Right Number, Wrong Year

Matt Unger's transcription of the 1924 diary of his grandfather, Harry Scheurman, has earned a write-up in Sunday's New York Times.

Mr. Unger’s mother first showed him the volume when he was doing a fifth-grade project on family history. But he examined it closely only last Thanksgiving, at which point he decided to transcribe it.

At odd moments, the two worlds occasionally seem to touch, as they did the day Mr. Unger impulsively dialed Mr. Scheurman’s old telephone number — ORchard-0505.

“Some company picked up the phone,” the grandson said. “I was so wigged out that I just blurted, ‘I’m sorry, this is the wrong number.’” [Link]

Doughboy Diaries In Demand

The superb Veterans History Project has launched a new effort to collect firsthand accounts of the First World War. Learn more at Experiencing War (World War I, the Great War).

World War I is among the least documented wars of those covered by the Veterans History Project, and the number of collections relating its experiences are not likely to grow dramatically. Because all but a handful of WWI vets are no longer alive, oral history interviews are out of the question, so we must rely on the generosity of relatives and friends of deceased veterans to donate written accounts in letters, diaries, and memoirs, as well as precious collections of photographs.

A G-Man's Journal

Here's another place you might not want to find your grandparents' names: the diaries of FBI special agent Max H. Roder, now for sale on eBay.

The diaries from 1931 to 1937 are his narcotics work in Philadelphia Pa. Diaries from 1938 to 1959 are New York City work except for a brief period Sept 46 to Sept 47 when he went back to Philadelphia Pa. It appears the New York City cases were mainly targeted again Italian Americans in Little Italy. You'll be amazed how many people smoked opium in NYC. [Link, via Boing Boing]

Ace Ventura: Family Historian

Jim Carrey is set to star in a film called "Me Time," which—despite the following synopsis—will be a comedy.

[The story] revolves around a writer penning a book about his great-great-grandmother, a frontier woman. When his pregnant wife has to go on bed rest, leaving him to care for the house and their other child, his confidence is shaken as he reads his ancestor's diary, in which she describes raising a family, plowing the fields and taming the wild environs. [Link]

A Day in the Life of a Radio

April 1, 1930, was an important day in the life of my grandfather Edgar Dunham's radio. That was the day that radios were first counted in the census. Here it is, enumerated with the rest of the family:

On that same day, my grandfather recorded in his diary that he "took Radio Battery over to Geo. Forbes." (I would guess that the radio used a "wet cell" battery that had to be taken to town for recharging periodically.) George was a young auto mechanic in the nearest village, and (the census shows) lived a few doors down from Edgar's first cousin once removed, Charles A. Dunham. Boarding with Charles on April 1, 1930, was Edgar's girlfriend, Mae Coolidge, who attended the same school where Edgar spent half the day splitting wood.

Edgar and Mae would marry and live happily ever after. Of his radio, no further record has been found, suggesting that—like many people in my genealogical experience—it ceased to exist on April 2, 1930.

Dodd Doomed in Iowa

D-Day has the scoop on the latest scandal to rock the 2008 presidential race: Chris Dodd's great-great-great-great-aunt hated corn.

"Mama never usually cooks it right," wrote Rose-a-Sharon Millicent Dodd in a diary entry dated March 16, 1835. "An' e'en if she did, it sticks between my teeth like President Jackson sticks to the Indian Removal Act!"

Staffers for Senator Dodd hastily assembled a closed-door meeting to discuss how best to deflect the damage this could do to his nascent campaign. Needless to say, the eating habits of a distant relative twice remove[d] would have a crushing effect in the farmlands of this midwestern state, home to the first caucus in the nation.

Pepys Keeps His Mistress

Samuel Pepys's diary tells of his wife walking in on him and their maid, Deb Willet.

“(Elizabeth) coming up suddenly did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats,” he wrote, adding details of their embrace that cannot be repeated in a family newspaper. “I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also.”

Dr. Kate Loveman has discovered through some genealogical research at the Bodleian Library that the affair might have survived Willet's discharge and subsequent marriage.

Willet married Jeremiah Wells, a theology graduate, in January 1670. Wells soon wrote to Pepys to ask if the writer could use his contacts in the Royal Navy to get him a job. Pepys obliged, securing Wells a job as a ship’s chaplain. The diarist therefore knew not only where his old flame lived, but also that her husband was away at sea. [Link]

Diary of a Confirmed Bachelor

Twenty years ago, Paul and Sandy Kolacki's daughter found the 1886 diary of Levi Dalley in a bucket of toys. The Peapack, N. J., couple recently decided to donate the book to the State Historical Society in North Dakota, where Dalley settled and lived out his wifeless days.

Area genealogist George Barron said records show Dalley was a bachelor who apparently was unwilling to marry, despite his neighbors' hopes. In the Jamestown Weekly Alert of April 3, 1890, the Mount Pleasant Notes read, "Levi Dalley has returned from New Jersey, but alas, we are doomed to disappointment. We had all looked eagerly forward to the time when we could welcome Mr. and Mrs. Dalley in our midst. Mr. Dalley is here, but Mrs. Dalley, oh where! Oh where! can she be!" [Link]

Talk Back to the Future

A new British website, Posterity.com, will let your descendants 1,000 years from now know what a fascinating individual you are. Or at least what a fascinating individual you think you are.

The site provides you virtual immortality by holding your hand through the process of writing a 16-chapter autobiography, and then hosting it online in perpetuity. For a £7.50 annual fee, you can continue updating as long as you wish. Fortunately, there's no annual fee for perpetual storage.

In addition to all this, there’s an online ‘Diary’ where you can write and store your thoughts on the day’s events, an area entitled ‘My Time Capsule’ in which you can lay down messages that are time-released for any date in the future, and a ‘Safety Deposit Box’ where you can store electronic files for the whole of eternity. [Link]

Let's hope that your descendants in 3006 can still import a GEDCOM file.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

A Logorrheic Diarist

The blog of the Athanasius Kircher Society today features the world's foremost diarist. In a 1994 interview, Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, said he'd been spending four hours a day for twenty years recording whatever he ate, did, dreamed, said, and heard. He said he had stopped traveling, because when he gets back "it takes me a day to catch up with the notes." His diary—now housed at Washington State University—ultimately included about 38 million words, stored in 81 cardboard boxes.

This reminds me of Joseph Heller's book Good as Gold, in which the President of the United States spends his first year in office writing a memoir of his first year in office.

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

Her Postman Never Rang Twice

Seen on eBay:

Personal housewife diaries 27 years 1936-1962

Large lot of personal diaries spanning 27 years....From the perspective of an everyday housewife...most basic kind of stuff from the weather to baking bread....I've only briefly looked at some of this and who knows there maybe some juicy stuff in here...(the postman rings twice kind of thing).

[snip]

On Dec-13-05 at 00:49:28 PST, seller added the following information:

These diaries are from one individual housewife from Oregon..who was apparently afflicted with polio...from what I can tell...Some of these diaries are the lock and key variety. From what I have read it's just the day to day going's on from doing the wash...baking bread...weather and visiting with friends..etc...

[snip]

[Read the rest]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree