10. Came free with your last car wash.
9. Inscribed motto is "Caveat Emptor."
8. Looks just like the one sold to the Vietnamese family next door.
7. Consists of German beer labels glued to an old pizza box.
6. Resembles a Mötley Crüe album cover.
5. Issued by The Royal Heraldry Society of Daytona Beach, Florida.
4. Ordered through an ad in High Times magazine.
3. When displayed on a T-shirt, provokes Scottish people to hurl haggis.
2. Dates back to February.
1. Features a rampant marmoset.
Here's one Englishman who takes the sins of his forebears very seriously.
Mr Andrew Hawkins from Plymouth, the United Kingdom, who claims to be a direct descendant of England’s first slave trader, Sir John Hawkins, will don yokes and chains at the forthcoming Roots International Festival in The Gambia to apologise for the actions of his famous ancestor.
He will be joining the lifeline expedition team, which has been journeying around with whites wearing yokes and chains while Africans and descendants of enslaved Africans accompany them. The Africans are also ready to apologise for selling their brothers and sisters to the European traders. This action is also a means of raising awareness of ongoing slavery and racism at the present time. [Link]
71-year-old Russell Colquhoun Ryan, Jr., of Santa Rosa, California, may be the James Cullen Colquhoun descendant everyone is looking for. If sufficient proof of his descent is found, he could earn a nice chunk of change.
He is in line for the windfall after the owner of arguably the world’s finest collection of native American artefacts offered up to “tens of thousands of pounds” to anybody who could prove that they were directly descended from Mr Colquhoun, who travelled to British Columbia with his great-grandfather in the 1850s.
A retired public works labourer, Mr Ryan spent years digging up streets for the water department in Santa Rosa, 50 miles (80km) north of San Francisco. He said: “My wife and I are doing pretty well but we’re not rich. Anybody could always do with a little more money. [Link]
Members of The Society for American Baseball Research get free access to HeritageQuestOnline and the ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database. Ancestry.com members, on the other hand, have access to Professional Baseball Players, 1876-2004:
This database is an index to over 15,000 professional baseball players who played between 1876 (the year the National League was founded) and 2004. Information listed in the index for each individual includes their first and last names, birth first and last names, nickname, birth date, birthplace, death date, death place, college attended, height, weight, date of first game, date of final game, how bats, how throws, and date and round drafted. Additionally, many of the individuals who played between 1887 and 1938 have images associated with them, showing either a photograph or baseball card.Unfortunately, the only baseball player mentioned in the database description is a man children in New England are born to despise.
Players are listed in the browse table by their popular names, not their birth names. For example, Bucky Dent is listed as "Bucky Dent", not as his given name "Russell Earl O'Dey." To browse the images first select a first letter of a last name in which you would like to search, followed by the last name, and finally the full name of the individual.
Tom Robinson, a University of Miami accounting professor, has become the first man outside of Asia to prove his descent from Genghis Khan. His Y chromosome is an exact match with the Mongol warlord's for eight of nine markers (one mutation is to be expected over 800 years).
Update: Always wait for a second opinion.He has little in common with his infamous ancestor. He is not a keen horseman. Though a Republican, his politics are moderate. And while Genghis Khan may have fathered thousands of children, Professor Robinson and his wife, Linda, have no offspring.
“I’m not sure we have too many similarities,” he said. “I obviously haven’t conquered any countries, and though I’ve headed up accounting groups, I’ve done nothing as big as Genghis Khan.
“I’m proud to have such an interesting ancestor. I’ve been reading a lot about him since I found out about the link, and it does seem that his reputation is a little unfair.
“He conquered a lot of countries, but he had a pretty good system of government.” [Link]
Claudette Jensen has fond memories of the Trinity Lutheran Danish Cemetery in Gayville, South Dakota.
Jensen's farmland was adjacent to the cemetery. She and her daughters would decorate the trees with red ribbons "until they got too big to reach."
"One year my husband Harvey remarked that he had never seen so many flowers on so many graves and we found out later our 4-year-old son Mark had 'redistributed' flowers from plots that had 'too many' to others that didn't have as much," Jensen said with a chuckle. [Link]
What better day to explore the World War II resources over at the National Archives?
They have casualty lists for Army and Army Air Forces Personnel and Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Personnel. These are arranged by state, and are not searchable. To search through enlistment records and POW records, see Access to Archival Databases.
They've also digitized nearly 1,000 registration cards from Ohio. These are from the same collection recently put online by Ancestry.com.
Topping things off are 2,829 World War II posters and 1,568 War Production Board posters—all digitized and available for download. Since this website is a product of the U.S. Government, you'll have to spend several minutes engaged in senseless clicking and scrolling before arriving at the posters. (The first collection is especially hard to find; it's easiest just to search for the ARC Identifier, "513498".) All the classic propaganda posters are here, from Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms to "Loose Lips Sink Ships." After browsing through them, I feel like planting a Victory Garden and signing up for a tour in the South Pacific.
Just months after abolishing marriage, the British are now doing away with spinsters.
Spinster has been in use since the 14th century, but was not used to describe a single woman considered to be past the marrying age until the early 1600s. From December 21, it will no longer officially exist in Britain. It will no longer appear on the marriage certificate of anyone, whether heterosexual or gay, apparently "to make things consistent so civil marriages and civil partnerships are registered in the same way", according to the Registrar General's Office.
Webster's defines a spinster as "a woman of evil life and character", so it's perhaps not surprising that feminists are pleased at its abolition. [Link]
Wood County, Ohio, Records Manager Brenda Ransom ran across a reference to the 1937 marriage of Teamster boss James Hoffa and Josephine Poszywak in a black binder "tucked away in the basement of the courthouse."
A call to the Probate Court confirmed that the Hoffa's license was on file. The couple apparently came to Wood County because it was known as a "marriage mill town" where requirements were lax.Ms. Ransom said she came across the tidbit of local trivia quite by accident. The binder, apparently kept by a probate clerk in the 1940s, was filled with neatly typed but odd facts about marriage license applicants in Wood County, including people who had famous names like George Washington, those who were remarrying a former spouse, and even "divorced couples married by ministers who object to divorce."
"It's by no means a record of the court. It's just something they did for fun, I assume," Ms. Ransom said. [Link]
World War II had a lasting impact on the Philippines—or at least on Filipino names and nicknames.
After World War II, the American presence was well-established in Philippine names. In the late ’40s-’50s, there was a boom in Mary Lous (though it still stood for Maria Lourdes or Maria Luisa), Mary Anns, Mary Janes, Mary Roses, Mary Joans, Mary Beths.
Other stateside names that crept in were Elizabeth, Juliet, Nancy, Sheila, Emilie, Judy, Jeannie, Doris, Betty, Betsy, Katy, Leilani. A few Shirleys appear in every other generation. The same old ’50s male names persisted such as Lorenzo, Joaquin, Cesar, Emmanuel, Jaime, Felipe, Daniel. Popular nicknames were Louie, Mike, Andy, Tony, Benny, Steve, Teddy, Jimmy, Jess (ho-hum). [Link]
I wrote last month about Ben Vereen's discovery of his birth mother. This weekend, his newfound family will have a reunion in New Haven, Connecticut.
A genealogist helped Vereen discover Essie Middleton was his mother. She died in 1982, but he did find his sister, Gloria Walker.
"At first I just couldn't believe it 'cause my cousin said guess who your brother is. And I said who. She said Ben Vereen. I said right Bert, OK," Walker said.
From Broadway's "Chicago" to the television mini-series "Roots," Ben Vereen is a household name. And he wanted to know if his mother was a fan.
"That's the first question I asked my Aunt Esther. I said did she like me? Did she know me? She said yeah. She said she knew who you were, but she didn't know you were her son," Vereen said. [Link]
Elizabeth Stefan of Norwalk, Connecticut, celebrated her 111th birthday this month, which places her among the top 50 oldest living people in the world. In the words of her 80-year-old daughter-in-law, "Holy cow, that's remarkable."
Tara Stefan, the wife of Stefan's grandson, said they cannot explain why Stefan has lived so long.
"Everyone says, 'Oh my God, What does she do? What does she eat?'" Stefan said. "I say, 'I don't know, stuffed cabbage, that's her favorite dish.' You can't say what she did or didn't do that made her like that." [Link]
Just in time for Memorial Day, Ancestry.com has put online World War II Draft Registration Cards. These are from the "old man's registration" conducted Apr. 27, 1942, which covered those men born between Apr. 28, 1877, and Feb. 16, 1897, not already in the military. About one-third of the total registrants are included in this release.
Information available on the draft cards includes:Additional information such as mailing address (if different from residence address), serial number, order number, and board registration information may also be available.
- Name of registrant
- Age
- Birth date
- Birthplace
- Residence
- Employer information
- Name and address of person who would always know the registrants whereabouts
- Physical description of registrant (race, height, weight, eye and hair colors, complexion)
This database currently contains draft cards for the following states:
- Arkansas
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Indiana
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Puerto Rico
- Rhode Island
- Vermont
- Virginia
- West Virginia
A Cub Scout pack in Libertyville, Illinois, will be placing flags on the graves of veterans on Saturday. It won't be as scary as some had feared.
When the Memorial Day service project was first announced not all Cub Scouts were enthusiastic. To some, it sounded spooky because their only knowledge of cemeteries came from Halloween lore.
"A first-grade boy wasn't sure he wanted to be involved. He kept asking his mom 'when are we going to see mummies,'" [Judy] Zemeske recalled. "When we got to Lakeside he was greatly relieved and delighted there were no mummies. He had never been to a cemetery before." [Link]
The Charzewskis were visiting the Ellis Island National Monument on Monday with their daughter when the park ranger leading their tour began calling them by the wrong name. Residents of America for just two years, they felt too intimidated by the ranger's uniform to correct him.
A proposed revision of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act in India would allow a kid stuck with an intolerable name just one chance to change it.
The draft amendment, seeking replacement of section-14 of the existing Act, which deals with registration of name of child, says: "Where the birth of a person has been registered with a name, change of the name so entered in the register of birth will be allowed to be made only once in a person's lifetime in manner prescribed and on payment of prescribed late fee". [Link]Such a law might have discouraged some misguided name-changers, like:
A ceremony this weekend will recognize how Vandals have left their mark on Fayetteville, West Virginia. Abraham Vandal donated land in 1834 where the Fayette County Courthouse now stands.
Vandal was a New York native, and around 1812 he settled in what was called Vandalia, a community named for him. This community later became Fayetteville. Historians believe his cabin was located on the present site of the Fayette County National Bank, located across the street from the courthouse.
In Saturday’s ceremony, officials will unveil a plaque dedicated to the Abraham Vandal family. (Although Abraham Vandal spelled his last name with one L, some of his descendants now spell the name with two L’s.) [Link]
Last Friday, David Lambert caught a sneak peek of the soon-(but-not-soon-enough)-to-be-released Nova Scotia Vital Record Database.
The indexes and images will cover: Births 1864-1877; Marriages 1864-1930; and Deaths 1864-1877, and 1908-1955. The index was being demonstrated on the hard drive of the laptop from the archives. The 700,000 images were not yet available to see. But a sample image of a certificate was presented on the screen. All the images are scanned according to the staff, and should launch in Summer 2006. [Link]
R. Allen Stanford—founder and chairman of the Stanford Financial Group in Houston—recently donated $2.5 million dollars to restore the home of Leland Stanford, Sr., who founded Standford University with his wife Jane. Allen has claimed that Leland's father was "closely related" to his own great-great-great-grandfather.
The University is suspicious. Some suspect that Allen Stanford is trying to buy some good publicity for his offshore banking outfit.
“I am not aware of any genealogical relationship between Allen Stanford, founder of Stanford Financial and Leland Stanford,” [Susan] Weinstein — the official guardian of the usage of the University’s name — said. “Of course, this does not mean that there is not a distant relationship — but it does not show up in any of our records.” [Link]
The Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in Newfield, New York, was dedicated on Sunday. It's the state's first natural cemetery, and the fifth in the nation. If the trend toward "green burials" catches on, genealogists of the future will have to bring more than a pad and pencil when visiting their ancestors.
If Greensprings becomes a person's final resting place, their families will eventually find plots that have either small gravestones or none at all. Small metal markings are used to identify the plots and once nature takes over the land again, people will have to use metal detectors to find some plots, said [Sam] Hernandez, the caretaker.BTW, if you're interested in eternal environmentalism, but would rather not be buried in a cardboard box, check out this line of lovely wicker caskets.
“There will be no big stones,” Hernandez said. “The stones we will have will have to be flush with the ground. It won't look like a cemetery. In fact, we are hoping we get picnic tables.” [Link]
Errors in genealogy sometimes stem from the commonality of certain names among contemporaries—names like "John Smith, "Mary Brown," ... and "Sibongile Dlamini."
A woman of that name died in Swaziland last month. Actually, two women of that name died last month in the same hospital, in the same week, at the same age, and were taken to the same mortuary. You can guess what happened next.
The Tjapile family were the first to claim their relative. After satisfying themselves that the documents in their possession belonged to their relative, they took the corpse for burial, unaware that it was the wrong one. Maria Tjapile said they were convinced that the corpse was her daughter’s until four days after the burial.
“Police arrived to alert us that we had buried a wrong corpse,” she said. [Link]
If you can prove that you descend from James Cullen Colquhoun—a "lowly servant from Victorian Britain"—you might want to give Simon Carey a jingle. He's offering "tens of thousands of pounds" to descendants of Colquhoun, who came to British Columbia with Carey's great-grandfather in the 1850s, and died penniless in San Francisco.
Mr Carey, 77, great-grandson of the Rev Robert Dundas, is expected to make up to $10 million (£5.3 million) when the Dundas Collection is auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York in October. Boasting more than 80 artefacts, it was acquired by Dundas during his time as a clergyman in Canada.
It has been heralded as the world’s finest private collection of American Indian artefacts, with several items described by Sotheby’s as masterpieces.
But in an extraordinary gesture, Mr Carey said yesterday that he wanted to “honour” Colquhoun’s memory as a loyal family servant by giving money to his descendants. He said that Colquhoun was held in great fondness when he worked in the Dundas household in Edinburgh in the mid-19th century.
He told The Times: “It would be wonderful if we were able to find relatives of James Cullen Colquhoun. They were devoted family servants. I have been trying to find what happened to him. If there were any direct descendants I would love to give money to them.” [Link]
I am very happy to announce that the Maine Genealogy website I've been working on for the past few years is now up and running on all cylinders.
The site has four main databases:
Carlisle County, Kentucky, exists only because a bunch of state reps skipped breakfast.
On April 3, 1886, Charles Offutt of Bourbon County, who was Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives at the time, purportedly promised not to adjourn the House for lunch until lawmakers voted on a measure to make Carlisle the state's 119th county.
There was opposition. One legislator in particular questioned the creation of yet another small county.
Meanwhile, mealtime came and went. Offutt started frying bacon on a portable stove.
"The aroma permeated the room. It made every man present hungry," wrote Ran Graves in his "History and Memories of Carlisle County."
The naysayer to the new county, "being used to eating his biggest meal at noon submitted gracefully," the author added.
The House voted Carlisle into the commonwealth. Offutt dismissed legislators for a late lunch. [Link]
Some descendants of Chang and Eng Bunker—the original "Siamese twins"—are profiled in the current issue of National Geographic. The brothers settled near Mount Airy, North Carolina, in 1839, married local sisters, and had 21 children between them ... so to speak. Their descendants now number around 1,500.
The article explains that, after 14 contentious years of living under one roof, the brothers agreed to split their time between two homes—three days in one, then three days in the other.Open admiration for the twins was not always a given. The older generation preferred a tight-lipped approach. Jessie Bunker Bryant, the 70-year-old grande dame and the force behind the annual family reunion, tells of a Bunker bride who didn't know about her famous relatives until the night before her wedding. "Your fiancé may not want to go ahead with this," warned her mother after disclosing the family secret. Happily, the revelation charmed the groom-to-be. [p. 151]
Ruth Gembe has deep roots in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and in the community of Roadside. In her capacity as resident genealogist of the Franklin County Library System, she sometimes has to assure people that their relatives were not born in a ditch.
Some people actually are offended by a birth certificate that says “Roadside,” Gembe said. She explains that it does not mean the person was born along the road - it's an actual place. [Link]
A Canadian man thinks genealogy will help prove that a portrait he owns is an authentic sketch of William Shakespeare.
The Sanders Portrait, believed to have been sketched in 1603 by a friend of a then 39-year-old Shakespeare, is the property of Ottawa resident Lloyd Sullivan, 73, who says his heritage can be traced back to the portrait-painter John Sanders.It's too bad his ancestor didn't use some of that ink to write down when Shakespeare was born, because no one else seems to know.The retired engineer has put his portrait through tree-ring dating of the wood it was sketched on, radiographic testing of the canvas and radiocarbon testing of the paper label on the back of the painting. He also tracked his genealogy back to 1607, which he says makes it almost certain that his painting is authentic.
All that's left is to trace his heritage into the 1500s and to date the ink of the painting. But Sullivan was told to wait for the technology to improve so a smaller sample of the painting could be used.
"If the ink dates back to that time, it proves that my ancestor knew when Shakespeare was born, knew when he died," Sullivan said. [Link]
10. "How many elderly members of the household did you set adrift on ice floes in the previous year?"
9. "What was your net income in 2005 from selling fake Viagra to Americans?"
8. "How many Tim Hortons can you see from your kitchen window?"
7. "How many American draft-dodgers could your current dwelling accommodate?"
6. "Do you speak French well enough to pick up a prostitute in Montreal?"
5. "What is your occupation? For example: Professional Hockey Player, Mountie, Baby Seal Clubber."
4. "If born in the United States, have you learned to control your murderous impulses?"
3. "How many hours per week do you spend evading polar bears?"
2. "What ever happened to Gordon Lightfoot?"
1. "Do you not agree to keep none of this information from being made publicly unavailable in 92 years?"
Just a reminder that access to ArchiveGrid is free through the end of May. It won't tell you why your granddaddy ran off with his brother's wife, but it
