INTRODUCTION

In setting up this Lippard Heritage website, Gary and I hope to record the knowledge we have acquired after many years of research concerning our Lippard family genealogy and the general history and culture both here and in Germany and how it influenced our family's world. It is our plan to develop a site to which any member of the Lippard family can add his or her own knowledge of their particular branches of our family including family stories and family photographs as well as a section of photos and explanations of Lippard family antiques you send us, making this a broad repository of Lippard genealogy, German and American history, and culture.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have wondered why since my early childhood I have been especially interested in family since my immediate family lived in Washington, DC, and then the Maryland suburbs, and did not often see our North Carolina relatives. However, there were two people in my early life who greatly influenced me. There was my paternal grandmother, Mary Lippard Rumple, who when I was quite young, during the early years of World War II, led me one day when I was visiting her and Granddad to a table in their living room where there was a collection of photos of a number of young men in military uniforms. I was born about a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese so by the time Grandmother led me to her table of photos, all the young men in the photos were away at war except my Dad who had a temporary dispensation because he worked at the U.S. Government Printing Office in Washington, D. C. Grandmother told me the names of each of the young men and how they were related to me. She asked me to remember them in my prayers.

As time went on, I was eager to learn more about each of them, and when they finally came home, I felt I already knew them but wanted to know them even better. Whenever we visited North Carolina in warm weather, Grandmother invited all her living brothers and sisters and their families to a family reunion with lunch on sawhorses and pine boards under the big oak trees. She always encouraged us to hold close to our family. I asked her one day what country the Lippard family came from. At first, she guessed they were "Dutch" but then decided that since there were so many German people living around them that "they were probably German too." (Mary probably didn't know that Dutch was a synonym for German among her ancestors.)

The second big influence in my growing interest in family, especially family stories, was my Dad, Paul Rumple, who told us story after story of his and his relatives' lives as he was growing up in Iredell County, North Carolina. My brother, Tom Rumple, and I soon knew his many stories by heart teaching us much we otherwise would not have known about growing up on a farm in the rural south. Beginning at age 58 he wrote out his stories, I typed them, and we added appropriate photos to bring his 50-page booklet even more alive. And thus began my ever increasing interest in our Lippard family – the genealogical data, the personal stories, and the historical and cultural environments they lived in.

By the time I began college, I was determined to become a teacher, but a teacher of what? My strongest area in school was English Language, Literature, and Composition, but I was also interested in history and took a number of history classes in college as a minor to my English major. After being graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A., I got a Master's degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and back in Maryland taught 12^th grade English literature as well as background history and also a course in advanced expository writing. Then after Norb and I were married, we joined a writing group and pursued writing mostly memorable family stories so here I am today recording genealogy and collecting and writing stories about my various families, especially the Lippards.

So many Lippard descendants, more than I can possibly name and thank individually, have assisted me (Harriet) in collecting family information, especially about their own family lines, that I wish to offer them all my sincere thanks for their great efforts. I especially appreciate the initial encouragement and research assistance given me by my late great aunt and great uncle Grace and Hoyt Lippard (Grandmother Mary Lippard's brother and his wife). They got me started on my sporadic 60 year journey tracing our elusive Lippard family beginnings as well as all the members of our family tree we have been able to identify.

Without the assistance of cousin Seth Lippard of the Philadelphia area, descendant of my great, great grandfather Henry Lippard's brother, Irenius Smith Lippard, we still might not know what happened to our Lippard family from the time they left the English sailing ship Queen Elizabeth in Philadelphia in September1738 until eighteen years later when they appeared in North Carolina. Seth's procuring of invaluable legal documents such as church records, wills, and estate inventories in Pennsylvania has added much to our knowledge of our family.

I wish to add a few words about Seth's wonderful gift of music, his beautiful baritone voice that added so much to our reunions through the gift of song. Seth was a banker who through song praised God every Sunday as a semi-professional vocalist at a large Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. He produced two albums of sacred music and a tape, copies of which he and his wife Marge sent out to as many senior citizens' residences as they were able to locate in the United States – truly a gift of love. Unfortunately, Parkinson's disease eventually took away his ability to sing and finally his life. Seth was truly a wonderful and wonderfully talented man whom I always felt blessed to be related to.

Though I have researched and recorded some of the history or probable history of our Lippards, I have primarily concentrated on the genealogy of our family. Thus, most importantly I must include my special thanks to my cousin Gary Freeze as the co-author of this Lippard Heritage document. His contribution of his knowledge of the historic and cultural background of the times and places our family lived contributes fascinating and educational insights to our Lippard family's heritage. It is our hope that with the continued assistance of family members we know and others we may get to know, we will learn many more family facts and stories that we can add to this Lippard family history and genealogy.