Genealogue Challenge #12

Who was Barnett Kulp's most famous granddaughter?

Bringing Down a Website in One Step

The Ancestry Insider explains this morning how even a well-intentioned effort to make genealogical data more accessible can step on the toes of other webmasters. (I would add that Mr. Morse offers a tutorial on how to subvert his own well-intentioned efforts.)

Law and ethics have a hard time keeping pace with technology. Some of you old-timers might recall the Genealogy Message Searcher. That was a tool at GenCircles that cached and searched messages from the Ancestry.com and GenForum boards simultaneously, but was shut down in 2002 over concerns that it violated Genealogy.com's new terms of service. With the help of Google, I just created The New Genealogy Message Searcher in about two minutes. Granted, it's not nearly as functional or comprehensive as the original, and doesn't provide links to cached copies, but... Wait, are those lawyers from Utah I hear outside my door?

Two Tales of Treasure

This story of pirate gold at Moultrie Creek reminds me of a couple of stories of lost loot from my neck of the woods in Maine.

The first was related by an Abenaki healer named Mollyockett (or Molly Ockett, a corruption of the French Marie Agathe). She reported that in the mid 18th century, when the local Indians relocated to Canada, they buried some amount of gold beneath a tree in what is now West Paris. They marked the spot by hanging two traps in the tree. An iron chain was later found embedded in a tree at "Trap Corner," which lent credence to the story. My mother grew up at Trap Corner, and searched for the treasure when she was a kid. If she found it, she's kept it a secret from me.

The second story involves a man named Isaac Patch, who lived in my hometown of Greenwood. He was fairly well off and held mortgages on many of his neighbors' farms, which might explain the legend that emerged after his death in 1849. It was said that he stashed gold somewhere on his farm, and that on his deathbed he began to tell his wife where it was buried. "... the northeast corner..." he whispered. "The northeast corner of what?" his wife asked. "You're too damn curious," he replied.

For years afterward people searched his homestead for the hidden gold. My great-great-grandfather Lemuel Dunham wrote in 1896 that "the sensation in regard to finding buried treasure on Patch Mountain savors strongly of humbuggery." But still they searched—with everything from divining rods to electronic metal detectors.

The New York Journal picked up the story in 1900, branding Patch a professional gambler, and putting a value on his cache of $100,000. The article quoted his will as saying that "should anyone else save the legal heirs try to get the fortune he (Patch) would appear in the form of some animal and drive him away." I have read the will, but don't recall this bizarre provision. Still, I can confirm that some locals believed it.

Isaac Patch is buried on Patch Mountain, not far from where my great-grandmother, Mabel (Morgan) Dunham, lived as a girl. Mabel was older than her brothers, but she was given the worst job on their treasure-hunting expeditions. She was assigned the task of sitting on Isaac Patch's grave to make sure that he didn't rise from the dead and thwart her siblings' search. As far as I know, she was successful in her job.

[Image Credit: Clubhouse Tokens by Matt DeTurck]

Free Baby With Every Fill-Up?

Judy Quiban and Douglas Whittaker's baby was born at a Chevron station in Elk Grove, California.

Quiban and Whittaker were on their way to the hospital. Judy was having contractions. But the couple realized their car did not have much gasoline.

Whittaker pulled into the gas station and started pumping gas as Quiban was yelling at him to call 911.

Holden's birth certificate actually shows the gas station as the place of birth with the father in attendance.

"Chevy!" Quiban's daughter said, suggesting a nickname for the baby. [Link]

Genealogue Challenge #11

Big Nose Kate lived with a man for two decades, and upon his death was executrix his will.

What were the full names (first, middle and last) of this man and of his estranged wife?

No Better Name for Idiots

Mary Penner writes today of the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent census schedules of 1880.

The 3-D forms had seven different categories: insane, idiots, deaf-mutes, blind, homeless children, paupers and prisoners.

Even back in the 19th century, the sting of political correctness vexed the special agent in charge of the 3-D schedules. Defending the labels attached to the various 3-D classes, he noted in his final report that he would have gladly used less offensive and more judicious classifications, but he couldn't think of any better terms and no one had suggested any better ones. [Link]

It's Henry!

Jane Walsh of the archives committee in Gloucester, Mass., did a search of the Web in 2004 to figure out why a 19th-century painter changed his name from Nathaniel Rogers Lane to Fitz Hugh Lane.

Up popped Lane’s request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane. Walsh and her committee comrades figured “Henry” must be a mistake, a typo maybe. Still, it was an error they came across with some frequency in Lane records. And so they visited the state archives in Boston to look at Lane’s actual petition.

“And sure enough, there it was: Nathaniel Rogers Lane writing in to ask if he could have his name changed to Fitz Henry Lane,” says co-chair Sarah Dunlap. They realized that Lane had always been Fitz Henry. Fitz Hugh was the error. [Link]

An article from last year gave a more vivid account of the discovery.

In Lane's own handwriting was a request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane.

"It's Henry!" Dunlap recalls shouting in the archives room. [Link]

When news of the discovery spread, museums across the country had to relabel their Lane paintings. Some labels were not so easily changed.

Caching Trashed

I have little to add to what John, Jasia, Janice and Becky have written about Ancestry.com's decision to pull its controversial Internet Biographical Collection.

Whatever the legality of the practice, The Generations Network should have known that caching other people's websites and calling it a "collection" would raise some hackles. Genealogists are a pretty generous bunch—which explains why there is so much genealogical content on the Web to be cached. We have added tons of content to the TGN empire—whether by posting to message boards, submitting family trees, or contributing data to RootsWeb. By reaching for content beyond the borders of its empire, TGN assumed our generosity without the courtesy of a request. In doing so, it confirmed the suspicion of many that Ancestry.com operates outside the community of genealogists. And if this two-day tempest proves anything, it's that this is a community to be reckoned with.

Genealogue Challenge #10

Ogden Driggs had a very eventful trip to Europe when he was a boy.

Why did his family have to leave Continental Europe in a hurry, and what famous person came home to America on the same ship?

A Smoking Centenarian

Winnie Langley celebrated her 100th birthday by leaning over her birthday cake and lighting up her (estimated) 170,000th cigarette.

The former launderette worker said she started the habit in 1914 - just weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28 - which sparked the First World War.

Despite the numerous health warnings, Mrs Langley insists she's never suffered because of the habit as she "has never inhaled". [Link, via Neatorama]

Genealogue Challenge #9

You might not know character actor Charles Lane's name, but you'll probably recognize his face. He had roles in hundreds of films and television shows, including a turn as Mr. Potter's rent collector in It's a Wonderful Life. He died last month at age 102.

Where was his maternal grandmother buried?

They Were Their Own Grandpas

James Pylant has compiled a history of the "I'm My Own Grandpa" meme, tracing it back to 1848. I spotted the same story in an 1822 newspaper, and it may be even older. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere in the Bible.

The Key to a Tragedy

An officer who was supposed to serve on the Titanic's maiden voyage was taken off at the last minute, and took with him the key to a locker in the crow's nest that stored binoculars.

In his haste, second officer David Blair forgot to hand the key over to his replacement and took it with him. As a result, none of the lookouts on board could use the binoculars, despite asking other officers for them.

Fred Fleet, a lookout who survived the disaster, later told the official inquiry that if the crew had had binoculars they would have seen the iceberg the ship struck sooner. When asked by a US senator chairing the inquiry how much sooner, Mr Fleet replied: "Enough to get out of the way."

The 95-year mystery has resurfaced after the key was made available for sale at auction. The key is being sold by Mr Blair's descendants, along with a postcard he wrote to his sister about his disappointment on missing out on the trip. [Link]

The Names in Spain Are Anything but Plain

A town in Spain with a population of just 900 wants to be recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the place with the largest number of inhabitants with uncommon first names—names such as Fredesvinda, Clodoaldo and Baraquisio.

A glance at the census or newspaper obituary pages of Huerta de Rey, located in the central Spanish autonomous community of Castile and Leon, is sufficient to find individuals with the aforementioned names as well as others such as Orencia, Sincletica, Tenebrina, Rudesindo, Onesiforo and Floripes. [Link]

The First International Gathering of Odd Names will be held in Huerta de Rey next year.

Caching for Cash

Last October I mentioned that Ancestry.com was scanning the Web for biographical information. Kimberly Powell reports that the company is caching the content it finds behind its subscription firewall.

Ancestry.com is serving up copies of copyrighted work and, to make matters worse, selling this as one of their subscription databases. Because the pages are cached, they are also depriving the Web site and/or content owner of traffic and potential income.

In addition to the concerns Kimberly voices, I wonder if Ancestry.com allows webmasters to forbid caching, as Google does. Permitting website owners to easily opt out is both legally and morally advisable.

From reading my feeds I've learned that Janice at Cow Hampshire and Amy at Untangled Family Roots have both had their content scraped by Ancestry.com. Randy has also weighed in.

Update: "Based on community response," Ancestry.com has decided to make the Internet Biographical Collection free to registered users.

Genealogue Challenge #8

Widow Mary Turnbull let out rooms in her home in 1880. One of her boarders would write in his will that he wanted to be buried "without any monkey business."

What was this boarder's name, and what was written on his tombstone?

Mary and Howard

Late genealogist Mary Smith Fay almost didn't take the biggest case of her life. She recalled in a 1985 interview getting a telephone call from attorney Ted Dinkins.

He was asking for help. He had been appointed to represent the unknown heirs of Howard Hughes Jr., the eccentric multimillionaire who had died without a will, and he needed the assistance of a crackerjack genealogist.

Fay was certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists in Washington, D.C. She also was an amateur sleuth with an inquisitive mind, a dry sense of humor and energy that belied her 60-odd years. She had been likened to Miss Marple, the matronly investigator starring in some of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries, and it was an apt comparison.

Dinkins pressed on. Was she interested in the job - possibly the case of a lifetime?

In retelling the story today, Fay blushes. "I said no; I was busy."

[Houston Chronicle, July 8, 1985]

Fay found enough time in her busy schedule to work on the case from 1977 to 1981. She helped establish the claims of twenty-two cousins and step-cousins, who were able to share in Hughes' estimated $2.5 billion estate.

Genealogue Challenge #7

When outlaw Frank James died in 1915, someone from his hometown served as undertaker.

What was his name, and what kind of business did he operate when not undertaking outlaws?

A Premature Purchase

A couple in Serbia took advantage of a funeral parlor's going-out-of-business sale by buying their headstones early—and having the dates of their deaths carved in advance.

Dragoslav Mikic, 78, of the northern village of Dubnica, said: 'After looking at the length of time my relatives lived, and taking into account I eat well and am healthy, I am sure I will die in 2020.'

He predicted his wife Dragica would die in 2021. [Link]

Genealogue Challenge #6

Where was labor leader César Chávez born?

Extra credit: What unusual symbols adorn the location of his birth?

Unstable Bacon Should Not Be Trusted

There's an old joke that the plays of William Shakespeare were not written by him, but by someone else of the same name. The notion that Shakespeare was not the author of the works attributed to him originated in a log cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio.

The story begins, a little unexpectedly, with an odd and frankly unlikely American woman named Delia Bacon. Bacon was born in 1811 in the frontier country of Ohio, into a large family and a small log cabin.

Delia was bright and apparently very pretty but not terribly stable.

Gradually, for reasons that are not clear, she became convinced that Francis Bacon, her distinguished namesake, was the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. Though she had no known genealogical connection to Francis Bacon, the correspondence of names was almost certainly more than coincidental.

In 1852 she travelled to England and embarked on a long and fixated quest to prove William Shakespeare a fraud. [Link]

Genealogue Challenge #5

Mr. Green Jeans (who was not Frank Zappa's father) was Captain Kangaroo's wingman for thirty years.

What was his father's middle name?

Einstein's Theory of Relativity Clarified

A recent interview with aviation exec Kristen Einstein calls her "the great-grandniece of Albert Einstein (yes, the Albert Einstein)."

So how are you related to Albert Einstein?

He's my grandfather's father's brother. We had a family tree done and all that. My brother is the last male, and I'm the last female right now.

Really? In the whole family?

Yeah.

What kind of a reaction do you get when they find out you're actually related?

People will say, "No way!" I wouldn't make up someone who I'm related to!

A clarification from her father, Dennis Einstein, was published the next day.

He ... said that while he is a descendant of Albert Einstein, the connection is more distant than what his daughter stated. Kristen Einstein said she had repeated what another family member had told her about the connection. [Link, via Regret the Error]

Time for Family Feud to Be Cancelled

Gracia Jones—a great-great-granddaughter of LDS church founder Joseph Smith—is among those trying to heal a long-standing rift between his descendants and those of Brigham Young. It all started with Smith's death in 1844.

While Young led the LDS migration to the Salt Lake Valley, Emma Smith remained behind and eventually re-married. One of her sons led a splinter group known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Consequently, none of Smith's descendants were affiliated with the original body of Latter-day Saints until Jones discovered her ancestry and joined 51 years ago.

Ill will has persisted among some descendants of the families for more than a century and a half, Jones said. When planning a reunion of their family members, Smith descendants "talked about the difficulty that children of the family had with Brigham Young and the harsh feelings that had filtered down and left a scar on the family because of the bitterness the children held against him," Jones said. [Link]

Sons' Sub Search Successful

Here's an update of a story I blogged about last year. The sons of a World War II submarine commander have likely found their father's resting place on the floor of the Bering Sea.

The discovery of the USS Grunion on Wednesday night culminates a five-year search led by the sons of its commander, Mannert Abele, and may finally shine a light on the mysterious last moments of the doomed vessel.

"Obviously, this is a very big thing," the oldest son, Bruce Abele, said Thursday from his home in Newton, Mass. "I told my wife about it when she was still in bed and she practically went up to the ceiling."

As news of the search spread, several relatives of the Grunion's crew banded together to locate others with ties to the lost men. To date, the relatives of 69 men are following the progress of the search, said Mary Bentz of Bethesda, Md., whose uncle died on the Grunion. [Link]

Relatives of every crew member save one—Byron Allen Traviss of Detroit—have been located.

Bentz knows little about Traviss beyond his birthplace, Detroit, the name of his father, Russell A. Traviss, and his 1942 address, 4344 Tireman St.

The address is now a vacant lot. Neighbors said they never heard of Traviss.

Detroit directories from the 1930s listed the name of his wife as Ann and his jobs as electrician and autoworker. [Link]

You can contact the search team through their website if you have information on Traviss' family.

Update: A day later, and a relative of Traviss has been found.

Genealogue Challenge #4

This one is trickier than it appears:

Under what name is Casey Stengel's father listed in the 1880 census?

You Can't Judge a Book While It's Covered in That

About 2,300 leather-bound ledgers were found in a barn in McHenry County, llinois, that may contain historical tax records and property assessments. But nobody wants to open them to find out.

That’s because the books came into contact with raccoons, pigeons and other critters that left their marks.

While the animals didn’t shred or otherwise physically destroy the books, they did defecate on them, [county Records Manager Bill] Draths said. [Link]

You Have More Grandmas Than Grandpas

Transylvanian Dutch links to a New York Times blog post claiming that more of our ancestors are women than men.

While it’s true that about half of all the people who ever lived were men, the typical male was much more likely than the typical woman to die without reproducing. Citing recent DNA research, Dr. [Roy F.] Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did. [Link]

An update to the post gives a good explanation of how this is possible. In short, the difference in reproduction rates combined with pedigree collapse makes it more likely that men will appear multiple times in your family tree with different mates than will women.

From Cork to New York

I found time this evening to watch From Cork to New York—a dramatization of Annie Moore's journey to America written, produced, directed, and acted by 11-year-olds from Scoil Oilibhéir in Cork, Ireland. (You can watch the trailer here.)

My school projects at that age involved gluing macaroni to poster board. These kids commandeered a train and reenacted a transatlantic sea voyage on film, then got people on another continent to watch it. I guess they don't have macaroni in Ireland.

Careful Where You Have a Hare

The Derbyshire County Council's Record Office has compiled a list of 19th-century inmates (pdf) and the crimes they committed.

The document features the records of all prisoners held at the County Gaol in Derby from 1800 to 1819.

Reasons for imprisonment included "feloniously milking a cow", being an "incorrigible rogue", "vagabond", or "lewd woman" and suffering from "indolence". [Link]

Other offenses included "Having a hare," "Taking swan's eggs," and "Pretending to have skill."

Drowned Towns

MetaFilter has a neat post about four towns in Massachusetts—Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott—swallowed up by the Quabbin Reservoir in 1938.

It's a longstanding piece of Massachusetts lore: When the Quabbin Reservoir is low, they say a church steeple rises from the water, a ghostly reminder of the towns submerged by the flooding of the Swift River Valley in 1939.

No offense, says Dale Monette, program coordinator at the Quabbin Visitors Center in Belchertown, but, "I guarantee he's never seen it." No structures of the four "lost" towns of the valley, all vacated and disincorporated in March 1938, were left standing, he confirmed on the day I visited. [Link]

One town up here in Maine—Flagstaff—met a similar fate. Here's a list of other drowned towns in the U.S.

It Came Naturally To Her

A British woman gave birth to a son at age 59 without the benefit of in vitro fertilization. That may make her the world's oldest "natural" mother.

Dawn Brooke had a healthy boy without any fertility treatment only 12 months before she became eligible for her old age pension, her family said.

Her husband, former company director Raymond Brooke, said the couple had kept the 1997 birth private for a decade to let their son grow up in peace. [Link]

Former Princess Not a Pauper

Fellow blogger Demetrius Clark of Your Brother Kings noticed an error in an article about his relatives published in the Port Huron, Michigan, Times Herald<