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March 21, 2012

Polly Scheirer Comfort: A Fearless Female for Wordless Wednesday


This is the only image I have of my great-great-grandmother, Polly Scheirer Comfort. It’s scanned from a photo that belonged to my grandmother, Nora Eberhard Ballenger. On the back she wrote “Mom’s Mom.”

Nora’s mom (my great-grandmother) was Mary Comfort Eberhard. Our family is lucky enough to have Mary’s baptismal fraktur, written in German, from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. I wrote about this family treasure in Baptismal Fraktur of Mary Comfort. The certificate names Polly Scheirer as Mary’s mother.

I’m still searching for details to document Polly’s life. Polly was a common nickname for Mary or the German name Magdalena, so one of those was probably her given name. I know she was married to Louis Comfort by 1870, and that they lived in Lehigh County. In addition to her daughter Mary, she also had a son, Henry Comfort.


I chose Polly’s picture today in keeping with Lisa Alzo's “Fearless Females” theme for Women’s History Month on The Accidental Genealogist. Even though I don’t know much about Polly, she looks like a pretty strong woman to me. 

3 comments:

  1. My husband's grandfather was Alfred Comfort married to Annie Heller. One of their children was Lewis (Louis) Comfort. Have been to his grave in Egypt, PA. My husband's sister just updated us on your info on Polly Scheirer. Found the marriage record & am some confused on the dates. Could you give me the correct marriage date on Lois & Polly (Scheirer) Comfort. I did notice the spelling (Kumfert) was the same as a precious wife (resumed before Polly) that is a grave next to Louis. Also I have dates of other siblings born & somewhere the dates are off. Can you help me with this.
    As you can notice my email address is
    CBS2000@swbellnet
    I am Carol Comfort and have be researching the Comfort family line for over 30 yrs. now. Very interesed in this line.
    Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

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    Replies
    1. Carol, thanks for reading and leaving a comment for me. It's great to find someone else researching the same family! I'm emailing you with some more information, although I don't have exact dates for everything. I'm very interested in learning more about Lewis and Polly's other children (siblings of Mary Comfort). I'm looking forward to working with you on this!

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    2. Thanks for posting this. I noticed the spelling of Kumfert on the baptismal certificate you found and posted years ago, but haven't researched much yet. I should get back into genealogy, especially now that I'm retired. You have really done a lot of work. Thanks again. Ron Gilliland (your "second cousin", son of Mildred Gilliland (Eberhard), one of your grandmother's sisters)

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