My paternal great-grandfather was Hugh McDonald Prall. He was born in York Co., PA in 1852, the youngest of 10 children born to Isaac Rittenhouse Prall and Ann Bathia Rhodes. He married in Auglaize Co., OH in 1874 and died in Grant Co., IN in 1907. Hugh and Margaret Jane Wolary were the parents of two children. All-in-all a pretty non-descript story.
My father told me he thought we might be Scottish. McDonald screams Scotland! So I ran with it. Back in 1990, I had learned of a week-long genealogy workshop at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. I attended the workshop.
There were lectures, research opportunities, sight-seeing trips and plenty to do in town. It was a fantastic trip! No Prall links turned up during the research sessions, however.
A couple of years later, I was going back over the 1860 census for York Co., PA and came across a curious entry. A couple of pages from Isaac R. Prall's household was that of a physician, one Hugh McDonald. Had Isaac and Ann decided to name their youngest after the doctor who delivered him?
There's probably no way to find out if that was the case, but it is a possibility.
Talk about quirky researchers......
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