One of my childhood heroes has died. Like 90% of American boys in the '70s, I idolized Evel Knievel. I remember once setting up a ramp and trying to jump my bicycle over ... my brother, I think. The bike came out from under me and I landed flat on my back. That was the only time in my life I ever saw stars, just like in the cartoons. Rest in peace, Evel.
On what date did Evel's father's father's paternal grandmother arrive in America, and where is she thought to be buried?
Tom Hendrix has built a memorial for his great-great-grandmother—a Native American woman who survived the Trail of Tears and returned to her home in Alabama.
What he did to remember her involved 6 and a half million pounds of rock, and the size of 5 football fields. Hendrix wanted the legacy of his great grandmother to be remembered for a long time.
What he did has taken much of his time and strength. "I have worn out 3 trucks, over 20 wheelbarrows, over 1,000 pair of gloves, two dogs, and one old man," said Hendrix. [Link]Here's a blog post with photos and videos of Te-Lah-Nay's Wall—supposed to be largest monument to a woman in the United States, and the longest unmortared wall in the country.
Aaron Giles lost his identity bracelet 25 years ago while playing in his grandfather's barn in Minnesota. It turned up a few months ago in an unlikely place.
The barn was dismantled a few years ago, and the materials were used to construct another barn in rural Elmore, about 45 miles away, he said. Giles thinks his bracelet was imbedded in the barn materials when they were moved.
Workers at Olson Locker in Fairmont were cutting the meat of chickens that came from an Elmore farm when one of them, Brittany McDonald, came across a shiny object in a chicken gizzard. McDonald, whose grandfather owns the locker, saw Aaron's name, address and phone number engraved on it. [Link]
Workers found a tombstone in the basement of the courthouse in Bangor, Maine, for Isaac Cobb, who died Sept. 7, 1874, at age 72. A second epitaph was written on the back—presumably by inmates at the courthouse jail.
It appears to have been printed in black paint on the back of the headstone.I actually know Isaac Cobb. He was born in the same town I was, and his mother was a Dunham—a distant cousin of mine. I have no known connection to "Pretty Boy Floyd."
Titled, "Pretty Boy Floyd Redmond," the first two verses read:
"Beneath this sod so cold and deep,
Lies the once bold Floyd R,
Now, the meek and dirty creep.
He came to our town,
His motto to "do or die,"
But now he’s stocking shelves,
It makes you wonder why." [Link]
William Sermon's 1671 medical book The Ladies Companion, Or The English Midwife reveals his strange fascination with hares.
Sermon (c1629-1680) is said to have decided to study medicine after witnessing a woman giving birth alone in a wood while he was out hare-shooting – which may explain why hares feature so prominently in his cures.
"Take the slime that a hare will have about his mouth when he eateth mallows and drink it in wine," Sermon instructs his readers. "Two hours after lie with your husband and fear not (faith my author) but that you will conceive."
Another remedy Sermon recommends to husbands is to secretly feed their wives the womb of a hare. "Give to the woman without her knowledge the womb of a hare to eat. Or burn the same to powder, and give it to her in wine to drink." [Link]
Ancestry.ca commissioned a national genealogy survey of Canada with more than 1,000 respondents.
The results show that a staggering 39 per cent of Canadians cannot trace their roots back more than 100 years, and 20 per cent don't know where their families came from before moving to Canada.13 percent of respondents think that genealogists are doctors who perform Pap smears, and 2 percent spoke into the wrong end of the telephone.
The survey, conducted by MarketTools, also reveals that a surprising 24 per cent of Canadians don't know the maiden name of any of their grandmothers and 22 per cent have no idea what any of their grandfathers did for a living. [Link]
You can win a day in London with a professional family historian (travel not included) from Your Family Tree by answering this question:
Which of the following is NOT shown on a birth certificate?
[A] The child’s name
[B] The child’s sex
[C] The child’s occupation
No one has taken up my last challenge yet. I'll try not to take it personally.
I remember Sterling Holloway from his guest roles on The Andy Griffith Show and Gilligan's Island, but the younger set will know him as the voice of Disney's Winnie the Pooh.
What was the full name of his maternal grandmother's undertaker?
The latest tool released by FamilySearch Labs is a Standard Finder. The old FamilySearch is great at "fuzzy" searches (I can search for "Chroferus Dunnum" and still get hits for my name), and I expect the new FamilySearch to be even better.
[H]ave you ever wondered how computers determine that a person your looking for may be the same as another person? It goes through a match process. One of the key ways of determining whether two possible candidate persons match with each other is to evaluate the genealogical data known about the person. Of course it gets kind of tricky. How does the computer know that Polly Pay is a pretty good match to Mary Pay? How does it know how to compare dates on different calendaring systems or just interpret 24 Jul 1847 and 8/24/1847? How does it know that SLC, UT is the same place as Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, USA? [Link]
Kylie McCartney gave birth on November 12 to a son, whom she named "Paul."
The 26-year-old changed her last name from Presley 20 years ago, along with her dad Dave and 27-year-old sister Caroline who both chose a surname of Lennon.
Kylie and Paul returned home from St Michaels Hospital in Bristol on November 15 to live with her dad, whose full name is David John Paul George Ringo Lennon. [Link]
Archaeologists hoped to dig out the long-buried gravestone of Methodist preacher James Gwin in Vicksburg, Miss.
What the excavators did not expect to find under years of dirt and grass was a second crypt, bearing a name unfamiliar to the researchers. The tomb of Elizabeth P. Mosby lay next to the reverend's, and the dates inscribed appeared to show she died on Sept. 11, 1841, barely a month after Gwin. She is named on the stone as the wife of J.C. Mosby.As it turns out, Elizabeth was the daughter of Reverend Gwin.
Who was she? Why bury her here? Why were her remains so close to Rev. Gwin?
"Perhaps she was the organist," quipped Hobbs Freeman, a local artist who rode along on the excursion. [Link]
At a gathering in Milford, N.H., Dave Palance explained that gravestones can reveal more than names and dates.
Early death’s heads were simple skull and cross bones, but later ones are made to look like the departed. Many have wings to show that the person went to heaven. At the graves of couple Samuel and Mary Leeman, buried in a Hollis cemetery, only the husband went to heaven.
“He earned his wings, she didn’t,” Palance said. [Link]
Is this the World War I draft registration card of gospel blues pioneer Blind Willie Johnson? Michael Corcoran thinks it's possible.
Johnson’s widow, Angeline Johnson, said that Johnson had been blinded at about age 7 when a girlfriend of Blind Willie’s father threw lye in his face to avenge a beating. In the 1918 document, when Johnson was 21, he says he’d been blind for 13 years.
The death certificate, with information provided by Angeline Johnson, has Blind Willie’s birthdate at Jan 22, 1897; draft card puts it at Jan. 25, 1897. Considering record-keeping of the time, especially among itinerant African Americans, that’s close enough. Death certificate says he was born in Independence, near Brenham; draft card puts his birth at Pendleton, near Temple, which has long been thought of as Blind Willie’s birthplace. Could it be that Angeline said “Pendleton” and the doctor heard “Independence?”What additional evidence (circumstantial or otherwise) can you find that this document indeed refers to Blind Willie?
Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula Prince Kretzulesco died last weekend in Germany.
He was plain Ottomar Berbig until the 1980s, when his life was changed by a chance encounter with an elderly Romanian princess who was struck by his Transylvanian appearance with his curly black hair and drooping moustache.
Ekaterina Olympia Kretzulesco, a genuine blood descendant of legendary count Vlad Dracula, was childless and wanted to ensure the family line continued.
"She thought I looked typically Romanian, so she decided to introduce me to the rest of the family," Ottomar once recalled. She adopted him and he went on to fulfil the role of Count Dracula with gusto. [Link]
This article about the surviving Wizard of Oz Munchkins led me to this Wikipedia entry on The Doll Family.
The Dolls were four out of a family of seven children (the rest being of average size) born to Emma and Gustav Schneider in Stolpen, Germany. Harry and Grace were the first of the quartet to begin performing in sideshows, as "Hans and Gretel". In 1914 they were seen by an American, Bert W. Earles, who brought them to the United States to tour with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. The siblings lived in Pasadena, California, with the Earles family. Earles also brought Daisy and Tiny to the United States (in 1922 and 1926 respectively) where they joined Harry and Grace in their act.
By this time, the entire family had adopted the Earles' surname; they would retain that name until Mr. Earles died during the 1930s, when the tiny performers became the Dolls - a name which reflected comments overheard from their audiences.What inaccuracies and glaring omissions can you find in this passage?
Congrats to Miriam for spilling the beans to a Spokesman-Review reporter. The article even includes a family recipe for soup.
Her most infamous ancestor was old Uzza, who was hanged in 1850 for murdering his second wife by putting arsenic in her soup, and it was later discovered that he had also struck a death blow to his own son.I'm envious. I wish more of my ancestors had shown that kind of initiative.
Challenge #94 still needs attention, but here's a quick one sent in by Steve Danko. For this one, I want you to guess without looking up the answer question. You can wager some or all of your checking account balance.
I just watched today's (20 Nov 2007) broadcast of Jeopardy! and the Final Jeopardy category was "American Ancestry". Alex Trebec said that this was a new category for Jeopardy!Remember to phrase your response in the form of a question. (Cue the music.)
The answer was:
ACCORDING TO THE CENSUS BUREAU
AT 15.2% AND 10.8%
THEY ARE THE 2 LEADING
NATIONAL ANCESTRIES OF AMERICANS
The European Union denies that a proposed census question has anything to do with a woman's sexual history.
One proposed question asks the "date(s) of the beginning of consensual union(s) of women having ever been in a consensual union: (ii) first consensual union and (ii) current consensual union".
A spokesman for Eurostat, which provides the EU with statistics at European level, said: "This definition has absolutely nothing to do with asking women about their sexual behaviour.
"Consensual union is in fact another term for unmarried partnership." [Link]
A University of Leicester study finds that surnames ending in "son" came from northern England, while names ending in "s" came from the south.
They discovered that nearly 60 per cent of northerners in villages such as Crosby, Ravensworth and Patterdale had a "son" surname in the seventeenth century.
Dr Dave Postles, from the University of Leicester's English department, said: "Looking from the outside, it will be noticeable to people that the 'north' of England is a place where surnames ending in 'son' have predominated, although they have spread more widely now.
"Whereby somebody in the North would be called Williamson in the South they would be called William or Williams." [Link]
As promised, Ancestry.com has released a database of U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925.
This database contains passport applications from 1795-1925, including emergency passport applications (passports issued abroad) from 1877-1907. It also contains passport application registers for 1810-1817, 1830-1831, and 1834-1906.This won't help me much. My ancestors never left the country for fear that they wouldn't be let back in.
Fran Allison—the only cast member of Kukla, Fran and Ollie to draw a paycheck—was born on this date a century ago.
With whom was she living in 1930?
Extra credit: When did her maternal grandparents arrive in America?
Just before he left Illinois for his first inauguration, Abraham Lincoln stopped by a cemetery in Coles County to visit the graves of his father and step-mother. It was Gale Baker's grandfather, John W. Baker, who showed Abe where the bodies were buried.
At the time, the burial sites were mostly unmarked, so Abraham Lincoln carved the initials of Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln on a piece of wood to serve as a rudimentary grave marker.If I remember correctly, some other stuff happened between his going to Washington and getting shot.
At least, this is the tale handed down to Gale Baker from his grandmother, Susan D. Baker.
Abraham Lincoln “found those graves and then went to Washington and was shot there,” said Gale Baker, 90. “That’s the story as she told it.” [Link]
The oldest graves in my neck of the woods are generally aligned east-west, in line with the rising and setting of the sun. Thomas S. Klatka found in his study of Roanoke County, Virginia, burying grounds that the orientation of subsequent graves often depended on when the first hole in a cemetery was dug.
Individual graves were rarely dug on a precise compass orientation, but rather they were generally oriented toward the position of the rising sun on the eastern horizon. Additional variability was introduced into this procedure since the exact position of the sun rising over the eastern horizon changes throughout the year.Rayne, Louisiana, was recognized by Ripley's Believe It or Not for having the "only cemetery in the U.S. that faces north and south"—St. Joseph's Catholic Cemetery. (Klatka notes that Catholic cemeteries are less likely to follow the east-west tradition.)For instance, at the latitude of Roanoke the rising sun moves from approximately 60 degrees east of true north during the summer solstice in June to approximately 120 degrees east of true north during the winter solstice in December (U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office 1964). As a result, the exact orientation of graves tended to vary from any northeast through any southeast direction depending on the time of year when the graves were excavated. Following cemetery establishment and excavation of the initial grave shaft, the long axes of subsequent graves within a cemetery generally ran parallel with only minor variation. This pattern often persisted even in cemeteries that were active for lengthy periods of time. While graves within a cemetery were usually oriented parallel to one another, the overall orientation of graves between cemeteries tended to differ more markedly. As a general rule, the orientation of graves within cemeteries tends to reflect the time of year when individual cemeteries were founded.
Perhaps the gravedigger did not have a compass. Perhaps the priest did not oversee the work of a common laborer. Whatever the case, the most commonly accepted version of what happened is that the graves were mislaid and before the mistake was discovered, too many people had been buried; the expense of reburials (not to mention the effect it would have had on the grieving families) was too great a cost. The citizens allowed the cemetery to remain as it had originally been placed, albeit at the expense of being a rarity in the civilized Western world. [Link]The only cemetery in the U.S. that faces north-south? That's a claim that just begs to be refuted. I can certainly think of cemeteries where the "east-west rule" was thrown out the window. (When the garden cemeteries of the 19th century were designed, aesthetics outweighed celestial considerations in the placement of graves. Just look at the layout of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.) I can't, though, think offhand of a cemetery I have visited where the graves were all oriented north-south. Can you?
Actor James Robertson Justice was very proud of being Scottish, "habitually donning a kilt, adopting a Gaelic name, and beating Sean Connery for the job of rector of Edinburgh University." Too bad he wasn't Scottish.
[R]esearch for a new biography on Justice has revealed the actor was a "huge liar" whose real birthplace was distinctly un-Scottish: a London borough.
Writer James Hogg examined Justice's birth certificate and was astounded to discover his subject was born at 39 Baring Road, Lewisham.
He also discovered his name at birth was James Norval Harold Justice. Hogg believes he may have dropped his original middle names and adopted a new one to justify his habit in later life of wearing the Robertson tartan. [Link]
Nilda Quartucci says she's the illegitimate daughter of Eva Perón.
A bid to have Perón's embalmed body exhumed for a DNA test was turned down by the courts in Argentina. But, given the complicated history of Evita's corpse, it may resurface on its own one of these days.The first inkling Nilda had that she was Eva's daughter was in 1966 when she was a mother of two. Her husband Isaur - a banker she had married at 15 - claimed he had wheedled the truth from her father after hearing rumours.
"I was numb," said Nilda. "Then one day I was out with my father and I said to him, 'So, I'm Evita's daughter?' He said, 'Oh, your husband told you.'" [Link]
This won't come as news to anyone who follows Major League Baseball, but Hispanic surnames are becoming more prevalent.
Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.And yet, only one of Ben & Jerry's 44 ice cream flavors has a Hispanic last name.
The Census Bureau’s analysis found that some surnames were especially associated with race and ethnicity.
More than 96 percent of Yoders, Kruegers, Muellers, Kochs, Schwartzes, Schmitts and Novaks were white. Nearly 90 percent of the Washingtons were black, as were 75 percent of the Jeffersons, 66 percent of the Bookers, 54 percent of the Banks and 53 percent of the Mosleys. [Link]
Schelly at Tracing the Tribe has tagged me for the 161 Meme: open up the book you're currently reading to page 161 and share the sixth sentence. This was a real challenge for me, since I rarely read books longer than 17 pages. Fortunately, I'm just finishing Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. (My policy is, if it's bad enough to ban, it's good enough to read.)
Not sure, but I think that's a metaphor for sex.He was in these mounded rows, stooped and picking with the sun on his neck, low against the land in a sea of green and red with the smell of the earth and its berries rising like a mist, filling by the labor of his hands the twelve woven pine baskets in his caddy.
Bob Engel's explanation why he started up his piano store in California is a bit confusing.
“I was born in San Jose, so there was a draw to come back to California. And I have a strong heritage in Castro Valley as a direct descendant of James Harvey Strobridge, a great-great cousin who engineered the railroad between California and Utah.” [Link]
Ancestry.com will soon release a US passport collection with "millions of names from the years 1796 to 1925."
Passports became more popular in the late 1840s. In 1914, American citizens were permitted to travel abroad without passports. If your ancestors were travelers this will be a great collection for you. If you find a hit for one of your ancestors you will get a little gold mine of information. Many of these applications include photos. [Link]This announcement comes with a sample image, which is almost readable if you squint really hard.
Judge Wapner celebrates a birthday today.
When did his father arrive in the United States?
Louisiana's oldest resident is Maggie Renfro, who says she is 113. Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group says she is the 11th oldest person in the U.S., and the 21st oldest in the world.
Young said Census records for 1900 list Renfro as 4 years old, giving her birth date as November 1895, and the 1910 census puts her age at 14. That would make her 112.
The family is long-lived: her sisters also have passed the century mark.
Renfro, Rosie Warren, 101, and Carrie Lee Thornton, 105, are the world's oldest living sibling threesome, with 320 combined years, Young said. The all-time record is 327 combined years. [Link]
