While I Was Away...

• The Advertising Standards Authority in Britain ruled that Ancestry.co.uk was dishonest for claiming to offer "Everything you'll ever need to research your family tree in one place." The revised ad campaign will promise only "Some of the things you might need to research somebody's family tree in two or more places."
• The National Archives in Washington opened a new exhibit in the basement exploring the historical implications of mildew.
• Hereditary Health Solutions launched a service that will find your lost relatives and extract stool samples from them.
• ITV announced a new celebrity genealogy series called "You Don't Know You're Born." The title is a common British phrase which means "Idea Ripped Off From the BBC."
• Sharon Elliott found more evidence that no one in America has Welsh ancestors.
• Paul Allen revealed that the key to Ancestry.com's rise to power was purely alphabetical.

Vacating the Premises

For the next few days, I'll be in seclusion at the family camp—located in a corner of the old Dunham homestead in western Maine. There's no phone, so in case of emergency, here are directions and a map:

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

He'd Given Them Up for Dead

Forty descendants of author Nathaniel Hawthorne gathered in Concord, Mass., on Monday to witness the return of his wife and daughter from England.

Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, died in New Hampshire in 1864. His wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, moved to England with their three children and died there six years later. She and their daughter Una were buried at Kensal Green cemetery in London.

Hawthorne's daughter Rose returned to the United States and started a Catholic order dedicated to caring for cancer patients. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, based in Hawthorne, N.Y., paid to maintain the Hawthorne graves in England.

When cemetery officials told the nuns that the grave site needed costly repairs, the order arranged to have [the] remains reburied in Concord instead. [Link]

Census Name Number Nonsense

Of all the stories about Ancestry.com's indexing triumph, this one stands out.

US genealogy site Ancestry.com has now completed indexing and digitizing the entire US Census from 1790 to 1930 – featuring more than five billion names.

Ancestry.com's team spent 6.6 million hours of labour deciphering handwriting from 13 million original census documents and 21.9 billion keystrokes manually entering information into the database. [Link]

Five billion names from 13 million census pages over 15 censuses? That comes out to about 385 names per page, and would give the United States an average population in those years of 333 million.* This is odd, since our population isn't supposed to reach 300 million until this fall.

Also, they managed to type in 5 billion names with only 21.9 billion keystrokes, meaning that the average American's name was only 4 or 5 letters long. Notwithstanding "Cher," most American names ramble on for at least 6 or 7 characters.

This is what happens when you read a press release too quickly:

The addition of the complete census collection makes Ancestry.com the most comprehensive genealogical database ever compiled online with more than five billion searchable names.

*The average population would be even higher since only the head-of-household was named in the first six censuses, and the 1890 census was mostly destroyed.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

When You Wish Upon a Star and Consult an Attorney...

A couple in Britain wanted to put Winnie the Pooh on their child's gravestone, but The Walt Disney Co. turned down the request.

Disney had warned that a stonemason would be in breach of copyright if he included the bear's image along with "bear of very little brain," on the gravestone, The Telegraph reported. The parents had sought approval from Disney, but were rejected. [Link]

The company later reversed its decision.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Only GEDCOMs and Meds are Vital

The Arizona Republic asked 14 people what they would take from their homes if a raging brush fire were 10 minutes away. Only one guy—Howard Dendurent of Gilbert—gave the right answer.

I'd grab all my medications and the flash drive on which I have my genealogy and leave. [Link]

We'll assume that Howard doesn't have pets or children.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Ancestors Offer Career Counseling

Genes Reunited has been looking into the phenomenon of people sharing the same occupation as their ancestors.

In addition to large numbers of people who found they came from a long line of sailors, watchmakers and the like, it found that growing numbers of people were turning to their family trees for evidence of a “grand design” that would give them guidance on what kinds of jobs they are likely to be good at. Of the 3,000 respondents to a survey, 71 per cent said that they had come to their family history to seek out patterns, such as a bias towards a particular occupation or a penchant for a certain talent. [Link]

This would explain why Drew Barrymore thinks she can act.

Germanic Descent Lowers Age of Consent?

Joey Michaels is only a "sporadic genealogy buff," but has learned enough to maybe write a pilot for HBO. Among his cast of characters: an Irish mobster, a pious dwarf, and a guy who's, "well, ewwww."

At the time of the 1930 census, my Great Grandfather Melvin on my Mom’s Mother’s side was 59. His wife, Belle, was 49. Now, the interesting thing about the 1930 census is it also asked for your age at the time of marriage. According to this column, Melvin was 22 when he married Belle, who was listed as 14.

Now, I was a little freaked out by this until I went back and did the math. In 1930, they were 10 years apart. When they were married (in 1893), they were only 8 years apart. Now, does it make more sense to claim that Melvin was 22 when he was really 24 or to claim that Belle was 14 when she was only 12?

Basically, my great grandfather married a 12 year old. At this point I stopped being a little freaked out and started being a lot freaked out. My mother points out that A) He was of German descent, B) He was a farmer, and C) This was Tennessee we were talking about. Apparently, any one of those things alone is justification for marrying a child, but together, it is a wonder he didn’t marry a six year old. Basically, he showed considerable restraint by waiting until she was 12, since his Germanic, Tennessee farming blood was demanding he marry somebody straight out of the womb. [Link]

Heck, in Colorado these days you don't even have to be a farmer.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Flushing Out the Truth

When investigating a mysterious death, the coroner in Great Falls, Montana, wasn't above asking tough questions like "Number one or number two?" and "Did you wash your hands afterwards? With soap?"

One event that [Jan] Thomson recalled vividly from her research was a death at the Stockholm Concert Hall, a popular Great Falls watering hole around the turn of the last century.

A man was found dead in the restroom. Apparently "the guy went in there to take a leak and died," Thomson said.

The subsequent coroner's inquest included interviews with witnesses as to what exactly they were doing in the water closet at the time of the death. Predictable answers followed, and foul play was soon ruled out. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Butcher Finds Himself On the Hook

The following appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Oct. 13, 1896.

UNUSUAL WEDDING GUESTS

Jacob Dohm of 1,022 Columbus avenue, New York city, and Gertrude Fulham of 748 Halsey street were married this morning by Justice Van Wart. Dohm was arraigned before Justice Harriman on the girl's complaint and on his promise to marry her they were sent off to Justice Van Wart's court. An hour later Officer Cloonan, who accompanied the couple, returned and smilingly reported that they had been married. Dohm was then formally discharged. The groom is a butcher and has a good business.

As if Jacob's day weren't bad enough ...

The representatives of no less than four furnishing houses had heard of the affair and hoping to get a good order for household goods they waited on the groom in a body. That individual was very much disgusted and told them to clear out.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Undercover Genealogy

Viewing digitized records online just doesn't match the experience of reading microfilm at the FHC with a light-shielding hood over your head. A student at the Royal College of Art in London has come up with this hoodie for "computer obsessives" that should supply stay-at-home genealogists with the missing element of embarrassing isolation. Plus, it'll keep the kids from looking over your shoulder while you're browsing erotic GenForum queries.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

1930 Free for Three

If you want to check out the 1930 U.S. Federal Census at Ancestry.com free for three days, click here. If you want to check out the entire Ancestry.com site free for 14 days, click here. If you want to check out my great-grandmother in a bikini, click here.

The Nutty Profession

Ancestry.com knows how to make America care about genealogy: dish some ancestral dirt on a Hollywood celebrity like, say, Tom Hanks.

It seems that the multiple Oscar-winning actor may have gotten his droll humor from his grandfather Clarence Frager, who listed his occupation as "squirrel inspector" on his daughter's birth certificate.

Frager got a little more serious when it was time to fill out the 1930 Census. He described his occupation as "rodent control," and we can only imagine that he wasn't talking about rug rats. [Link]

[Photo Sources: Nothing in Common movie poster, Squirrel Eating Lunch by Buffy Lyon (License)]
[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

How to Get the Librarian's Attention

Ever had one of those days at the library when everything falls into place?

[Photo Credit: Klara Kim (license)]

Nowhere Left For Your Ancestors to Hide

Ancestry.com has completed indexing every name in the 1910 U.S. Federal Census. This means that every name in every available U.S. census is now available for searching. If you still can't find your American ancestors between 1790 and 1930, consider giving up genealogy and taking up something less challenging—like neonatal neuropathology, or perhaps gum-wrapper collecting.

Sometimes an Accountant Is Just an Accountant

Tom Robinson—the Florida accounting professor supposed to be descended from Genghis Khan—has been featured in hundreds of newspapers, and was offered a free trip to Mongolia by a movie company. Then he made the mistake of asking for a second opinion.

The discrepancy occurred because Oxford Ancestors only tested Mr. Robinson's Y chromosome at nine sites, ones at which the DNA mutates quite often between generations. Finding a match between Mr. Robinson and Genghis at seven of nine sites, Dr. [Bryan] Sykes assumed that was good enough to declare a direct relationship, since he had never seen such a match outside of Asia, he said.

But the major branches of the Y chromosome family tree are defined by mutations at sites that change very seldom. Oxford Ancestors did not check the slow-mutating site that defines the branch to which Genghis Khan belongs. [Link]

Despite the headlines reading "Prof Not Direct Descendant of Warlord," Robinson might still be a direct descendant of Khan. This proves only that he didn't descend through a unbroken line of fathers and sons. Believe it or not, several people in the world don't even have a Y chromosome. In fact, there's about a 50-50 chance you're one of them.

Robinson's blog proves that he has retained his Mongolian sense of humor.

The only things I am willing to conclude based on the weight of the evidence at this point is:

• My Y-Chromosome ancestors were likely nomadic horsemen in Central Asia/Eastern Europe, but not Genghis Khan (and I will not be taken that previously scheduled trip to Mongolia).
• Vikings may have been involved.
• While I may be the closest match to the Mongolian DNA from west of the Caucasus mountains in databases at this point in time, other closer matches are likely to be found some of whom will be haplogroup C3. There goes any inheritance!
• I am an accountant (not practicing), living in the Miami area.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Is Your Family Rusyn, or Just Strange?

Click over to Megan's Roots World for telltale signs of Rusyn roots, including:

• you have weird family traditions, including dressing up and going from door to door at Christmas time scaring the kids -- or throwing water on the girls at Easter
• your idea of dancing strongly resembles wrestling, skipping or a combination of both

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Crossing the Atlantic by Horse

Jane Glenn Haas knows there's more than one kind of "illegal immigrant." Her great-grandfather, Patrick Glynn, found his ticket to America in someone else's stable.

Stole a horse, he did. Well, “borrowed” would be a more delicate term.

He sold the “borrowed” horse at the weekly market in County Mayo and used the money to buy a ticket to America.

His daughters hotly denied their daddy’s dark past, but a third cousin still living on the family farm in Ireland confirmed it when I met him years ago. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Focus on the First Families

Sure, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have their own libraries and museums, but what about Billy Carter and Roger Clinton? Nicholas Inman—a 24-year-old Wal-Mart greeter who lives with his mother in Marshfield, Missouri—wants to open a museum devoted to our former First Families and their descendants.

He expects the displays to include photos, White House Christmas cards, personal letters, invitations to inaugurations, books and perhaps items owned or even worn by presidents and their families. Many of the items will be from Inman's personal collection.

Inman rounded up descendants of 26 U.S. presidents and in April brought them to Marshfield, where they announced the launch of the museum.

He isn't sure where the museum will be, though he has narrowed it to a building in the town square and the unused second floor of the old high school. [Link]

Given Inman's other accomplishments, I'm betting he'll succeed.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

That First Step Is a Doozy

Genealogists can take nothing for granted. Consider Joan Mushka, who's trying to prove she's a descendant of a United Empire Loyalist.

"It's funny but the hardest thing for me to prove was that I was my dad's daughter; the rest of the stuff I had documented from my genealogy," Mushka said. [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Delaying the Inevitable

The Australian government awarded women giving birth on or after July 1, 2004, a $3,000 "maternity payment." This had a predictable result:

Birth records for 2004 show 490 babies were delivered on June 30, one of the quietest days in the year for midwives and obstetricians. The babies' parents received no bonus.

But on July 1, the first day of the $3000 bonus, the number of births doubled to 978, making it the busiest birth day in 30 years of Bureau of Statistics data. The next day, July 2, recorded 902 births. This was the seventh most popular birthday in the three decades. [Link]

The two researchers who discovered this "shifting" of births also found that several rich Aussies "shifted" their deaths from June to July 1979 to avoid a soon-to-be-abolished inheritance tax. They predict that the same effect will be witnessed in the U. S. in a few years.

"Under current United States law, the estate of an individual worth more than 3.5 million dollars will be taxed at a marginal rate of 45 percent if they die in the final week of December 2009, but untaxed if they die in the first week of January 2010," they wrote.

"Even the super-rich cannot cheat death forever, but some may be able to stay alive long enough to avoid the estate tax." [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Mass. Hysteria

If you have ancestors from Massachusetts, or might someday have descendants with ancestors from Massachusetts, the alert issued today by the Massachusetts Genealogical Council should make your hair stand on end.

A proposed law would restrict access to Massachusetts birth records for the last 90 years, to marriage and death records for the last 50 years, and (it gets worse) to the indexes of these records. They don't even want genealogists to know what records they can't have access to!

The MGC site has info on contacting legislators, who should be reminded that the biggest genealogy conference in history will be held this summer in Boston. If they succeed in this foolishness, I'm inviting all the FGS/NEHGS folks to my house in Maine instead. BYOB, and don't park on the lawn.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

A Curious Canine Query

Randy Seaver spotted this post to the Chihuahua, Mexico, message board at RootsWeb.com:

I finally brought my baby (Female Chihuahua) home Thursday and she turned 8 weeks old yesterday (06/16/06). I read in a few books and article that Chihuahua puppies were one of the top ten hardest to house train. Mine hasn't used the potty inside once in the last 3 days, she goes outside sniffs a few seconds squats and pees/poops and all she seems to do is sleep. And I mean sleep. Which is my question. I wrap her up in her blanket and she probably sleeps 22 hours of the day. I have to wake her up to eat and of a night at 3pm to go outside. Might she be sick? [Link]

Before offering advice, Randy wisely asked for the dog's "pedigree."

Famous Genes In Demand

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

"We're nobodies," reveals Frank, an auto mechanic in suburban Atlanta. "They couldn't find Genghis Khan or Daniel Boone or anybody cool. Just some guy who sat on the House of Burgesses in the 1700s. Big deal."

They were doubly disappointed because they were planning to start a family, and wanted to pass on illustrious genes to their children.

"We'd want our kids to be interested in their roots," says Nancy, a Sunday-school teacher. "But you know kids today. It's all about celebrities."

The couple was considering adoption when Nancy spotted an advertisement in the back of People for CelebriDNA—a Los Angeles company that is capitalizing on the growing demand for famous genes.

"I'm not a scientist," founder and CEO Alberto Fuentes tells The Genealogue. "I'm just a guy who makes dreams come true. Who wouldn't want to share genes with a famous actor or a rock star? It's too late for the parents, but the kids not born yet—they've still got a chance."

For a fee, CelebriDNA will match a couple with a celebrity willing to contribute genetic material. The company's catalog of donors is a "Who's Who" of Washington, Hollywood, and the sports world, with at least one ex-President, three Oscar winners, and one Heisman Trophy winner with a penchant for Bruno Magli shoes on board.

"Yeah, O. J.," Fuentes smiles. "No one's picked him yet. Too bad, 'cause he could really use the money."

The most elite figures fetch a staggering price, so the Hammonds—whose budget is tight—have set their sights lower.

"We were thinking about a Senator," explains Nancy, "but we finally settled on Pauly Shore. In fact, he's coming tonight, so I'd better get dressed and light some candles."

[Photo Credit: Michell Zappa (license)]
[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Last Name First, Last Name Last

The reversed order of names in some Asian countries can confuse slow-witted Westerners. An actress and model from Singapore was born Fann Woon Fong—her surname being Fann—and she resisted early in her career pressure to use a "Christian" name that Western clients could more easily remember. That changed when she was 18, and a magazine misspelled her name as "Fann Wong."

She stormed home and threw the offending magazine on the table to show her mother. Before she could lament, her mother, Wong Siew Toy, saw the name and said delightedly: “Woon Fong, it is so sweet of you to do this! I am so happy you went to such lengths for me.”

“I didn’t know what Mum was talking about (at first),” says Fann Wong with a grin. “Then it dawned on me that Fann is Dad’s surname and Wong is Mum’s surname. Of course, I was smart enough to keep quiet and not tell her how annoyed I was over that name. ‘Fann Wong’ made her so happy, so I decided to use it from that day onwards. It was years later before she found out, ha ha!” [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

World War Wonderful

World War I Color Photos has, of all things, photos from World War I. In color! Like this shot of a camouflaged commode, titled "The pause that refreshes."

The images are taken from Gallica, a digitization project of la Bibliothéque nationale de France.

[via Neatorama]
[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Pater Familias

But Who Has His Car Keys?

When Torbjorn Johannes Maage emigrated to the United States from Norway in 1882, he left behind his wallet. It somehow ended up in the family of Tor Oevsthus, who recently tracked down a descendant of Torbjorn in Minnesota.

"I have taken for granted that it came into my family in an honorable way," Oevsthus said. "But you never know. Maybe it was won in a poker game? My thought is that this family needed some money to make the journey to America, and they sold this wallet with other possessions.

"It is a very nice piece of work, but it had nothing to do with my family. I thought it was very important to find the right address for it." [Link]

Her Name Is Lee, and She's a Geneaholic

It's good to see that Lee Anders—late of Kindred Matters—is back blogging, and is now a confessed Geneaholic. I do take issue, though, with the seventh of her Seven Genealogical Laws of Success.

7. Last but not least, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

This conflicts with my own credo, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do next Thursday."

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

DNA Test Leads to Confucian Results

The Chinese have jumped on the celebriDNA bandwagon. A genetics lab is offering a test to prove descent from ancient philosopher Confucius for just 1,000 yuan ($125)—a lot of yuan in a country where the average farmer might take home $300 a year.

"We would like to help these unconfirmed claimants to test their DNA and to establish a Confucius-DNA database," [the Shanghai Morning Post] quoted Deng Yajun, a DNA expert from Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Science, as saying.

How the scientists had obtained a sample of Confucius's DNA was not explained. [Link]

Given how well-documented his family tree reportedly is, it shouldn't have been hard to find living male descendants carrying around his Y chromosome (though the 2,500-year time span is daunting).

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

A Rising Tsar in the Music World

Eleven-year-old Georgian pianist Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is proud of the great-great-grandfather from whom he inherited his name. You probably know his ancestor better by his nom de guerre: Josef Stalin.

Josef said that he knew who his great-great-grandfather was — “President of Russia!” — and had admired his portrait hanging in his grandfather’s home.

“He was very clever and everybody knew him because he ruled all the world — he was a tsar,” he said. “I want to be famous, too. But I want to be a pianist, not a tsar.” [Link]

Something tells me young Josef has been skipping history class to practice his scales.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]