Henry J. Young Award - Cindy Hartman, July 2022
Cynthia (Cindy) K. Seitz Hartman was born in York on August 3, 1958, the daughter of Burnell K. Seitz and Bonnie L. Freed. She was a 1976 graduate of Dallastown High School and a 1980 graduate of Penn State University.
Cindy passed away unexpectedly on August 22, 2019. She was married to Paul E. Hartman for 35 years. At the time of her passing, she was employed as an accountant for Dentsply Sirona. Her hobbies were gardening and genealogy. She was the coordinator for the Landis Family reunions for several years.
At the time of her passing, she was survived by her husband, Paul E. Hartman. Mr. Hartman, who was the son of Clair E. Hartman and Romaine E. Fitzkee, passed away, this year, on April 21, 2022. Cindy’s family included, besides her parents, sister, Pamela and her husband, Harry Fry, sister, Patti and her husband Kenneth Gingerich and brother, Timothy M. Seitz and his wife Susan, and several nieces and nephews.
Cindy became a member of South Central PA Genealogy Society during the early 2000’s and in 2009, agreed to join the Board of Directors, serving as Director of Public Relations. She began rebuilding the Society’s website, making it fully operational and current. She served as webmaster until her passing. About 2012, she traded positions with Mardella Brenneman and became Director of Publications. In addition to managing the website, she took over the organization of the Special Publications sent to members twice a year. When Mardella gave up the editing of the monthly newsletter, Cindy took on that job also. The newsletters were full of interesting articles and news from the genealogy world. Ever mindful of the expenses to produce the newsletters and publications, Cindy researched and instituted less expensive printing options, saving significant amounts of money for the Society.
Cindy was responsible for the completion and publishing of the Society’s five volume Special Publication of the 1798 Glass Tax for York County. In 2014 Cindy updated and revised the By-Laws of the Society. She was great at taking up unfinished projects and completing them. While continuing as webmaster and newsletter editor, she organized the set-up of the spreadsheet format for the eight volume Special Publication of the 1862 Civil War Draft Enrollment Lists which are currently being issued to members, 2 volumes each year. It now takes four members on the Board of Directors to do the jobs Cindy handled so well.
Cindy had many York County families for her personal genealogy research. Her father’s Seitz family has family names – Bell, Bortner, King, Landis, Meckley, Piersol, Rohrbaugh and Sterner. Her mother’s Freed family has family names – Eppley, Haines, Hartman, Holtzinger, Innerst, Koontz, Leader, Peiffer, Schaffer and Shirey. Just to name a few. I’m not sure how far she got with all of them, President Konkel told me he thinks she did list some of the families in the Ancestry family trees. I remember one that gave her a lot of trouble to find – Vernie Koontz. After Board meetings three or four of us would go out for dinner and she would keep us posted on her efforts to find Vernie. I remember her telling us that she thought she had solved that mystery shortly before her passing. Becky Anstine had found a newspaper article from a paper in Maryland that mentioned Vernie.