House Turns Into a Money Pit

Contractor Bob Kitts found $182,000 in Depression-era cash behind the walls of a Cleveland house he was rehabbing for a friend. Now he and the homeowner, Amanda Reece, are heading to court to find out who gets the money.

They traced the home's Depression-era ownership to a businessman named Peter Dunne, Kitts said. The money bundles had "P. Dunne" written on them, but no sign of its origin. Dunne apparently died unmarried and childless, leaving behind a mystery -- a fortune that would be worth an inflation-adjusted $2.7 million in today's money.

But the joy, friendship and contractual bonds of the former classmates dissolved like melting snow amid the heat of all that money. Now Kitts and Reece speak to each other only through their lawyers. [Link]

[Thanks, Nancy!]

Politician Flip-Flops on Birth Date

Sen. Robert Byrd—the oldest and longest-serving member of the Senate—celebrated the wrong birthday for decades. He was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr., in Wilkesboro, N. C., but his name was changed when he was adopted by his aunt and uncle.

His natural mother died Nov. 10, 1918, a victim of a national influenza epidemic, [Byrd aide Cindy] Huber said.

“When Sen. Byrd met one of his brothers — I think this was in the 1970s — he told him that his birthday was Nov. 20, not Jan. 15,” Huber said.

Since the Byrds in West Virginia had no children, they adopted the future senator but somehow confusion developed as to his actual birth date, the staff spokesperson said, and wasn’t cleared up until the brother came to see him. [Link]

What Kind of Bait Did He Use?

A man fishing in Indiana's White River caught more than his limit of gravestones.

An Indianapolis man stumbled upon the grave markers when he untangled a snagged fishing line and lifted a 145-year-old gravestone into his bass boat.

"All these headstones, I don't think they have any business of being where I found them," said Jim Hodges, 62. [Link]

Centenarian Not as Old as She'd Thought

Upon inspection of her birth certificate, a 100-year-old woman in Wales has learned that she blew out her birthday candles on the wrong day for 99 years.

Nellie Davies, who has no idea how the mix-up happened, said: "I couldn't believe it. Who'd have thought all these years I'd been celebrating the wrong day?"

Ever since Nellie was a child she had been celebrating her birthday on May 2 but that has changed since a relative noticed the birthdate was May 24. It was in-fact 22 days later in 1907 Mrs. Davies was born. [Link]

We had a similar situation in my own family. My grandmother always celebrated her birthday on November 18, but her official birth record gives the date as November 9. The family record I shared here gives the November 18 date, with the time and day of the week written by another hand. In this case, the official record is almost certainly wrong—perhaps the product of a country doctor with poor penmanship.

So maybe Nellie was celebrating the right birthday all along.

A Viking-Inca Link?

The Vikings were great seafarers, but could they have traveled all the way to Peru and brought back an Inca? Archaeologists pulled up some rose bushes at the old St. Nicolas church in Sarpsborg, Norway, and came upon an unusual skull.

"A particular bone at the back of the head was not fused. This is an inherited trait found almost exclusively among the Incas of Peru," [Mona Beate] Buckholm added. To this day, no other example of this trait has been found in Norway. "While it is tempting to speculate, seeing as St. Nicolas is the patron saint of sailors, it's hard to imagine a Peruvian making his way here at the time. This is quite puzzling." [Link]

History Swept Under the Rug

Something surprising was found recently under the carpeting of 700-year-old St. Helen's Church in Pinxton, Derbyshire, England.

Churchwarden Stuart Thornley said that the headstones came to light when the carpeting was being replaced.

"It was something of a shock to see them. The carpet had been down for many years and we had no idea that they were there," he said.

"They had obviously been taken from the churchyard and used when the floor was relaid. But we have no idea when the work was done." [Link]

One of the stones mentioned—that of Mary Kelsal—has been there since at least 1891.

Horse Thief Almost Lost in Translation

The recently departed Alice Claire Lehmann Nelson was a devoted genealogist who took classes in German and French so she could translate historical documents.

Still, when she came across a copy of a newspaper article on her great-great-great grandfather, there was a glitch in the translation.

"She thought there was a distant relative who was killed by being run over by a horse," Don Nelson said. "Then she realized he was really a horse thief. He escaped from jail several times.

"Once she got the correct translation of it, it took her two years to tell my grandmother there was a horse thief in the family." [Link]

Not the Scabs She Would Have Picked

Back in March 2003, a New Mexico librarian discovered something special between the pages of an old book.

Librarian Susanne Caro was leafing through an 1888 book on Civil War medicine when she spied a small, yellowed envelope tucked between the pages. Freeing it, she read the inscription "scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington's children" in the corner, with the signature "Dr. W.D. Kelly," the book's author.

After some research, the 23-year-old Santa Fe, N.M., woman decided not to open the envelope. "The only thing I could find connected with it," she said, "was smallpox." [Link]

[via Metafilter]

A Veep Dark Secret

It took genealogist Brenda Gene Gordon many years to discover that she is descended from a U.S. Vice President

How on earth could Brenda Gordon not have known that her great-great-great-grandfather was Vice President Richard M. Johnson? Wasn’t this fact passed proudly from generation to generation inside her family?

No, it was not.

Why not? Because the woman who bore Johnson’s two children – a woman named Julia Chinn – was, by law, a Negro. [Link]

Johnson was clearly a man ahead of his time, who made no effort to hide his relationship with the woman he had "inherited" from his father.

For example, nearly twenty years after Johnson's retirement, it was brought up during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. Douglas insinuated that Lincoln approved of interracial marriage. Lincoln deflected this charge by saying that the only distinguished person he knew of who felt that way was "Judge Douglas's old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson." [Link]

Papered-Over Profile Puzzles Prolific Parents

A couple in New Salem, Pennsylvania, discovered a man with a big head hiding in their home.

The drawing was discovered under two layers of wallpaper and glue, said Susan Wood, who lives in the home -- at 38 E. George St. -- with her husband, Robert Wood, and nine of their 10 children.

The writing beside the man's profile reads "Papered by M.H. Glatfelter 1911 Sep 24," Susan Wood said.

Until the family can find the true identity of the man on the wall, he will be called by another name.

"We call him Ghost Glatfelter," Susan Wood said. [Link]

Grandmother Not as Dead as He'd Thought

Ian Scott was able to confirm a family story concerning his father and a woman he met while visiting a hospital for the mentally ill.

As the story goes, according to my father, he met a woman that was supposedly “insane” in Belfast who called him “Hugh Scott.” This took my father by surprise; his father was Hugh Scott. My father apparently told the woman that he was John Scott, son of Hugh Scott - and this woman - Annie Moore (today I’ve discovered her official registered name was Anna Moore) then told my father that she was his grandson.

My father replied, “Oh no, that can’t be. My grandmother is dead.”

Annie Moore, according to my father then replied, “Oh, is that what they’ve told you?” [Link]

How to Make a Racist Shut Up

William Hoff, Jr., was a virulent racist, and a leader of the National Socialist Movement. According to his brother Sheldon, he was also part African American.

Around 1995, Sheldon uncovered a bombshell, a gem that could have destroyed Wild Bill's credibility with the Nazis - in the 1910 census, their father's family was listed as black. Sheldon eventually traced their black ancestry back to the 1600s.

When he told his brother about his find, Wild Bill brushed it off.

"He was in denial, but after that he never gave us any of his 'white is superior' stuff," Sheldon said. [Link]

Woman Discovers Indians in Bathroom

Barbara Forgas found possible evidence of her Native-American ancestry while tearing down walls in her late grandfather's Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, home.

Did John Gross use pieces of an American Indian mural as insulation because he was thrifty, or was he hiding a valuable artifact he feared would be destroyed by racism?

Maybe he hated the reminder of his ex-wife, Sara Slaseman, and hid her family heirloom out of spite.

Barbara Forgas does not know why her grandfather put 8-foot-wide panels - with painted images of American Indians - inside the walls of a bathroom he built about 70 years ago in his centuries-old farmhouse. [Link]

Appraising Bigotry

While demolishing a wall in a 200-year-old Northborough, Massachusetts, house, Betty Tetreault's son discovered a medallion bearing the initials of a despicable organization.

Tetreault brought the medallion, about the size of a silver dollar, to an appraiser at the Historical Society's Main Street building Friday night. In cut-out words it reads "in good standing," with the letters "KKK" in the middle.

"It's bizarre because this is a northern state," said Marie Nieber, who is also the chair woman of the town's Historical Commission. "Maybe someone tried to hide their past. Who knows? " [Link]

Their Marriage Is Legal in Every State

Simone Chiha and Jaime Garner met through Match.com in 2005, and married last November. Ever since their first date, they've been finding unexpected connections between their families. Simone's stepfather knew Jaime's mother as a teenager. Simone's godmother worked for Jaime's family as a nanny in Germany. Her grandmother and his great-grandmother are buried in the same cemetery.

"I was thinking, great, he's going to tell me we're long-lost cousins," Simone says.

Jaime called his mom, who had a wall of genealogy charts in her office, and he rattled off the names he'd been given.

"She starts looking on our tree and says, 'None of these names are on our family tree.' She's gone back at least five generations, and there's no relation." [Link]

Your Wednesday Wasn't as Good as Mine

Wednesday was one of the best days of my life—genealogically speaking. Her mother having passed away on Monday, my aunt felt empowered to delve into her drawers and closets to see what family treasures had been packed away and forgotten. When I went to the house at noon, I found a stack of photo albums and loose documents waiting on the living-room sofa. My eye was immediately drawn to a small cardboard box bearing the signature of Elton Dunham, my great-grandfather. Inside was an autograph album I never knew existed.

Twelve people signed the book, most offering a poem or aphorism in addition to their autograph. The first, dated Feb. 20, 1895, is from Elton's future father-in-law. His future bride signed next ("On this leaf in memory prest, May my name forever rest"), followed a few months later by her mother and grandmother. In all, the signatures of five of my ancestors appear in the book—the most remarkable of which is that of Drusilla Morgan, my great-great-great-grandmother (below). She was born Apr. 27, 1820, in the northern reaches of Oxford County, Maine, and died on Sept. 9, 1896—the day that Elton and her granddaughter were scheduled to marry.

Exciting as this find was, it wasn't nearly as exciting as the next. I picked up what looked like an old composition book and turned to the first page. It took me roughly half a second to recognize what I was holding. It was the account book of my great-great-great-grandfather Moses Fairfield Coolidge, a storekeeper in Upton, Maine. His outlays for the years 1877 through 1884 were given, together with a list of expenses for fixing up and operating the store.

Fairfield didn't run his store for long, leaving plenty of blank pages in his account book. It seems that his wife, Jane (Tebbetts) Coolidge, then took custody of the ledger, because on a later page there appears the record of "Johnathan Tebbetts and his family." "Johnathan" was born June 13, 1784, and "Died in Rochester [N. H.] May 5 1857." Three generations of Coolidge family records follow this, with several changes in handwriting. The last birth recorded was that of my grandmother:

Tucked between the pages of the book were smaller treasures. My favorites are the bills for my Dunham great-great-grandparents' funerals, and the original script for my father's grammar-school graduation speech.

So, if I'm lax in posting the next few days, it's only because I find it difficult to type while jumping for joy.

They Should Clean Their Yard More Often

Bao Wenguang's mother found a century-old document that helped establish his descent from Genghis Khan.

The document was found in 2002 when his mother was tidying up the courtyard in the family's ancestral home, but Bao is only now making the find publicly known.

The "Bao family tree", is 6 meters long, 1.45 meters wide and together with other documents [cover] a period of more than 200 years. [Link]

Genealogy Makes Strange Bedfellows

A couple of notable genealogists have discovered that the family histories of two presidential aspirants—Strom Thurmond and Al Sharpton—intersected in the antebellum South.

According to the Daily News, the genealogists found documents establishing that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

The newspaper said the lead researcher was Megan Smolenyak, the chief family historian for Ancestry.com and an author of several published books on genealogy. Another researcher on the project was Tony Burroughs, who teaches genealogy at Chicago State University. [Link]

When first told of the connection, a nephew of Senator Thurmond exclaimed, "That's a bunch of baloney," while a niece graciously allowed that "it is wonderful that [Sharpton] was able to become what he is in spite of what his forefather was."

Were he still alive, the Senator would undoubtedly be thrilled, given his close relations with the black community.

Genealogist Finds the Lord

Lula Joughin Dovi has written a lengthy piece for the St. Petersburg Times about the search for her half-sister Roberta—born in 1924, the child of her father's second wife. The mystery of Roberta's fate was cleared up a few years ago by an English cousin and fellow genealogist, Philip Allen.

"Hello, Lula, I just had to tell you about this," Philip wrote in his e-mail. "Did you know that your half-sister married the younger son of an English duke?"

In an idle moment at work he had been on the Internet looking for Joughins in California, when he came across the name. He saw that Lord Edward Eugene Fernando Montagu, second son of the ninth duke of Manchester, had married Roberta Herold Joughin (his fifth wife) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Sept. 28, 1953.

Roberta had died in 1964 in Los Angeles. [Link]

Her Work Is Sometimes in Tents

Textile expert Loreen Finkelstein has matched up a 2-foot-by-2 1/2-foot fabric panel found at Mount Vernon with a gaping hole in the tent George Washington used as his headquarters at Valley Forge. The missing fragment will eventually be sewed back in place.

The tent was taken down for conservation in October 2003 and brought to Finkelstein's laboratory in Williamsburg, Va. During that process, Finkelstein was also called upon to evaluate some of Washington's clothing at his Mount Vernon estate.

It was while doing that work that Finkelstein became aware of tent fragments at Mount Vernon. One remnant in particular looked like it could be the missing piece, Finkelstein said Wednesday.

She went back to Williamsburg and made a template of the hole, which she brought back to Mount Vernon in April 2005 for comparison. It matched almost perfectly, she said, noting that further confirmation came from analysis of the thread count and stitching technique. [Link]