On September 9, 2026, Jim and Alice traveled to Jordan, New York, and found an enormous amount of material on the Hardy family, including Ethel Hardy (Jim’s paternal grandmother) and her relations as well as her husband Sven Harry Liljestrand.

Their first stop was the Elbridge Library and Historical Center, where three historians discussed the history of Jordan and Elbridge, two towns within two miles of each other that are really one community. One of them was Maureen Doyle, whom we met again later.

At Maple Grove Cemetery in Jordan, where most of the Hardys and Bramleys are buried, Alice photographed me at the gravestones of Marvin and Chauncey Hardy (PHOTO). Moss and lichen made some stones hard to read. With only an ABCD map designation, section C 23 was hard to find. Some Hardys turned out to be in section H, across a grass car track from the main group. We didn’t find the Bramleys, who we later learned are buried up near the road (PHOTO). By 5 pm, in oppressive heat and humidity, we were exhausted and went back to the Sherwood in Skaneateles where we were staying.

The next morning Maureen Doyle, chief historian for the village of Jordan, showed us artifacts, newspaper articles, and maps she had prepared. We focused on the paper mill Marvin Hardy, Ethel’s grandfather, built. His son Chauncey later ran it and sold it to a power company in 1890. Skaneateles Creek powered Jordan’s industry, including wheelbarrows for the Erie Canal and the Hardys’ pressed strawboard, which was dried in the sun and used for chicken coops and interior wallboard. The creek dwindled after 1955, when Syracuse began drawing its water from Skaneateles Lake.

We learned that Marvin’s father Joel Hardy moved to Jordan in the early 1800s, likely drawn by work on the Erie Canal (1817–1825). Heavy rain cut the day short, so we still need to visit the Village Cemetery, where Joel is buried, and the mill site with its historic marker, and to see Maureen again. We also met my third cousin, James Leland Bramley, MD, an infectious disease specialist in Clinton, NY, and his sister Margaret (Meg), a physician assistant in Vermont (PHOTO). We compared family histories from the Liljestrand tree on Ancestry. Hardy and Bramley descendants include physicians in every generation (PHOTO of paper).