, Keen and Burnett branches of the tree. My Grandmother, Isabelle Margaret Peters married Earl Chester Anstine. She was the daughter of Edward Keen Peters and Maggie Burnett.
“ANNE’S QUEST” -- THE BURNETTS
A Dedication
It broke my heart when my Aunt Mary passed away. And, it broke my Uncle Earl. Not just his heart. None of us could imagine life without her.
Aunt Mary and my Grandmother Belle -- my “Nan” -- were close friends even before Mary came to this country in 1945 as an English War bride. Mary knew as much, or more, about our family than we did. About a year before Mary died on January 5, 1994, she gave me a book to write down family names. I had been pestering her to document things for me as I knew they would be forgotten when her generation was gone.
I was fascinated, always, by the two small pictures that sat in the home of my Grandparents, the Anstines, where I grew up. They were my Grandmother’s parents, Maggie Burnett Peters & Edward Peters. In those days, little personal information was discussed in our family. And from what others say about those times in the years after World War II, we were not unique. People were busy getting their lives back together and enjoying the prosperity of the times. Maggie, my Grandmother’s mother, passed away before my Nan was a year old. The children were divided among relatives as fathers had to continue their work. This I have always known -- but little else.
Aunt Mary’s book still sits without a pen stroke. But my computer and what my husband teasingly refers to as my “desk with no paycheck” over flow with pictures, facts and figures of generations before. My Uncle Earl sat at this desk with me for hours, recalling names and stories, as well as supplying pictures; my Mother wrote away for the first birth and death certificates; my Uncle Bob tells wonderful tales of the Burnets and Peters, contributing many old photographs and continues to cheer me on. My second cousin Raymond Boulay added missing facts and gave me an amazing picture of the original Keen/Peters Farm, “Summer Hill”, where Maggie bore her children. Now my “new” cousins -- recently discovered after much searching -- have opened up more doors.
I have to mention Ben Bates, our family friend, and thank him for not only introducing me to the vast amount of archival information available, but for taking me to The Pratt Library, Maryland Historical Society and the Archives in Maryland and teaching me how.
This work will never have an end and I know it had no beginning that we will be able to pinpoint.
And mostly, I am ecstatic to write we were successful in erecting a gravestone on the unmarked family resting place of John Burnett, his wife, Margaret, and seven other family members.
THE KEENS
Edward Keen Peters was a direct descendant of Edward George Peters (1788-1870) and Elizabeth Barnett Peters (1800-1870) both born in England and died in Maryland. Edward K. Peters' mother's name was Milicent Lane Peters. We have found quite a few of their descendants, some of whom moved to Iowa. What still escapes us is documentation of their lives before that first 1830 census in which they appear.
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