She grew up in York and Springfield, Pennsylvania. Her two brothers - Rennie and David - still live in Pennsylvania, and her sister, Julie, lives within driving distance, in Massachusetts.
Once we had set our motorhome up nearby at the Philadelphia/West Chester KOA RV Park, the Meisenhelder clan assembled at a local seafood restaurant. Here's a photo of Nancy's family at a restaurant later in the week. From left to right, Julie, Rennie, Rennie's girlfriend Kathy, Nancy, me, and David.
Julie is an artist and graphic designer who is mostly retired. Rennie is a retired electrician who worked at Franklin Mint. His birthday on 5/29 is the occasion that brought us all together, and Nancy and I adjusted our travel itinerary to be here this week. David is a CPA who many years ago helped me build our little castle in Ben Lomond.
Julie recently sent in a specimen of her own to AncestryDNA.com. Since Nancy, Rennie, and David share the same parents - Ren and Dottie - Julie's results apply for the most part to them as well. Unfortunately, the Meisenhelder line is not as pure and impressive as I had always thought. Her ethnicity estimate came back 40% British Isles, 33% Western Europe, and 7% Southern Europe. Migration data includes Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana settlers typical of German farmer immigrants. Looks like there's a good dollop of German blood in there, but the Meisenhelders are definitely not pure Aryan. Thus Nancy is not of the master race. (I had always assumed that she was).
At the restaurant Julie handed Nancy a canister containing ashes of their dear departed father, Ren. Julie had divided up his cremains into four equal parts, one to each of the remaining siblings, for disposal as each of them thought best.
We had an excellent meal and a grand time at the restaurant, with plenty of laughs and some not entirely appropriate comments regarding the prior disposal of the remains of other family members. We have all tried to honor them by selecting disposal sites that reflected their favorite places on Earth.
Later we had a play date for all the Meisenhelder dogs at Rennie's home, where ordinarily his little dog Max is king. When our Tammy Faye and Sophia and Julie's Bijou invaded his domain, Max began barking obsessively and wore himself out to the point that (according to Nancy) he gave himself a timeout by retreating to a back room to recover. At some point a wet spot appeared on Rennie's carpet. Suspicion fell on our Sophia, who was in the area, although only a DNA test would convince me that our perfect little princess was to blame.
This section of the Pennsylvania countryside is very beautiful - rolling hills, incredibly green, lots of big trees, winding country lanes. There's a variety of housing styles here, with more stone buildings than elsewhere, and with its early American history and its architecture, it reminds me of England, for some reason. Nancy and I both have a dream of living in a stone house similar to but more modest than the one below, ideally surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers.
It's so pretty that Nancy is relaxing her objection somewhat to living here under the threat of terrible winter weather. So we drove around looking for that classic small town or city with a downtown full of cool restaurants and shops. The best example of that we came across was West Chester, which is a very nice community. We can't rule out this area entirely.
Nice house
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