Craig Pfunnkuche says we should be digging around in our ancestors' privies.
"Outhouses are wonderful, fantastic, fabulous places to find stuff out about families."
Pfunnkuche, a retired history teacher and amateur archeologist from Wonder Lake, collects the items found in digs, such as his favorite, a Meakin Tea Leaf china set.
Although he goes through rigors of disinfecting the dishes before use, they still grace his table when company comes over, he said with a chuckle. [Link]
The Graffiti House in Brandy Station, Virginia, was occupied by both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. They left behind names, dates and drawings scribbled on the walls, discovered during a renovation in 1992. New graffiti came to light just last summer.
[Paint-removal specialist Kirsten] Travers ... uncovered a large piece of graffiti in the JEB Stuart room - where the Confederate Army General signed his name. The new image is a full-size figure of a man with a head resembling a pumpkin. On his torso is the phrase: “President J. Davis. Good on the boots.”
Neither Travers nor Edrington know what the phrase means but they suspect it is a sarcastic comment, perhaps about Davis’ efforts in providing adequate footwear to soldiers.
Besides the date and the pumpkin head, Travers found another image of a horse standing in front of a man who had been revealed previously.
Edrington said the volunteers thought the man was a standalone image but now he is seen behind the horse and above him are the words, “He smells a rebel.” [Link]
There was an interesting query (genealogically speaking) in Dr. Paul Donohue's column today:
Dear Dr. Donohue: Enclosed are copies of two prescriptions given to my father in the 1940s. I had little contact with him during his life, and now I'm trying to gather as much information about him as I can. All I know about his health is that he was in poor health most of his life and was a patient in veterans' hospitals in Ohio and California from 1940 to his death in 1956. My older brothers told me he had rheumatoid problems. I have not seen his death certificate.It turns out that his dad "must have had epilepsy."
I discovered that belladonna is a poison. I wonder if you could tell me what conditions are treated by the ingredients in these prescriptions. -- R.H. [Link]
The Washington Post had an interesting article Monday about Ashish Sharma Pawan—a priest who keeps the records of some 2,500 Indian families stretching back 144 years.
The pages are filled with script in Arabic, Sanskrit used generations ago and dialects of Persian mixed with tribal languages. These days, Hindi is northern India's predominant language. The foreign letters in the book represent the past, says Pawan, 28. There are hundreds of priests, or pandas, like Pawan in this city, and each works for a set of families.
"It's so lovely that we still feel so emotionally connected to seeing the books," coos Parthi Krishnan, a hotel manager marveling at the record book's faded pages. There were remarks written by relatives through the years: "A good listener," one entry said. "Hard worker," another said.
"You see, a computer has no feeling," Pawan explained. "There is an intimacy in seeing the handwritten notes of a family." [Link]
A violin acquired by an Ontario museum tells the story of its maker, Dennis O'Meara.
Inside a violin that he finished carving in 1877 in Lambton County, O'Meara penciled in numerous notes that offer clues to his life and hint about local living conditions at the time.
He wrote that "wild (passenger) pigeons were passing over in billions" as he carried the wood for the violin from the Col. Faithorn estate in present day Bright's Grove.
He cryptically mentions a revolution in 1930, which is also the year he died.
And, intriguingly, he invites "whoever takes this fiddle apart (to) see if you can find me." [Link]
Some essential source material for John Bridges's latest book—The Commercial Life of a Suffolk Town: Framlingham Around 1900—was found in seven dusty trash bags stored in a farmer's shed.
Inside were thousands of invoices and receipts - many a bit grubby - that chronicled the fortunes of a rural family business as it moved from the Victorian era to the limbo years between the end of rationing and the dawning of the swinging sixties.
They covered the period from 1882 to 1957, with more than 4,200 bills covering 165 different businesses in the Framlingham area alone. [Link]
Here's an extreme way to establish the marriage date of your ancestors: chop down their "wedding pair" and count the rings. This is from a story on a Dogwood Festival in Connecticut.
In keeping with the botanical aspect of the festival, visitors will take in views of the spectacular copper beech tree on the green-listed in Connecticut's "Book of Noble Trees" as well as a number of "wedding pair" matching antique trees, a custom dating back to the 1600s and 1700s to mark weddings of our ancestors. [Link]
Jonathan Stayer spoke Sunday to the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society about the wide range of materials available at the Pennsylvania State Archives, where he is reference archivist. I'd love to take a peek at these records:
There are dog records. York County was the only county, Stayer said, where dog owners actually sketched out a picture of the beloved canines on their applications. [Link]
Serious researchers of Irish genealogy have long depended on the eight volumes of The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements Placed in the Boston Pilot, edited by Ruth-Ann Mellish Harris, Donald M. Jacobs, and B. Emer O'Keeffe (Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1989-). Now these records are coming to the Internet, albeit in abstracted form, through Information Wanted, a website of the Boston College Irish Studies Program.
The Missing Friends advertisements, dating from 1831 to 1921, were placed by those seeking information about an Irish immigrant to America, and contain a varying amount of identifying data.
The advertisements contain the ordinary but revealing details about the missing person’s life: the county and parish of their birth, when they left Ireland, the believed port of arrival in North America, their occupation, and a range of other personal information. Some records may have as many as 50 different data fields, while others may offer only a few details. The people who placed ads were often anxious family members in Ireland, or the wives, siblings, or parents of men who followed construction jobs on railroads or canals.Anyone finding a relative will still want to consult the original text, but the online index will surely help speed their research in the right direction.
