Family Folklore, Oral History, and Genealogy

Yocom / Davidheiser / Keck / Zwald families,
immigrants to Delaware and Pennsylvania from Denmark/Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland.

My Yocom ancestor, Peter Jochimson (Jochimsen?), was born in the Schleswig-Holstein area of Denmark (now Germany) and sailed to the New World (Fort Christiana, now in Delaware) from Goteborg, Sweden, as a soldier in the Swedish army, in 1642, arriving 1643. Thanks to my cousin Peter Craig for all his genealogical research!

I am building Yocom, Keck, and Zwald family trees on the Ancestry.com website.  From 2016 to 2018, I had several family DNA tests done by Ancestry.com– for my mother, Betty Keck Yocom, my uncle Donald Keck, and my father Norman’s sisters, Gladys Yocom Metka and Edith Yocom Boyer.

On this website’s Publications page, you’ll find folklore articles and poems on my family.