A Swiss genealogist seems to have found examples of a breed of cow thought extinct since 1975.
Retired Swiss economist Roger Pasquier rediscovered what are thought to be Fribourg cows, imported from Switzerland in the 1930s, while investigating his family roots in Punta Arenas in southern Chile.
"I notice much more interest for the cows than for the Swiss emigrants," said Pasquier, who has published a book entitled, The people of Fribourg and their descendants in Chilean Patagonia. [Link]
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.Other offenses included "Having a hare," "Taking swan's eggs," and "Pretending to have skill."
Reasons for imprisonment included "feloniously milking a cow", being an "incorrigible rogue", "vagabond", or "lewd woman" and suffering from "indolence". [Link]
Here's another story about Marion West and Vy Higginsen—the cousins of different races I blogged about in March. West, a Missouri cattle farmer, explains why the color of a cousin's skin doesn't matter:
"I've butchered a lot of cattle, all different kinds. When you cut the hides off, underneath, they're all the same," said West. [Link]I'm pretty sure he stole that from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
After a fight with his wife, Serbian farmer Zivomir Nesic had her name on the family headstone replaced with a picture of his favorite cow.
He said: 'I always said my wife was a cow so, if I'm going to have a cow on my grave, I would rather it was one I actually liked.' [Link]
Renee was kind enough to mention that GenealogyBank.com is offering free access until next Tuesday (see her post for the secret handshake). Thanks to her, I was able to find this item in a 1866 newspaper:
A six-year old chap in Bethel, Me., being unable to drive the cow out of the barn, set it on fire, and then, he says, "she run."I have plenty of relatives from Bethel, but I haven't yet confirmed that this brilliant lad was a cousin.
It's déjà vu all over again.
I blogged last year about an historic black settlement in Ohio fighting to keep a dairy farm out of the neighborhood. Today comes news of an historic black settlement in California fighting to keep a dairy farm out of the neighborhood.
Basque immigrant Sam Etchegaray had two seemingly perfect swaths for a pair of large dairies: 2,000 rural acres of dusty fields, where thousands of cows would be at home in the No. 1 milk-producing county in the nation.
The only problem is that the pastures were next to a state park that pays tribute to a community founded by a freed slave, raising the ire of environmentalists and blacks who objected to the pollution and stench that would come with the cows.
"I guess they're ready to put manure on top of us," said Nettie Morrison, 72, a resident of the unincorporated community of about 120 families. [Link]
If you can tolerate milk in your diet, you have your cattle-herding ancestors to thank.
On the other hand, Asians have been shown to be more tolerant of Jackie Chan movies.All humans digest mothers' milk as infants, but until cattle were domesticated 9000 years ago, weaned children no longer needed to digest milk. As a result, many shut down the enzyme lactase, which breaks down the lactose into sugars. After cattle were domesticated, however, it became advantageous for their keepers to digest milk, and lactose tolerance evolved.
Not everyone can stomach milk equally, however. Northern Europeans, who tend to be descended from cattle farmers, are much more lactose tolerant than most Asians, who were not as dependent on cattle. [Link]
There's an interesting column in Saturday's Times about the pitfalls of genealogical research. Some pitfalls are deeper than others.
Maurice Kellner, a county officer for Genuki, the genealogical body for the UK and Ireland, reports how he helped a woman in Tasmania seeking facts about her family connection to the village of Wappenham, near Towcester. He found that one of her ancestors had been sentenced to be transported to Australia for committing unnatural acts with a cow. “I’m not sure if she was grateful or not because she never contacted me back,” he says. [Link]
From The Indiana (Pa.) Democrat of Oct. 30, 1879:
Several girls were recently brought before a justice in Scranton, Pa., on a charge of stoning a peaceable old lady. Their defence was that she was a witch, and they believed it to be their duty to stone her to death.From The Marion (Ohio) Daily Star of Mar. 6, 1882:
A Wisconsin farmer has been put under bonds to keep the peace on account of his attempts to mutilate an old lady whom he believes to be a witch. He avers in defense that she had bewitched his cattle and has repeatedly entered his domicile through the chimney, the keyhole and other inconvenient and inappropriate apertures, contrary to his wish and to his great terror and distress.From The Madison County (Ill.) Courier of Apr. 19, 1866:
The following witty yet suggestive anecdote is related of Chief Justice Holt, before whom an old woman was once brought accused of witchcraft. The evidence against her was that she had been seen to ride through the air on a broomstick.
"Well, my good woman," said the humane judge to the demented old creature, "did you ride through the air, as the witnesses say?"
"Yes, sir," replied the accused, supposing that what everybody said must be true.
"And I know of no law against it," said the judge, who immediately discharged the prisoner.
From the Decatur (Ill.) Review of Dec. 15, 1918:
"The value of vital statistics might be cited from the following, vouched for by Dr. Hurty of the Indiana State Board of Health.
"A farmer in Indiana left his valuable farm in trust to his unthrifty son, to go to his granddaughter on her twenty-first birthday. When she believed she was 21 and claimed her inheritance, her father disputed her age, saying she was only 19. The family Bible was consulted, but the leaf with the record was gone. The court was in a quandry. At last a neighbor remembered that a valuable cow belonging to the grandfather had given birth to a calf on the day the girl was born, and he could swear to the coincidence; perhaps the grandfather had recorded the date of the birth of the calf. His farm books showed that he had done so, and the date of the birth of the girl was thus established. This story has a cheerful ending; in too many instances hardship and loss have been suffered because of a similar lack of indisputable birth records."
A genealogy feature in Sunday's Washington Post reveals how one woman has come to terms with having bovine-budging, wooden-toothed relatives.
Jill Groce always knew that her father's family had a long history in America, but it wasn't until she started researching her genealogy that she discovered exactly how far those roots stretched. Groce, a 62-year-old copy editor from Montgomery Village, traced her family tree back nearly four centuries; a 17th-century court transcript details one cousin's appearance before a Maryland magistrate on charges that Groce says sounds suspiciously like cow tipping. (For the record, Groce also learned that she is the "fourth cousin, seven times removed" of George Washington.) [Link]
Finally, a moment of authenticity on PBS's Texas Ranch House. In the last hour of the series, wannabe ranchero Bill Cooke cheated one his hands out of a promised horse, and then fired him. That led the rest of the bunkhouse boys to quit, leaving Cooke and his puppet-master wife to finish the task of rewriting history all by their lonesomes.
This show of loyalty by the ranch hands demonstrated that they, at least, had learned something from the experience. Sure, they were disrespectful to the women and were sometimes lax in carrying out their duties, but when the bull chips were down, they did their jobs as though the calendar read "1867" and comfortable lives were not waiting for them just off-camera. And when push came to shove, they did what any cowhands in 1867 would have done when the cattle drive was finished and the boss proved himself a cheat and a coward: they abandoned him.
As I suggested earlier, there are better ways to connect with one's ancestors than dressing up in their clothing and acting out their chores. I'm never more in touch with my Finnish heritage than when I'm eating a slice of nisu—a sweetened bread flavored with cardamom. But I have no desire to eat lanttulaatikko—a turnip casserole. Both are authentic Finnish fare, so what's the difference? The nisu is made from my great-grandmother's recipe, and tastes just like the bread I remember eating when I was a kid. We were never forced to eat lanttulaatikko, and trying it now would likely conjure up more nausea than memories.
Likewise, I'm never closer to my Yankee heritage than when I'm working at some necessary task outdoors like bucking wood or (to use my earlier example) fixing a stone wall. It's the necessity of the tasks that brings the desired connection. I don't know that that sort of connection can be manufactured on a TV show, but I suspect that the cowhands on Texas Ranch House felt something like it.
As for the Cookes ... I hope they had a nice summer vacation.
It ain't easy being a Nigerian census taker. Once you've crossed the desert on a snorting camel and dodged the rebels seeking to attack you with acid and machetes, you still might not get the information you're after.
It's considered bad luck to ask a Yoruba how many children the family has. Asking a herdsman about his cows or camels likely will get you shown the door. And what is a male census worker to do when Muslim women are home alone? [Link]
Members of The Clan MacFarlane Society are painting their faces Braveheart-blue in preparation for a battle over an island in Loch Lomond.
Eilean-I-Vow—less poetically known as Cow Island—was claimed by Douglas MacFarlane nine years ago for about £500 after he'd traced the roots of the clan to that location and established that it had no official owner. Now the rest of the clan—a family of "notorious cattle raiders"—wants ownership.
The clan's descendants, who span the world, believe the ruins of a historic seventeenth-century castle are being further dilapidated by party-goers. By assuming ownership of the land, the society wants to preserve the relics, one of the last few remaining traces of the clan in the region.Douglas is willing to give it up for the ever-so-reasonable price of £1 million. His wife Bernadette says, "I've e-mailed the society several times but never had a reply. I don't understand what they're trying to do." She concedes that the island has had unauthorized visitors, but "It's very hard to stop people coming over to the island."
"We thought about hiring someone, maybe an eccentric poet, to stay there, but we can't build anything on the land." [Link]
From The (Cleveland, Ohio) Plain Dealer:
Foes fight big farm near historic black settlementGranted, tourists will be put off by the smell, but didn't the original settlers ride horses, raise cattle, and shovel this stuff off the streets? They should call it "period ambience," and charge extra for admission.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Associated Press
Palestine, Ohio - Opponents of large livestock farms usually try to block the projects by claiming they will pollute, threaten the health of nearby residents and reduce property values.
But a proposed dairy farm near this tiny western Ohio village has produced a new argument - one of history.
A 2,000-head dairy farm many soon land right next to one of Ohio's first black pioneer settlements, which is being preserved and restored.
[snip]
Roane Smothers, whose ancestors helped settle Longtown, is worried that the smell from a nearby dairy would drive away tourists and hinder fund-raising to restore the settlement.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
It may seem odd, but genealogists can sometimes learn important information because of the animals their ancestors owned. In my own hometown in Maine, several pages of town records around 1890 were devoted to recording the names and owners of licensed dogs in the town. Along with the joy experienced upon learning that one's great-great-grandfather named his dog "Rufus" comes the more valuable insight that he did indeed live in the town in the year noted.
Sometimes establishing residence is of vital importance. In Plymouth, cows and goats were distributed among the settlers in 1627. Records of the division of cattle offer a sort of census of the colony, giving the names of every man, woman, and child. As records for some families are sketchy in the early years of the colony, genealogists can point to this record as proof that their ancestors arrived prior to 1627—or, as with my own Dunham forebears, as evidence that they had not yet arrived.
Also useful to genealogists are records of crop marks, or ear marks. These were the slits and notches cut into animals' ears to show ownership.1 The first pages of Plymouth town records list ear marks, in compliance with a law of the Colony Court, passed Nov. 15, 1636, that "every mans marke of his Cattle be brought to the towne book where he lives and that no man give the same but shall alter any other brought by him and put his owne upon them."2
Some examples:
John Wood a hollow cut out on the top of right yeare.A son would often inherit or adapt his father's mark—a sensible policy if inheriting his father's livestock. In towns where crop marks were diligently recorded, a genealogist may find in them proof of parentage, in addition to proof of residence in the town. Two men sharing the same name may be distinguished by their different crop marks. And record of a young man's first crop marks might be taken as evidence that he had that year "come of age."
Giles Rickett the top of the left yeare cutt of and a slit upon the same yeare.
Lieftennant Southworth the marke of his Cattle is a cropp on the left eare.
John Dunhame senior the marke of his Cattle is a croch on the left eare.3
