Lesbians Fighting Lesbians

Three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos want to reclaim the word "Lesbian" from a gay rights group.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

Lesbos was home to the poet Sappho, whose works are popular with Lesbians lesbians.

Lambrou says Sappho was not gay. "But even if we assume she was, how can 250,000 people of Lesbian descent — including women — be considered homosexual?" [Link]

Crazy in Love

From the newspaper archives of Staunton, Virginia:

A.H. McGehee, a patient at Western State Hospital in 1910, fell in love with Alice Lillie, a beautiful female attendant, and she reciprocated. In December, McGehee and Lillie met in Staunton and obtained a marriage license from the city clerk.

"As the clerk does not know a lunatic from anybody else," noted the Staunton Daily Leader, "he issued the license. They hunted up Dr. O.F. Gregory, the obliging pastor of the Baptist Church, who is just as innocent when he sees a lunatic."

The pair were married, but their happiness short-lived. Officials at the hospital quickly found McGehee and hurried him back into custody, ending the romance, while Lillie was summarily discharged from her job. [Link]

Why You Should Mind Your Ps and Qs

Jose Iuerdo's years in prison allowed him to move up in the world—or at least in the phone book.

In leaving prison the last time, he lost his birth name. What happened — and he swears this is true — he was imprisoned so long, the Department of Motor Vehicles "expunged" his name.

And his birth certificate was somewhere in Colorado. When he applied for a new identification card, someone interpreted the typed "Q" as an "I" and that's why he's now Iuerdo and not Querdo.

That's OK with him. He's happier with the new Jose than the old Jose. [Link]

Maybe He Bought It with Beer

Was Breckenridge, Colorado, named for local settler Thomas Breckenridge or for Vice President John C. Breckinridge?

[Robin] Theobald’s contention ... is that the town was indeed named after Thomas Breckenridge, then changed to “Breckinridge” when it was decided that taking the name of the vice president would enhance the possibility of getting a post office, then renamed yet again when the residents decided they didn’t want their town to be named after a member of the Confederate party.

The only hole left by such a hypothesis is, why would the town originally be named after such an insignificant settler? Thomas Breckenridge wasn’t known to be important for any reason more than the next guy.

Theobald’s response was vintage history mystery.

“The guy coulda bought a round for the house, and they decided to name the town after him,” he said. “It doesn’t mean he had to be the leader of the pack to have it named after him. Maybe he saved someone’s life and they wanted to honor him. Who knows?” [Link]

Reuniters Reminisce, Regret Reservoir

Residents of the four towns drowned by the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts still get together to mourn their lost homes.

[F]or remaining natives of the four "lost towns," all now in their 70s or older, nostalgia blends with sorrow and occasional flashes of bitterness. They continue to gather at least once a month to reminisce, clinging tenaciously to the bonds their families forged in towns long since erased from the map.

Each native has a story: passing cemeteries as ancestors' bodies were moved, watching helplessly as grandparents cried in frustration, realizing the drinking water of strangers had been deemed more important than their families' roots.

"That was the only place we'd ever known," Bob Wilder, an Enfield native, said of the hardscrabble farming town his family left in 1938 when he was a boy. "I try not to get mad when I think about it anymore, but that was home. I can't really ever go home." [Link]

Wrong Place at the Wrong Time with the Wrong Initials

John Wilkes Booth is supposed to have been shot and killed in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. But Booth relative Joanne Hulme and her sister Virginia Kline believe that the assassin escaped justice.

"The first story my mother ever told me was that John Wilkes Booth was not killed in the barn," Hulme said.

The soldiers' victim was James William Boyd or John William Boyd, who bore a striking resemblance to the assassin and was sought for the murder of a Union captain by some accounts.

"He was shorter than Booth and had red hair" instead of the actor's black wavy locks, Hulme said. [Link]

Architecture Is the Best Revenge

Neatorama has a post on spite houses: houses "built or altered for the sole purpose of exacting revenge."

The Skinny House in Boston is pretty well-known, at least in the area. The story goes that in 1874, a couple of brothers had a fight over the land they had jointly inherited from their father. Instead of properly settling the fight, one brother built a large home on the land while the other brother was away in the military. When the traveling brother returned home, he decided to spite his greedy brother and build a small house on what was left of the land they both owned, blocking his brother’s nice view.

The house does, though, offer a lovely view of the Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

Priceless Obituary Cost $650

Terry sent me a link to an obituary that (according to folo) "kicks butt and takes names."

Ida married High School friend, Karl Hadaway. On January 31, 1953, a child was born named Mary Denise. The marriage decayed and the couple divorced in 1954. Ida's marriage to Karl was a three ring circus, engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.

Ida met and married Albert Sills in 1960. Ida said "I never knew what real happiness was until I got remarried, then it was too late."

The obit earned an article of its own in a later edition of the newspaper:

It not only recalls his mother's one-liner jokes, but begins with the revelation that Ida Mae began life as Betty Jean Cherry, a child given up by a single mother for adoption and sold by infamous baby broker Georgia Tann through the Tennessee Children's Home Society in the 1930s.

That is one reason why some family members were not "thrilled" with the lengthy obituary, which ran Sunday in The Commercial Appeal. It cost $650, but, "I didn't care," says Lee. "It's important how people think of you after the fact."

So That's What Rebels Smelled Like

The Graffiti House in Brandy Station, Virginia, was occupied by both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. They left behind names, dates and drawings scribbled on the walls, discovered during a renovation in 1992. New graffiti came to light just last summer.

[Paint-removal specialist Kirsten] Travers ... uncovered a large piece of graffiti in the JEB Stuart room - where the Confederate Army General signed his name. The new image is a full-size figure of a man with a head resembling a pumpkin. On his torso is the phrase: “President J. Davis. Good on the boots.”

Neither Travers nor Edrington know what the phrase means but they suspect it is a sarcastic comment, perhaps about Davis’ efforts in providing adequate footwear to soldiers.

Besides the date and the pumpkin head, Travers found another image of a horse standing in front of a man who had been revealed previously.

Edrington said the volunteers thought the man was a standalone image but now he is seen behind the horse and above him are the words, “He smells a rebel.” [Link]

Ancestor Dead? Don't Mention It

For the Chumash people of California, family history could be a touchy subject.

The Chumash culture ... was very straightforward about bodily functions, so, unlike English, those descriptive terms weren’t used in a derogatory manner. Many words described family bonds, however, marking the importance of family ties. “The biggest insult was to name a deceased ancestor out loud in someone’s presence,” Johnson said. [Link]

Don't Call Him Mr. Moon

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been in office 16 months, and people still can't get his name right.

Recently, the U.N.'s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, sent a letter of "concern" to U.N. employees worldwide, a copy of which was obtained by Newsmax.

In the letter dated March 31, 2008, Nambiar writes, "Dear Colleague, I address you in a matter of some delicacy. Ever since taking office, the Secretary-General has had to cope with the question of ensuring clarity and accuracy in the recognition of his name . . .

"This is not an unusual problem, but it remains a matter of some frustration, that despite the passage of a year and some months, there still remains some confusion on this score. Many world leaders, some of who are well acquainted with the Secretary-General, still use his first name mistakenly as his surname and address him wrongly as Mr. Ki-moon or Mr. Moon." [Link]

Province Just Says No

New Brunswick won't allow Sharon (Weed) Thorne to put her maiden name on a license plate.

Sharon Thorne has even brought officials a copy of her birth certificate, but they still refuse to allow her to attach a tag that says "WEED" to her beloved 2001 Mustang convertible.

"I am not promoting drug use," she complained this week. "I do not smoke marijuana, have never inhaled it even once, don't sell it, am adamantly against it and have no criminal record.

"I have always been proud my name was unique, and thought people would see the plate and realize they went to school with me, or knew my parents or something. It was meant to be a fun thing, but has turned into something really annoying." [Link]

Spy's Like Us

When Ben-Ami Kadish wasn't passing classified defense documents to Israel, he was working on his family tree. Who knows what family secrets are now in the hands of the Mossad.

Top Ten Ways a Family Historian Can Help the Environment

10. Recycle old family stories by changing the word "still" to "meth lab."

9. Call the funeral director to see if you can carpool to the cemetery.

8. Cancel your subscription and start checking the obituaries in your neighbor's newspaper.

7. Plant a tree in memory of your ancestor who clearcut the redwood forest.

6. Scold your great-grandmother for having had so many children.

5. Slap a bumper sticker on your late grandfather's 1947 Buick Roadmaster that reads "My other car is a Prius."

4. Conserve electricity by turning off the tape recorder whenever your aunt starts rambling on and on about her affair with J. D. Salinger.

3. Remove "Club baby seals" from your family reunion activities list.

2. Replace your coal-powered microfilm reader.

1. Compost Uncle Louie.

[Photo credit: Atlas, it's time for your bath by woodley wonderworks]

Mel Brooks Says Uncle

When Mel Brooks was presented with an Ellis Island Family Heritage Award last week, a video clip was played to commemorate his father's arrival in America.

It was a moving tribute, with old family photos shown while "That's Entertainment" played.

One problem.

"That photo was not of my father," Brooks said after taking the stage. "That was my great-uncle." He went on to say that while his uncle was a good-looking man who "wore a nice hat," as seen in the snapshot, his father, Max Kaminsky, was better looking. [Link]

Do I Have to Wear a Trench Coat?

Sharon Tate Moody compares the interviewing techniques of two TV detectives:

The first is Sgt. Joe Friday. The stone-faced lead character of the "Dragnet" series never veered from his approach. "All we want are the facts, ma'am," he would say, not cracking a grin or blinking an eye.

Then there was Columbo. He was a fumbler interested in the quirkiest of things about unsuspecting persons of interest, sidestepping his way to what he really was after. I also think he was a closet genealogist. He was forever talking about his cousins and revealing things about his family - things such as his father having been a tail gunner on a beer truck during Prohibition and his grandfather being 40 years old when he began wearing dentures.

Columbo's approach might work well for you when interviewing reluctant relatives. [Link]

She Sure Knows How to Pick 'em

24-year-old Alison Smith wed for the fourth time on Friday.

It was the latest in a bizarre series of marriages for the young mum.

Alison's ex-husbands include a man who eloped with her own mum, a bigamist and a pal who stood in for her fiance when he jilted her the night before the wedding.

Alison was reportedly "delighted" when asked to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her mother and ex-husband.

But Pat and George's wedding was called off after officials discovered the groom was marrying his mother-in-law, which is against the law.

Staff from Arbroath register office stepped in at the last minute, citing the Marriage Scotland Act 1977, which states that you cannot marry a former spouse's mother unless your former spouse is dead. [Link]

Christ Will Be There

J. Christ will be attending the Mass held by Pope Benedict at Yankee Stadium today.

A "regular Catholic," [John] Christ, a former sanitation director for the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, was born 62 years ago to an Italian mother and Greek father who Americanized his name from Christopoulos. He pronounces his surname "Chris."

Through school, his name was never an issue - until he enlisted in the Army in 1966. "They teased me," he recalled. "They asked me if I walked on water and made me do more pushups and run a little longer than the other guys." [Link]

Time for Grandma to Come Out of the Closet

Many of the Cape Verdean families of New England have a hidden Jewish past.

[Gershom] Barros didn't know his father had Jewish roots until after he died.

"My mother told me she used to call my grandmother a crazy lady for lighting candles in the closet," he said, suggesting that she practiced secret Jewish customs passed down for generations, as has been noted among other descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who were forced to hide their identities. [Link]

Not Enough Characters at Your Reunion?

TamaGenerations.com (Warning: obnoxious music) lets kids combine their two favorite activities: learning about family history and supporting the Japanese toy-making industry.

It's time to start thinking about planning your summer family reunion and what better way to do it than by researching your family tree so you know who to invite! Celebrating the new Familitchi V5, the newest version of the highly popular Tamagotchi Connection toy, www.TamaGenerations.com provides kids the chance to create family trees of everyone's favorite Tamagotchi characters as well as collect hidden family heirlooms. With help from partners Family Tree Magazine and FamilyReunion.com, kids can create a personalized family tree online and learn fun tips on planning their very own family reunion party. But the fun doesn't end there! Finding 20 family heirlooms will give one lucky kid the chance to win an Ultimate Tamagotchi Family Reunion for 25 family members with a special appearance from the special and fun Tamagotchi characters. [Link]

If "special and fun Tamagotchi characters" show up at my family reunion, they better know how to perform a keg stand. Oh, and some of my older relatives might demand an apology for Pearl Harbor.

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Dead Husband

Language Log today has an interesting post on the language of the Carrier people of British Columbia. With the arrival of a Francophone priest in 1865, and the subsequent influence of English speakers, their names changed.

There are a few family names of Carrier origin. There are a great many people named “Ketlo”, which is the anglicization of /ketloh/ (English speakers can’t hear the final /h/), which is the contracted form of /ke dʌtloh/ “squishy shoes”. The progenitor of the family was called by this nickname because he was always getting his feet wet.

As I mentioned, the idea of having both a given name and a family name was an innovation of the late 19th century, and to Carrier people it wasn’t terribly clear which was which or how they were passed on. As a result, some children would take their father’s first name as their family name and some the second. The little village of K’uzche, for example, is populated mostly by people named either “William” or “Austin”. They are actually the same family: the patriarch was named “William Austin”.

Wikipedia offers this account of how the Dakelh came to be called "Carriers":

According to noted anthropologist Antonia Mills, the term "Carrier" was derived from the mortuary tradition of carrying the husband's ashes back to the main traditional village site, where a potlatch would be held acknowledging the passing of the individual and dealing with redistributing his property. Which would make sense when considering seasonal movements and the need to bring the ashes back to the village as proof.

An Extended Holiday

There are two theories how the Christmas Mountains in Texas got their name. One says that the peaks resembled a line of Christmas trees. The other rests upon a local legend that really should involve cannibalism.

Local folklore has it that an area ranch family decided to spend the Thanksgiving holidays camping in the mountains and got smacked by a freak blizzard that prevented the family from escaping until Christmas.

The property officially shows up as "Christmas Mountains" in the 1918 Corps of Engineers U.S. Army topographic map and also on the 1904 University of Texas Mineral Survey Map completed by Hill and Udden, according to General Land Office officials.

The land commissioner believes "the family story sounds more plausible than the Christmas trees from a distance story." Christmas trees weren't even introduced to Texas until the middle 1800s, and they didn't become common until the 1920s, he said. [Link]

If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Police Station

Curt Garfield's grandfather Seneca Hall was the first police chief of Sudbury, Mass.

Standing in his yard on Boston Post Road, Hall would watch for speeders by seeing how quickly the car passed stripes painted on telephone poles, Garfield writes in "The Parson's Cat."

"Once he was sure that his victim was over the limit, he would sound a blast on his police whistle. The yahoo in question would generally screech to a stop as grandfather put on his hat, pulled his ticket book from the bib pocket of his overall and proceed to write out a speeding violation."

When asked what the police station looked like when he was a boy, Garfield had no problem recalling.

"It was our kitchen." [Link]

How Many Teaspoons in a Jelly Glass?

If your grandmother measures ingredients in pinches and smidgens, here's a way to record her recipes for posterity.

Get out the camcorders and film them making those recipes in person. Have them show you just how to do it, so even if they don't have measurements, you can zoom in and see that it's a "jelly glass full of water" added to the pot. Or you fold the dough in thirds, then flip it "like this."

At the very least, have a tape recorder with you so you can capture their voices telling about the food and when they first ate it, or relating that story that goes along with it. The more details you can get, the better. [Link]

And then buy some of these.

Blogger Exonerates SSDI

Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level reports on a case where someone used the SSDI to steal identities.

Tracy June Kirkland, 42, allegedly used Rootsweb.com to find the names, Social Security numbers and dates-of-birth of people who, shall we say, had no further need for their consumer credit lines. She then "would randomly call various credit card companies to determine if the deceased individual had an … account," according to the 15-count indictment (.pdf) filed in federal court in Los Angeles Tuesday.

She'd then persuade the issuer to change the mailing address for the dead victim to one of her many rented mail drops in Orange and Riverside counties, and in some cases she'd add her own name as an authorized user of the card, prosecutors say.

At least 100 of the dearly departed were allegedly used in the scheme, which prosecutors say began in October, 2005 and continued until last month.

Poulsen went to the trouble of actually asking folks at the SSA and Rootsweb how the SSDI works—unlike the MSM journalists I wrote about here, here, and here. He found that the fault in the Kirkland case lies not with the SSDI itself, but with the lenders who didn't use it correctly. In the words of Rootsweb spokesman Mike Ward, "The reason the Social Security Administration has it out there is to prevent fraud, and when it's used to perpetrate fraud it's because not all the checks and balances were in place on the financial institution's end."

Sheiky Lineages

If you're relying on an Arab sheik to fill in the blanks of your family history, make sure he cites his sources.

"They will tell you these enormously fanciful genealogical stories that trace everyone back to one guy who was the ancestor of them all," said retired Col. Patrick Lang, formerly the Defense Intelligence Agency's regional director for the Middle East. "Sometimes they just invent these things. Sometimes families get associated with a tribe and convince themselves that they, too, are descended from this original ancestor."

A tribe is formally defined as a "segmentary lineage," a kinship network organized by branching lines of descent from a common ancestor, with the most-direct male-line descendants holding the greatest prestige. But anthropologists are quick to note that such kinships are often hazy or even fictitious, projected onto the past to justify practical arrangements in the present. [Link]

Well, He Did Write the History of the World

The 2008 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards will be handed out tomorrow morning. Once again, I've been passed over. Apparently you have to have accomplished something worthwhile in your life to even be considered.

The 2008 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards Honorees:

LITERATURE
Mary Higgins Clark — The Bronx-born bestselling suspense writer has sold over 85 million books in the U.S. alone and credits her Irish heritage for her storytelling talent. Mrs. Higgins Clark’s newest novel is “Where Are You Now?”. Her father came from Ireland in 1906.


BUSINESS
The Forbes Family — “Forbes,” the oldest of the nation’s major business magazines, was founded in 1917 by Scottish immigrant B.C. Forbes, who first arrived in America in 1904. B.C.’s descendants continue to manage Forbes Media Inc., a privately held company which publishes “Forbes” in eight foreign languages, reaching five million readers worldwide.


EDUCATION
Donna E. Shalala — President, University of Miami, Dr. Shalala has more than 25 years of experience as an accomplished scholar, teacher and administrator. Under President Clinton, she served eight years as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, becoming the longest serving HHS Secretary in U.S. history. Her paternal grandfather came from Lebanon in 1900.

ENTERTAINMENT
Mel Brooks — Director, producer, writer and actor, Mel Brooks has created many comedy film classics as well as the popular television show “Get Smart.” His latest project is “The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein” currently playing on Broadway. His father emigrated from Austria as a child in 1896.

There's Only One Chicken in Alaska

Drawn from Donald Orth's 1967 Dictionary of Alaska Place Names:

Mishap Creek, aka Big Loss Creek, is Unimak Island stream named for a lighthouse keeper who stripped naked to cross the water, then tried to throw his clothes to the other side, only to watch helplessly as they landed downstream and disappeared.

There's Chicken, an old mining town established during the Klondike Gold Rush. A detailed history of the name is not in Orth's dictionary, but according to oft-told lore, miners wanted to call the community Ptarmigan after a bird common to the area, but no one knew how to spell it. So they settled on Chicken, since miners also called ptarmigans "tundra chickens."

Atlasta Creek was inspired by a remark uttered by the wife of the owner of a nearby roadhouse after the first building was completed: "At last a house."

Lost Temper Creek, an Arctic Slope stream, was named over a "camp incident." [Link]

[via Neatorama]

Youngme/Nowme

Check out these childhood photo recreations at Ze Frank's Color Wars 2008. My favorite childhood photo is of me getting my first bath in the kitchen sink. I'm off to buy a tripod and a bigger sink.

[via kottke]

Cherchez les French-Canadian Ancestors

I am very pleased that The Drouin Collection of (mostly) French-Canadian vital records is now indexed and searchable. My Ancestry.com subscription runs out on Friday, which means that I'll have to put off sleeping, eating and bathing until the weekend.