By James Saul

For the Times

Northeast history buffs and budding family genealogists can expect some history lessons during the Bridesburg Historical Society's monthly meeting on Nov. 11.

Longtime resident Carol Sander Roat will present a history of Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery and how her genealogical research illuminated the existence of more than 100 Sander family members buried there. Sander Roat is a genealogy enthusiast, and hopes her talk will inspire people of all generations to learn more about their own family histories.

The free session starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Bridesburg Heritage Center, 2801 Brill St.

Sander Roat is a Northeast Philadelphia native who graduated from St. Timothy School in Mayfair and Nazareth Academy High School. Having grown up with the family business, Sander Memorials in Bridesburg, she has long been interested in cemeteries.

"As children, my dad on trips would stop at cemeteries and walk my sister and me around them," she recalled. "We thought everybody did this!"

Sander Roat's father and mother are Bridesburg-born, but they moved to Mayfair in 1934 because of the haze of coal dust from the Philadelphia Coke Co. on Richmond Street.

"My mother said you could not hang your wash out to dry (in Bridesburg)," Sander Roat said, "so my sister and I were raised in Mayfair . . . with relatively clean laundry."

It was her mother, Mildred Keck Sander, who started the family genealogy project in 1984 with her aunt, Helen Lachowicz Sander. In 2001, Carol picked up where they left off when her son moved to St. Peter the Apostle's Parish in Northern Liberties.

"(The parish) is apparently where the Sander family lived 150 years ago, and I was intrigued by what felt like the full circle of that fact," she said.

Most of Holy Redeemer Cemetery, at Richmond and Hedley streets in Bridesburg, is technically the "suburban" cemetery of St. Peter the Apostle Church. It has always been owned and overseen by the Redemptorist priests and brothers, and Carol Sander Roat's great-grandparents were the first superintendents when it opened in 1886. They raised their family in the stone gatehouse, now the cemetery office.

To uncover the mysteries of her family's past, Sander Roat did everything she could to find out more about the Sander story, talking with family members, taking notes, photographing gravestones, and searching for clues in more than a century of family business.

"My dad had been totally bewildered when I asked him questions about old family stories, since their generation was raised to focus on the future," said Sander Roat. "He would say 'Why ever would you want to know about that?' when I asked questions about the old days."

Over time, Sander Roat's father opened up and gave her more tidbits about the family history. With this information and the advent of Internet genealogy, namely the site ancestery.com, Sander Roat traced members of her family to 1808, further than any family member had discovered before.

"Now I have truly mythic stories to tell my two little grandsons about how they came to be so lucky as to live here in this country," she said.

To this day, Sander Roat stops at cemeteries all over the world - Ireland, Italy, Arizona, Annapolis, Md. - anywhere, "just to walk through the history of them." But she's closest to Most Holy Redeemer cemetery in Bridesburg, the final resting place for many of her relatives, and many of the original Philadelphians who struggled to make a life in its early days.

Sander Roat has a respect for history, her family roots, and other Americans that have similar pasts. She hopes her presentation will inspire other Philadelphians to use technology to trace their family heritage, whether they're lifelong residents or not.

"Most of us here in this country are children of immigrants, willing or not, here for fewer than three-hundred years," she noted. "And most of us in the Northeast came originally from river-wards families, with many of our relatives buried in Most Holy Redeemer. Genealogy research is both fascinating and important so the stories can be passed on, can be appreciated."

For information about the meeting, call 215-535-3828.