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]

Buster's Claim Doesn't Pass Muster

If 101-year-old runner Pierre "Buster" Martin reaches the finish line tomorrow in London, he would be the oldest person ever to complete a marathon. Assuming he really is 101.

Guinness officials said Friday that they did not consider Martin eligible for the record because he had never provided proof that he is 101.

A review by The Times of the documents Martin offered as proof of his age reveals that none were obtained with anything more than his own assertion that he was born Sept. 1, 1906, in France. The certificate of naturalization he provided was issued by the Home Office on Friday, based on an application made Thursday, when The Times first made inquiries.

"At the very least, there's no birth certificate. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors," said Robert Young, an independent senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records, though he was not speaking on behalf of the organization. Young said his sources had told him that Martin had two birth dates registered with the government: Sept. 1, 1906, and Sept. 1, 1913, which would make him 94. [Link]

Somebody Had to Watch Their Stuff

Newfoundland minister of tourism Clyde Jackman rejects the claim that Quebec—celebrating its 400th anniversary this year—was the first city in Canada where Europeans spent the winter.

Not true, said Mr. Jackman, who points out that fishermen were already frequenting the port of St. John's in the 1500s.

"Let's take this logically. If fishermen from the English country had equipment and so on, don't you think it's logical that they would have left people here year-round to keep an eye on that kind of stuff?" Mr. Jackman said.

"From the historical context, we're saying that yes, people were here, that they stayed here year-round, that they kept eye on all their fishing equipment. And that's our claim to it." [Link]

What Else Is Watson Hiding?

A Slate article casts doubt on the claim that James Watson is 16% African.

The company that did the sequencing claims that each base was read an average of 7.4 times, but Kari Stefansson, whose company assessed Watson's heritage, says he found enough errors in the public genome to have doubts about whether the 16 percent figure will hold up. For example, he says there are places where it appears that Watson has two X chromosomes, which would make him a woman. [Link]

Grave Used to Trap Tourists

Steven Sederwall is no longer fighting to exhume "Brushy Bill" Roberts to see if he was Billy the Kid. He can't be certain where to dig.

Sederwall said he suspects Roberts' actual grave is at the back of the cemetery and the one up front is "a tourist trap for them to sell their wares," referring to the Billy the Kid Museum in Hamilton. The back of the headstone, which is visible from the highway, contains a clear plastic cylinder full of museum fliers.

"I find it hard to believe that a pauper would get a front and center next to the highway gravesite," said Sederwall, who is investigating Bonney's jailhouse escape and the murder of two deputies during a courthouse shootout in 1881. [Link]

No, Really, Grandpa Was a Bastard

A very interesting piece in today's Washington Post about Frederick I. Douglas—a man who has been portraying abolitionist Frederick Douglass for two decades. When he's not delivering speeches in period costume, he's selling Frederick I. Douglass Wass Dis-Here Barbecue Sauce.

Douglas, of Baltimore, says he is a great-great-grandson of the great abolitionist, although some historians and documented Douglass descendants dispute his claim.

Douglas insists that he was born with the name Frederick I. Douglass IV. Explaining why he has not always used IV, Douglas says there was "not a need to use it. People use different things over the years. . . . I just did not use it. I didn't use it at that point in time."

He has also added an extra "s" to his surname since graduating from college.

In a 2001 letter, he claimed descent from Douglass' grandson Charles. Having learned that that Charles Douglass died at the age of 16 without issue, he now says that his grandfather was a different Charles—the illegitimate elder brother of the Charles who died.

Historians who specialize in Frederick Douglass say they have never heard of an illegitimate grandson. Douglas has provided no proof. [Link]

The Village That Never Was

Many residents of Danville, New Hampshire, believe that a village called Tuckertown was founded there in 1760 only to be wiped out by a smallpox epidemic about a decade later. Curt Springer and Betsy Sanders think it never existed.

"I think it was a fairy tale," Springer said. "People needed a good story, and somehow that got embellished into being Tuckertown."

Springer and Sanders, who help oversee the Tuckertown Road area because it is part of the town forest, have done a great deal of research, trying to find out if Tuckertown ever really existed.

They note that it was never mentioned in any public records and that there are no cellar holes in the area that indicate any sort of village.

"There is no evidence," Springer said. "How do you prove something is real if it doesn't exist?" [Link]

Built Like a Brick S***house, But When?

The Adam Thoroughgood House in Virginia Beach, Virginia, was once thought to be the oldest English brick house in America.

The city used to claim it was, for decades. Just think: Jamestown was founded in 1607; the Adam Thoroughgood House was supposedly built only 29 years later. The city even gave the house an address to match its alleged birth date, 1636 Parish Road.

Experts in the 1980s determined it was probably built about 50 years later, around 1680. Other experts last year dated the house to about 1720.

These expert opinions matter little to 81-year-old W. Paul Treanor.

He has no special background in historical research and only a high school diploma. But he is a 10th-generation descendant of Adam Thoroughgood, and he has spent 15 years pulling together every scrap of paper he can find on his ancestor.

Treanor is the last true believer in the oldest-English-brick-house theory.

He loves to proselytize, but he expects to die before he convinces the experts they are wrong.

Treanor knows he ticks off the experts in Williamsburg. He smiles at the thought. "I frankly don't give a damn," he said. [Link]

A Major League Puzzle

Luis Castro had a brief stint with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1902, and has been recognized as the first player from Latin America to play big-league baseball in the modern era. Problem is, he might have been born in the United States.

According to e-mails exchanged between the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and a member of the SABR biographical committee in 2001, these were the facts uncovered for a baseball player named Louis Castro during that period: He was born on Nov. 25, 1876 in the United States, he worked in a saloon, married a woman named Margaret and lived in Flushing for most of his life. His father, Nestor Castro, and mother, Agnes Wasquees, were both born in South America and he died at the age of 64 on Sept. 24, 1941 at Manhattan State Hospital on Wards Island.

So that's it. Castro's not only American, he's a New Yorker, right? Maybe.

Castro's death record says he was born in the United States, but the 1910 Georgia Census gives his birthplace as Medellin, Colombia. [Link]

The reputed 1910 census entry for Castro is found on page 132A of roll 192 (Atlanta, Ward 6). His occupation appears to be "undertaker," which must have conflicted with the "long minor-league career after 1902" attributed to him on this forum.

Castro played ball at Manhattan College in the late 1890s. Was he the Louis Castro, born Aug. 1877 in New York, boarding at 2329 8th Avenue in 1900, not far from where the campus was then located? His parents were natives of Australia, which Wikipedia tells me is not the same place as South America.

Anyone with an Ancestry.com subscription and time to kill want to look for Luis/Louis in their indexes?

Brushy Bill May Rise Again

The City Council in Hamilton, Texas, is considering a request to dig up the remains of "Brushy Bill" Roberts to obtain DNA samples.

Steve Sederwall, a former mayor of Capitan, N.M., told the council that he hopes to compare the DNA samples from Brushy Bill with remains of Billy the Kid’s mother. He said he already has samples from John Miller, another would-be Billy from New Mexico, along with a blood-stained bench where the Kid supposedly died after Sheriff Pat Garrett shot him. [Link]

Winston's Tribe: Jewish or Iroquois?

DavidB at Gene Expression tackled the question yesterday of Winston Churchill's purported Jewish ancestry. A check of secondary sources revealed no such lineage.

The only serious gap in the official records of Churchill's ancestry is a long way back in the female line, which cannot be traced beyond his great-great-grandmother, Anna Baker. According to family legend, she was part-Iroquois Indian, which the family believed accounted for the prevalence of dark eyes or complexion in the family. This does have a certain whiff of cover-up, but if so the cover-up may be of something other than Jewish blood. According to one account, Churchill himself believed there was a drop of black somewhere in his ancestry (see Elisabeth Kehoe, Fortune's Daughters: The Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters (2004), p.4). In any case, the usual claims of Jewish ancestry concern Churchill's mother's father, Leonard Jerome, and not the female line leading back to Anna Baker.

He concludes that the claims stem from a parenthetical comment—probably tongue-in-cheek—in a 1993 article by Moshe Kohn.

Where There's a Will, There's a Way to Keep It Secret

I've written before about Robert Brown's claim that he is the illegitimate child of the late Princess Margaret. Now Brown wants to take a peek at her will to see if it might prove his claim. Problem is, wills made by members of the Royal Family are not open to inspection by the public.

If individuals in general were allowed to claim the right to represent the public and seek judicial review, there would be "anarchy", counsel said. "This week Mr Brown; next week Mr White, Mr Pink, Mr Green."

This principle was established to avoid "busybodies, cranks and mischief-makers". Mr [Frank] Hinks said: "With all due respect, this applies to Mr Brown. He is suffering from a delusion." [Link]

Evidently very little respect is due Mr. Brown.

So Unbelievable It Must Be True

A new book identifies Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon of Bhopal, India, as the first in line to the throne of France.

A distant cousin of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he is alleged to be not only related to the current Bourbon king of Spain and the Bourbon descendants still in France, but to have more claim than any of them to the French crown.

The author, Prince Michael of Greece, offers a very persuasive argument.

"If I am right - and I don't have absolute proof, but I completely believe in my theory - then Balthazar Bourbon would be the eldest in the line," he told the Guardian.

"This is the cherry on the cake. Mr Bourbon is head of a decent, dignified, middle-class Indian family. They look so Indian and yet bear this name. When you look at them, it seems incredible. The more unbelievable it is, the more I believe in it." [Link]

Director: Good Odds It's the Son of God

Those caskets found in Israel contained the bones of their occupants, and mitochondrial DNA was reportedly extracted from the boxes labeled "Yeshua" and "Mariamne" (better known as Jesus and Mary Magdalene). Critics argue that the names on the ossuaries were common among Jews of the era, to which Lost Tomb of Jesus director Simcha Jacobovici responds, Consider the odds.

"There are really only two possibilities," says director Jacobovici. "Either this cluster of names represents the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. Or some other family, with this very same constellation of names, existed at precisely the same time in history in Jerusalem."

To calculate the odds, Mr. Jacobovici took the data to University of Toronto mathematician Dr. Andrey Feuerverger. Factoring in the commonality of these names in first-Century Israel, Dr. Feuerverger puts the odds of this tomb not belonging to Jesus and his family at one in 600. [Link]

They Weren't All Working on the Railroad

While poking holes in the quilt myth, history professor Martin Hershock notes that this is not the only far-fetched tale of the Underground Railroad.

"Any time you're dealing with the Underground Railroad, the myths are monumental," Hershock told me.

"Virtually any house that dates from the antebellum period is going to have a claim affixed to it that it was part of the Underground Railroad. If every house that had such a claim attached to it were actually a part of the Underground Railroad, there would have been a giant sucking sound as every single slave from Kentucky was instantaneously drawn out of the South." [Link]

Is It Honestly Abe?

Monday is the last day to bid on The Kaplan Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln. The starting bid is $5 million, which "will seem trifling compared to its realizable value after confirmation by the Lincoln scholarship community."

Lincoln scholar the late Professor Elton Trueblood had no doubt the young man of the daguerreotype was Lincoln. On the other hand I am aware of several well known and influential Lincoln authorities who have declared the opposite view: Illinois State Historian Thomas F. Schwartz, and former President of the Lincoln Group of New York, Richard Sloan.

To my knowledge there has never been a more controversial subject amongst Lincoln scholars as this matter. Accordingly, it seems fitting and proper that all the known evidence (both pro and con) should be put up on the Internet for all to see. The analyses can be examined at www.lincolnportrait.com.

If you're hesitant to fork over such a large sum for a portrait lacking provenance and authentication, don't worry. The website offers both a made-up history of the picture, and a plastic surgeon's professional opinion that it is indeed Lincoln. The doctor notes that Abe "underwent a noticeable change in his physical appearance beginning in January 1841 as a result of a grave emotional crisis," which explains why the daguerreotype looks nothing like him.

(Thanks to Sharon Sergeant for sending this item my way.)

Did the Princess Hide a Pregnancy?

Robert Brown, an accountant born in Kenya in 1955, claims to be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret, and 12th in line to the British throne.

At the heart of his claim is a meeting he had with a woman he believes to have been Princess Margaret when he was a young boy in Nairobi.

"I don't recall ever seeing her before but I know this woman spent some time with me. I remember we were playing games and during the day she told me that I must be on my very best behaviour because one day I might be king of England. That meeting has stayed with me and kept me going. Although I don't think I ever saw her again."

A key part of his case is that at the time of his birth, the Princess is described in at least one report of the day as [having] been confined to bed with a "hacking cough". [Link]

"Hacking cough" is, of course, an English euphemism for the expulsion of a child from one's uterus.

Would You Believe 999?

Bill Doering's statement last week in an AP article that "some 1,000 early Mexican settlers are buried at Kings Valley Cemetery" in Oregon has the locals scratching their heads.

“I got news for you, honey. There weren’t any Mexican people out there at that time. I don’t give a hoot what this dude says,” said Audrey Theurer, a local historian and former clerk of the Kings Valley Cemetery Association.

“It’s just ridiculous. Period,” said Earle Greig, who is a descendant of the family from which the tight-knit community takes its name.

“One thousand is a pretty big number,” said Mary Gallagher, curator of research and history at the Benton County Historical Museum.

“I don’t see how that many burials could take place without locals being aware of it. ... The history of the community is not that long. Things like that get passed down. That’s not going to go unheard-of,” she added. “This is just something I’ve never heard of.” [Link]

The World's Oldest Liar

The Gerontology Research Group is keeping an eye on the world's supercentenarians—those people who've neglected to check out by age 110. The group's website has a number of tables with data on current and past supercentenarians, but my favorite is the one listing False And Exaggerated Claims of Longevity.

Charlie Smith claimed to have been born in Liberia on July 4, 1842, and died Oct. 5, 1979, in Florida at the whopping age of 137. The July fourth birth date was chosen by Smith himself—"Out of loyalty to his country" reported Time in 1967. He may have chosen the year of his birth as well, if a Boston Globe article on Guinness World Records is correct:

A record search in Arcadia, Fla., showed a marriage record in which Smith claimed he was 35 years old in 1910. He apparently exaggerated his age by at least 33 years. ["Eat a Tree, but Never a Bicycle," Feb. 11, 1982]

His exaggeration was perhaps even worse. A partial marriage index for DeSoto County (county seat Arcadia) shows a marriage for Charlie Smith and Bell Van on Jan. 8, 1910. The couple was living in Lily, DeSoto County, in April of that year, at which time Charlie's age was 32. His place of birth was given as "Georgia."

If a liar, Smith was a very talented one. He said in interviews that he came to America in 1854, and lived in slavery until freed by Lincoln. No one seems to have doubted him. On its Emancipation Proclamation page, the National Archives links to an audio clip of Smith saying he was "21 years old when freedom was declared." A 1975 conversation with historian Elmer Sparks may be read or listened to at American Memory. At one point in the interview, Smith pushes the year of his birth back even further.

I'm a hundred and forty-four, last, last year, fourth of July. A hundred and forty-four years old now. My birthday, I gets a birthday card, I'm a hundred and forty-four last fourth day of July, last year. I'm a hundred and forty-four.

It's hard to consider Smith truthful when you read the other stories he told of his life. A few years ago, a screenplay titled 'Long Came Charlie was optioned by Dustin Hoffman's production company.

Described as "a black Little Big Man," 'Long Came Charlie is the incredible true tale of the world's oldest man, crusty codger Charlie Smith, who on his 134th birthday shares his poignant and often hilarious life story, which includes a disasterous [sic] cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, a brush with death at Gettysburg, an encounter with Abraham Lincoln, Charlie's travels with the Jesse James Gang, his gunfight with Jesse himself and how he apprehended the man who shot President Garfield. [Link]

According to the Sparks interview, Smith's partner in apprehending Garfield's shooter was none other than Billy the Kid.

Throw in Mark Twain and Queen Victoria and that'll make a great movie.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Too Many Heirs Want Share of Tomb

From the Chicago (Ill.) Tribune:

Taj Mahal entangled in love heptagon

By Kim Barker
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published August 8, 2005

AGRA, India -- For hundreds of years, the Taj Mahal has been the symbol of true love, a monumental valentine from an emperor to his dead wife that took more than 20 years and 20,000 people to build.

But now, as with many true loves and good intentions, the Taj has ended up in court. The white marble mausoleum, one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, is the subject of a bitter custody dispute.

At last count, six parties claimed to own the Taj instead of the government.

[snip]

. . . a self-proclaimed prince, armed with genealogical charts, says the Taj belongs to him.

In a darkly romantic gesture appropriate to the Taj, the wife of another purported descendant of the king's Mughal dynasty has threatened suicide over the whole mess.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

See also Indian Pauper Inherits Taj Mahal.