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]

The Gift of Grace

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good turkey!

SAN BERNARDINO, Cal., Dec. 25.—A large camp of brake-beam tourists just beyond the city limits is without a sumptuous turkey and chicken feast to-day only because the prompt action of Mr. and Mrs. George Delaney saved from the pot the entire stock of their poultry farm which had been given the tramps by their eight-year-old daughter Grace as a Christmas gift.

Grace had just returned from a church service when a tramp wandered up to the door. The sermon had been preached from the text that it is better to give than receive. The child put it to the test by presenting the wanderer with her own pet rooster. He promptly sent all the other denizens of the "Tincan" camp for Christmas gifts, and the little girl continued applying her pastor's text through the medium of her parents' poultry.

Just as the last pullet passed into the hands of a smiling tramp, Mrs. Delaney discovered the little Lady Bountiful. A hurried visit to the camp saved several hundred dollars' worth of turkey and chicken from being spitted over the sage-brush and yucca fires of the hungry tramps. [The New York Times, Dec. 26, 1909 (Link)]

Remember to Check the Chicken Guts

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]

Meet the Other White Meat

Stahnsdorf Cemetery has pigs. Davis Cemetery has turkeys.

Turkeys don't pose a threat to humans, but they can be intimidating. If a person runs from one of the toms, the aggressive males will give chase, [Susan] Finkleman said. She's learned to sidle by the turkeys and avoid making eye contact with them.

But even if the turkeys never actually attack, their presence at the cemetery is untenable.

“Out of their own fear of the turkeys, someone could take a step backward and fall over a headstone and get hurt,” Finkleman said. [Link]

KCRA reporter Richard Sharp tried to get the other side of the story, but was rebuffed:

Animated Ancestors

The Glasgow City Council has added Scrooge McDuck to its list of famous Glaswegians.

[A spokeswoman said:] "We have carried out some research and were delighted to discover that Scrooge McDuck hails from Glasgow."

McDuck's nationality is obvious given his surname and his lugubrious Scottish brogue, but his hometown remained a mystery. But an obscure US comic called The Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck, published in 1996, depicts the eponymous web-footed hero growing up as a humble shoeshine boy in Glasgow, which is shown as a grey metropolis of smoking chimneys and cobbled streets. [Link]

In case you're interested, here's the Duck family tree. Like mine, it has its share of loons and coots.

Cemetery Scavengers Not Welcome

Should you visit Graceland Cemetery in Mayville, Wisconsin, try to ignore the vultures and periodic explosions.

Ralph Smith, president of the Graceland Cemetery Association and head caretaker, said he has occasionally seen two or three pairs of turkey vultures nesting in the graveyard that dates back to the 1850s, but there are now about 60 of the birds on the ground, on headstones and in the trees.

Police are warning residents that an officer will fire bird bangers and screamer sirens twice a day to scare away turkey vultures that are roosting there. [Link]

[Yet again, thanks to Nancy!]

It's Their Third Bird

You have to admire the British government's commitment to both genealogy and ornithology. Their DoVE (Digitisation of Vital Events) project is progressing nicely, with 40 million of 70 million historical UK birth records now included in the EAGLE (Electronic Access to GRO Legacy Events) database.

Yet another bird's name has been chosen as the acronym for the third project - MAGPIE (Multi Access to GRO Published Index of Events). This will provide online indexes to the newly digitised records, and will be accessible via the internet, hopefully by April 2008. [Link, via Featherstone Genealogy]

Their fourth project will undoubtedly be dubbed "PELICAN" (Project to Encourage Licentious Implementation of Cute Avian Names).

The Mostoller Wild Goose Bean

As a genealogist and an organic gardener, I love this story. It seems that the most valuable heirloom passed down in the Mostoller family of Pennsylvania came from the gullet of a goose.

It was pure serendipity that prompted a wild goose to land in the heart of Somerset County in the fall of 1865 — serendipitous for those of us who love the taste of heritage, that is.

It was very bad luck for the goose, which plopped into a mill race at Joseph Mostoller’s sawmill south of Stoystown. David and John Mostoller, Joseph’s sons, spotted the goose and one of them shot it. When the boys’ mother, Sarah, butchered the bird, she discovered fresh beans in the craw. [Link]

Sarah planted the beans the next spring; they germinated and have produced crops ever since. A descendant (of Sarah) had a descendant (of the beans) tested several years ago, and it turned out to be an unrecorded variant, worthy of its own name: the Mostoller Wild Goose Bean.

A Business Deeply Rooted in His Family

Donny Richards makes some of his "Come Heah Tuh Me" turkey calls with the help of a long-dead ancestor.

It was a well-known fact that Richards' family originally came from the area of Lumpkin, Ga., and that the patriarch, Henry Spivey, was buried somewhere in the area.

“Really, his grave was found by accident when my mother was cleaning the graveyard,” Richard said. “And what was so amazing was that this huge cedar tree was growing right out of my great-great-great-grandaddy's chest.”

Only a small number of the turkey calls are made from the cedar that grew from his great-great-great-grandpa's chest, and those have a unique sound that Richards's credits to the wood. [Link]

Time to Talk Turkey

I don't know whether to buy Godfrey Hodgson's new book, A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving, after reading this excerpt. It states that "There was a feast in 1621, but not of turkey." A review provides Hodgson's argument, that "turkey couldn't have been served because the Pilgrims' heavy matchlock muskets simply were no match for the few wild turkeys inhabiting eastern Massachusetts at that time."

This would make a liar of my 10th great-grandfather William Bradford, who wrote that "besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc." In his defense, Bradford was reconstructing the Pilgrims' menu many years after the event, and may have been thinking of this painting.

Of Emus and Enumerators

Collecting census data can be a dangerous job—especially in Australia.

A 1986 inquiry found 9 per cent of collectors were the victims of dog attacks, or had their clothing damaged by a pooch.

That same report found one collector bitten by a horse, another stopped by a large bull, and others chased by geese, emus and a large pig. [Link]