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]

When Numbers Had Names

Remember back when telephone numbers started with words like "Evergreen" and "Klondike"? Neither do I, but the Telephone EXchange Name Project is building a database of exchange names like the ones our parents and grandparents used.

How do exchange names work?
Everybody used to know this 30 years ago, but many young whippersnappers have probably never heard of this:

An exchange name is a word that is used to represent the first two letters of a 7 digit telephone number (exchange names have nothing to do with area codes or country codes). The first two letters of the exchange name are the first two digits of the phone number, when they are spelled out on a telephone dial or keypad. So for example, the exchange name "SYcamore" means that the first two numbers of the telephone number are "79", and SYcamore-4-3317 would be 794-3317, (my friend's old phone number 30 years ago).

[Hat tip: Orange Crate Art]

Somebody Make It Stop!

Anna T. Burr turns 107 on Monday, and remembers a time when telephones inspired panic.

"My mother and father went away, and left me and my brother, who was three years older than I, alone with the maid," she recalled. "The telephone started to ring and the maid panicked because she didn't know how to turn it off," she said. [Link]

The Unlisted Are Unlucky

Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara was the illegitimate son of an aristocratic woman, and had no children and few friends.

So when it came to writing out his will almost 20 years ago, he asked a Portuguese notary for a copy of the Lisbon phone book and plucked out names at random.

Now, with the unhappy man having drunk himself into the grave, his randomly chosen heirs are receiving lawyers' letters telling them they can claim a share of his fortune. [Link]

Ring Up Yer Dead

Ancestry.com now has British Phone Books 1880-1984, with listings (in this first release) from 430 books. These at one time included job descriptions, making them a sort of city directory for the wired classes.

The first to go online are the phone books for Greater London, from 1880 to 1984, which contain many startlingly familiar names: Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula and business manager of the Victorian superstar actor Henry Irving, was at Victoria 1436 by 1910. Harry Houdini, the escapologist, was at Gerrard 1312 in 1916: renowned as an inspired self publicist, he had himself listed as Harry Houdini, Handcuff King. By then Buckingham Palace, Victoria 1436, had four phone lines. Four years later Viscount and Lady Astor needed a phone number each at 4 St James's Square to cope with their hectic social lives. [Link]

I was hoping to search for "Jack," occupation "Ripper," but a last name is required.

Call Me Anytime, But Don't Call Me That

It turns out that the residents of Norfolk Island are not the only ones identified by their nicknames in the local phone book. The 600 inhabitants of Cedillo, Spain, published their own colloquial directory at the urging of their mayor, Antonio "Booties" Gonzalez.

It means that Johnny the Potato can be found under P for Patata while Luciana is under C for Chinita.

From Pedro "the Whistle" to "Balls" Francisca, the Cedillo phone book is designed to give people the quickest and easiest way of finding their neighbors' phone numbers and addresses.

Not everybody in Cedillo is happy with the new phone book, however.

A man known as "Baldy" and another called "Peg-leg" asked to be registered under their proper surnames. [Link]

Christians Reproduce on Remote Island

Norfolk Island in the South Pacific is a sort of genealogical anomaly. About a third of its 1,900 residents can trace their ancestry to 194 descendants of Fletcher Christian and his Bounty mutineers who outgrew Pitcairn Island and settled on Norfolk on June 8, 1856.

The handful of surnames brought by the Pitcairners are shared by so many islanders that the local telephone directory lists people by nickname, including Cane Toad, Onion, Dar Bizziebee, Kik Kik, Mutty, Lettuce Leaf and Carrots. [Link]

Pitcairn Island is now so sparsely populated that the residents can be listed on one small webpage.

Where There's a Will, There's a Way Too Many Telephones

From the Minneapolis (Minn.) Star Tribune:

The phone's for you, and you, and you

Bill McAuliffe, Star Tribune

Last update: October 24, 2005

The departed sometimes call in strange ways. Robert Prosser, for example, seems to be doing it by telephone.

Twelve years after Prosser's death, a niece, a nephew and a longtime employee are trying to figure out what to do with his legacy -- a collection of telephones so vast it fills five buildings in his hometown of Turtle Lake, Wis., as well as barns on relatives' farms and corners of their homes.

Thousands of phones. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe a million.

"You count 'em and tell me," said George Pearson, a longtime employee of the Prosser family.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]