Huntingdon is nearly in the center of Pennsylvania, about a 30-mile drive east from Altoona. (There is no direct route.) Spruce Creek (A), unincorporated, is between Huntingdon and Altoona. A coal mining boom began in 1825. The railroad right-of-way is now a cycling and hiking path. The area was home to the Dorris and Dorsey families.

Ann Dorris’s pearl daisy brooch

A father’s 1853 wedding gift to his daughter made another appearance nearly a century later — for his great-great-great-granddaughter’s baptism. It arrived with this handwritten note from infant Allison McMillan’s maternal grandmother.

For darling Mary Allison McMillan on her baptism
November 2, 1952, in House of Hope

Just 99 years ago, your great-great-great-grandfather William Dorris of Huntingdon, Pa., bought this brooch in London and brought it back to his daughter Ann, who was marrying his neighbor Robert Allison Dorsey on the 27th of December of that year, 1853. Rob’s mother was Mary Henderson Allison, from whom your name comes down. Her father was Jonathan Henderson Dorsey, a physician in Huntingdon — your great-great-great-grandfather on that branch of the family tree. (You had 14 other great-great-great-grandfathers, by the way. But I don't know the names of all of them.) So your full name could be:

Mary Henderson
   Allison
      Dorsey
         McKibbin
            Bigelow
               McMillan!

Remember this sometime when you are older, wearing this onyx brooch with its pearl daisy.