By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Hey genealogy lovers… ancestry.com has a free trial for UK records this weekend. I don’t pay for “world access,” so whenever there’s a freebie I go and download all the stuff I’ve been stockpiling— like my Great-Great-Great Grandfather’s signature on an English ship crew manifest.
Joseph Prentiss Greiner was born in Wheatfield, but spent many years at sea with Liverpool as his home port. He returned to Buffalo to live in the area now known as the Medical Campus. Apparently adapting the skills he learned as a sailor– as far as I can tell, he was among the first people whose occupation was listed as “electrician” in the Buffalo City Directory, helping bring “The City of Light” to life.
My Greiners came to Buffalo in the 1820s… and there are several generations of many children who’ve moved all over the country since then. Most of the DNA matches that I can figure out trace back to Casper Greiner— whose daughter was among the first baptized at St Louis Church in Buffalo… and who himself is buried at the small Tonawanda church founded by St John Neumann behind St John the Baptist on Englewood.
