No Hard Feelings, Right?

Seven centuries after getting kicked out, Dante Alighieri is being invited back to Florence.

The council approved a motion that called for the city's mayor to organize "a public rehabilitation" for Dante, who was sentenced in 1302 to exile from Florence under threat of death, ANSA reported Tuesday.

The motion, which passed by a 19-5 vote, calls for the mayor to head a public ceremony where the sentence would be revoked and the poet would be given the city's highest honor. The award would be accepted by one of Dante's descendants, the motion said. [Link]

For what it's worth, Dante himself seems quite content to stay where he is.

Appealing Ancestors

Craig Manson has announced a most excellent new venture: the Historical Appellate Review Project.

You've heard the story that Great-Uncle Festus was a no-good horse thief. But was he really? Did he get a fair trial? Did he have a good lawyer or even a lawyer at all? Can his name be cleared all these decades later? We might be able to help!

HARP, the Historical Appellate Review Project, is dedicated to setting the record straight. Using state-of-the-art genealogical and legal research procedures, HARP will investigate your family's alleged black sheep and let you know if their names might be cleared! In certain cases, we even may be able to go to court and get the official record changed!

Find out if we can lift the cloud of doubt and suspicion from your ancestors!

There's even a special deal for "GeneaBloggers"!

If Craig wants this to succeed, he should start calling himself "The Hammer".

He Won't Be a Bad Guy Until 2034

Jeff Scalf's grandmother was the half-sister of John Dillinger, which gives him the right to require anyone who uses the Dillinger name to pay up and portray the murderous gangster law-abiding citizen in a positive light.

"They all have to sign a clause stating that they won't present him as a murderer, cop killer or vicious or mean-spirited," he says. "It's fair to say that he was accused of one killing but was never convicted."

Under a 1994 Indiana law, Scalf and other family members control rights to Dillinger's name and portrayal for 100 years after his death, says Jonathan Polak, an Indianapolis lawyer representing Scalf. Just because Dillinger — and Marilyn Monroe and Rosa Parks, whom he also has represented — are dead, Polak says, "doesn't mean they are suddenly thrown into the public domain. … You're stealing a piece of property." [Link]

Into the Lion's Den

Seventy years after his death, the family of Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey, is still trying to clear his name. He was accused of misbehaving with the "fallen women" he tirelessly tried to rescue.

At the ensuing church trial, in 1932, only one of the 40 witnesses, Barbara Harris, a 17-year-old prostitute bribed with money and alcohol, testified against him. Nevertheless, the Rector was found guilty of "systematic misbehaviour" and "removed, deposed and degraded" by his nemesis, the Bishop of Norwich. [Link]

His trial was a cause célèbre and spawned a media circus, but it was the story of his bizarre death that interested me most. Having been defrocked, he took a job at Skegness playing the part of "A modern Daniel in the lion's den." Standing in a lion's cage, he preached from the Bible and spoke about the injustice he had suffered. On July 28, 1937, his co-star Freddie grew tired of his act and knocked him to the floor.

The lion then grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and stalked around the small cage shaking the poor Harold back and forth. The audience thinking it was part of the act roared with laughter and therefore it was some time before help was called. Unfortunately it was too late for Harold Davidson and he died from wounds sustained a few days later. [Link]

They're Russian to Judgment

From The (Toronto, Ont.) Globe and Mail:

Descendant of last czar pushes Russia to admit mistake

By GRAEME SMITH

Monday, January 9, 2006

From Monday's Globe and Mail

Yekaterinburg, Russia — On the face of it, Maria Romanova's legal application to Russian prosecutors might seem straightforward.

As the self-described head of the surviving family of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, Ms. Romanova wants rehabilitation for her ancestors, according to her lawyer. Under Russian law, this would mean a formal admission that Nicholas II was unjustly killed along with his wife, children and attendants after revolution swept away Russia's monarchy.

[snip]

Perhaps most troubling for Ms. Romanova's legal process are the questions posed by experts in Yekaterinburg about her credibility. The birth certificate for czar Nicholas that she submitted as part of her application looks as though it could belong to anybody, said Vadim Viner, a businessman from Yekaterinburg who has been researching the death of the Romanovs for 17 years.

"She probably got the certificate from some homeless person whose name was Nicholas," Mr. Viner said, slouching in a badly rumpled three-piece suit in his small, dark office.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

Is This a Whitewash Which I See Before Me?

From (Aberdeen, Scotland) Grampian TV:

Deeside community campaign to clear Macbeth's name

15/09/2005 17:38

A Deeside community's leading a campaign to clear the name of one of Scotland's most infamous characters.

The people of Lumphanan are rallying to the aid of Macbeth, who was killed near their village - and who they claim has been disgraced by Shakespeare.

The gravestones at St Finnan's Church in Lumphanan tell stories dating back hundreds of years.

And yet, there is no monument or marker to this cemetery's most famous resident.

[snip]

Macbeth's name was immortalised by Shakespeare, who's tragedy has been performed on stage and the big screen.

But the people of Lumphanan believe the murderous monarch portrayed in the play is far removed from the truth.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Rasputin Remembered and Dis-membered

From the St. Petersburg (Russia) Times of Sept. 6, 2005:

Rasputin’s Notoriety Dismays Relative

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

“He is either demonized or deified and my mission is to try and make his image look more human, more normal, if you like,” says Laurence Huot-Solovieff, 62, one of the four great-grandchildren of Grigory Rasputin to come from his legal marriage, and the only of his surviving descendants to have traveled to Russia.

Interviewed in St. Petersburg’s Astoria hotel on Monday, Huot-Solovieff, who grew up in France, put the wild-eyed mystic who some felt ruled the country during World War I in a positive light.

[snip]

Huot-Solovieff has not visited and has no plans to visit the Erotic Museum of the Prostatology Center, whose director Igor Knyazkin claims to have Rasputin’s sex organ preserved in a jar.

“I have seen men’s private parts before, and I don’t care if it is original or not,” she said. “As for the idea of cutting out genitalia and putting it on display, human greed is no surprise to me either. I have seen people do worse for money.”

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Times published an article last year on the display of Rasputin's pickled parts. (The linked article is not for the squeamish or the prudish. In fact, no one should read it.)

Genealogy Works on Stubborn Stains

From the Medfield (Mass.) Press:

Soiled name restored for Stain
By Amanda J. Mantone/ Staff Writer
Thursday, June 30, 2005

One of Medfield's most famed criminals is getting a long-due redemption.

David Leighton Stain, wrongly convicted of murder and then shunned the rest of his life because of it, lies in an unmarked grave in Vine Lake Cemetery. Next week, he'll get a headstone for the first time since his death in 1915, thanks to a long-lost descendant who became unexpectedly entwined in his story while mapping her genealogy.

"It really started when I had my own child. As I was trying to fill in my son's baby book, I asked my mother what her grandfather's name was, and she didn't know," said Rhoda Boutin, a Pittsburgh native who now lives in Florida. "I was president of a small neighborhood women's club, and one day we had a genealogy specialist to a lunch meeting. She came to talk to us about how to research our roots, and that kind of sparked me."

That was five years ago. She could barely use a computer, but by typing the only thing she knew about her grandfather, his last name - Stain - into www.ancestry.com, she hit upon a murder trial from 1888, Stain and Cromwell v. the State of Maine.

"I said to myself, 'hmm, my grandmother must have had some relatives that got in trouble,'" said Boutin.

She traced the case to a magazine article from the 1890's, where she read about an unknown chapter of her family's past: David Stain, her great-grandfather and a longtime Medfield resident, and his son-in-law Oliver Cromwell, were charged with a murder in Maine in 1887, for which they were later pardoned and released from prison in 1901. Armed with that basic information, Boutin called Medfield Town Clerk Carol Mayer to help trace the family.

[snip]

Stain was released when his son Charlie, later thought to be mentally ill, confessed that he had lied about Stain's involvement while testifying, spilling the scoop to a sensationalist New York newspaper reporter that wined and dined him in exchange for the story. Barron's death was never resolved.

[snip]

On Thursday, July 7 Rhoda and her husband Mike will unveil the long-awaited gravestone, next to the stone that marks Stain's wife's grave in Vine Lake Cemetery. It's cut in the same style as other markers from that period in the cemetery, and sits shaded by a tree on a hill overlooking route 109. It reads simply, "David Leighton Stain, born Jan. 20, 1830, died July 7, 1915. An innocent shoemaker."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]