A collection of Gardner Family Histories as compiled by Marie Gardner.

Hearing friends talk about their ancestors and genealogical research prompted the author to wonder about her ancestors and started her on a journey that may never end. With the help of distant cousins contacted on the Internet, it was soon apparent that James Gardner of Butler County, Pennsylvania, was her great-great-great-grandfather. But there the trail grew cold. Where was he born and who were his parents? Was he part of the William and Sarah Gardner family that moved from Maryland to the wild frontier of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, either before or during the Revolutionary War? Most of the descendants of James and Martha "Molly" McAnallen Gardner married, had children and brought many other surnames to the Gardner family tree. Among those surnames are Ackerman, Brinkley, Cameron, Cann, Carson, Dover, Duffy, Fehrenbach, Grossman, Harriger, Hoge, Johnson, Mansfield, Marmie, McAnallen, Mershimer, Ott, Rohrer, Shoaf, Teal, Welsh and Wimer. With the help of more research and information from yet unknown cousins, this family tree will continue to grow and spread its branches. Perhaps we will even learn about the ancestors of James Gardner.

Roman families were infinitely diverse, but the basis of Roman civil law was the familia, a strictly-defined group consisting of a head, paterfamilias, and his descendants in the male line. Recent work on the Roman family mainly ignores the familia, in favour of examining such matters as emotional relationships within families, the practical effects of control by a paterfamilias, and demographic factors producing families which did not fit the familia-pattern. This book investigates the interrelationship between family and familia, especially how families exploited the legal rules for their own ends, and disrupted the familia, by use of emancipation (release from patria potestas) and adoption. It also traces legal responses to the effects of demographic factors, which gave increased importance to maternal connections, and to social, such as the difficulties for ex-slaves in conforming to the familia-pattern. The familia as a legal institution remained virtually unchanged; nevertheless Roman family law underwent substantial changes, to meet the needs and desires of Roman society.