I've poked around in trash dumps at a couple of family homesteads, but never have I probed beneath an outhouse. This MetaFilter post has some good links about amateur privy archaeologists and the treasures they find. Remember to wash up when you're done.
Those who prefer to stay aboveground may want to visit The Outhouse Museum's website, which features a collection of vintage postcards.
The New York Times has an entertaining article about genealogists who will go to any length to obtain DNA samples from possible relatives.
To her husband’s dismay, Melissa Robards, nee Springer, has spent more than $1,000 testing Springers around the country to see if they are related. She has been known to send flowers to stubborn holdouts.
More drastic measures may be necessary to secure DNA from the talk-show host Jerry Springer, who has so far ignored her three e-mail messages. Ms. Robards, a 55-year-old mother of two in Sparks, Nev., has not entirely dismissed posing as a cross-dresser to get on his show. [Link]
An AP story making the rounds today calls the use of the Internet and DNA testing "extreme genealogy."
Just as modern equipment has made it possible for any reasonably motivated person to climb Mount Everest or dive to the Andrea Doria, new technologies have made it possible to achieve incredible genealogical feats with relatively modest effort.I think the writer has shortchanged some truly extreme genealogists here. It's far easier to retrace the steps of a pioneering researcher than to make the discovery oneself. Knowing where to look and recognizing what one has found are skills that require more than a modest effort to develop, though the clues may seem obvious in retrospect. Genealogy becomes "extreme" when we're blazing new trails—not when we're following bread crumbs left by others.
Now, it takes nothing more than casual curiosity and a few hours of research to discover that New York-based civil rights activist Al Sharpton is descended from slaves who were owned by ancestors of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, a staunch opponent of desegregation. [Link]
From the Appleton (Wisc.) Post Crescent of June 27, 1931:
GENEALOGIST SEEKS BURIED PARCHMENTWashington—(AP)—Exhuming the body of an eighteenth century rabbi in a cemetery in Czechoslovakia will be the next step in the ancestor hunt in which Viola Root Cameron, international genealogist, is almost continually engaged.
Mrs. Cameron, blonde, small, quiet-mannered, hopes to find with the body a parchment which will supply some missing branches on the family tree of a wealthy New York client. She will go to Europe this summer personally to oversee the exhumation.
Such parchments, she says, were buried with the rabbis in the eighteenth century. The one she seeks was written between 1750 and 1800. If procured it will open a whole new field in tracing ancestry, she believes.
From The Newark (Ohio) Advocate of Dec. 18, 1931:
Columbus, Dec. 18.—(AP)—The date of her birth was so important to Jennie De Bout that she made a trip from California to Columbus, afoot most of the way.Miss De Bout, whose home is in Indian Diggins, Eldorado county, California, ended her 2,300 mile trip today, only to learn that the Franklin county probate court did not have a record of her birth. She said she walked most of the way, being given lifts by motorists only a few times. She told probate court attachés that she left California Oct. 22. The woman said she is 54 years old, and explained that she needed the date of her birth for life insurance purposes.
When advised that the court here had no record of her birth, Miss De Bout said she would go to Beverly, O., where she believes an uncle resides.
Genealogist Rudyard Edick recently visited the Fort Herkimer Church in Mohawk, N. Y., to photograph the grave of his ancestor Michael Ittig (Edick). He had to get special permission from church commissioner Donald Fenner.
Fenner showed Edick a trap door leading to the graves, with Edick slithering through a cramped space to an area underneath the church pulpit. Edick's background in spelunking no doubt helped a bit.
“I had done some caving in the past, so I decided to try it. It was a very tight space underneath. I had to crawl a considerable way to get to the graves,” said Edick.
Edick was surprised to find the footstone and headstone bearing the initials “M.I.” in excellent condition, further astonished that the distance between the two stones was exactly 56 inches - or roughly Edick's height. [Link]
You have to admire genealogist Lottie Smalls' persistence.
A relative had taken on the role of family historian but had tired of Smalls’ persistent questions as she tried to track the family’s genealogy herself. Soon, no one came to the door when Smalls visited. So she hid in bushes across the street and sent her daughter to the door — and that worked. [Link]
