I’ve been preoccupied with a writing project. Not anything huge, but it’s commandeered most of my free time. I’m not finished with it, but it’s at a point where I can upload it. Warning: It’s grim reading.
And now, it’s past my bedtime. Where the hell has this day gone?!
No, seriously. Harold Beaver Sunday is one of the names I came across while doing genealogy research. Another favorite discovery–neither of these are related to my family in any way–is Edmund Loosemore.
I also found an interesting entry while looking at parish records–again, no relation:
Mary the bastard child of George ACTON Bridge Mount and Nelly BYRNE a very young girl seduced by him while in his employ and married as pure and virtuous to Pat JENNINGS a workman 12/2/1860 July 21 [1861]
From Baptisms in Balla-Manulla Parish Co Mayo Ireland 1837 of 1864
In news that is related to my own family, I finally found great aunt Margaret’s immigration information. She did come through Ellis Island, and she came before great grandma Nell. I always assumed it was the other way around. Both listed their half-brother, Denis, as the person they were going to stay with. He was living in Heron Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Cordelia Ana Desdemona Dakin (Someone was a Shakespeare fan.)
Edith Delephine Tibbals
Fanny Tressa Ames
Americus Dakin
Zebulon Jones
Preserved Fish Dakin (No, I am not making that up.)
Josiah Akin Dakin (I’m not making that one up, either!)
Mercy Mary Coggleshall
Rosina Maria Francesca Otte
Edwina Estelle Dakin
And, of course, now I see that I’ve got a big, fat typo in one of the family tree entries. Easily fixed, thankfully. Hrmf. I’m blaming DST, just because.
I spent this evening trying to throw together something resembling a website for my grandma’s family’s genealogical information. It’s pretty sparse, as yet, and not all the sections are functional, but it’s progress of a sort.
I’m not entirely happy with the output of the main index file, but the individual pages are alright. I see that I’ll need to go in and edit some of the notes, because they exported unattached to their events. It might be nice to know which census is being referred to, for example. I’ve only been working with this program for a few days so far, and it’s got a bit of a learning curve, so I’m finding a few surprises along the way. All in all, I really like it, though. It isn’t pretty, but it’s flexible and powerful.
Also, letters. I’d like to get good scans of the originals and the envelopes at some point, but for now, all I have are kind of crappy photocopies, so I can only put up transcripts.
Alsotoo! Please to be meeting the actual, for real, totally legit, Hound of the Baskervilles!1!!!
A few years back, while visiting my grandparents, I photocopied a bunch of letters that had been written to my great grandmother, from her brother. I never got a chance to actually read them, because as soon as I got home, I promptly put them in a very, very, very safe place. So safe, that in three moves, I did not unearth them. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, while looking in the closet for vacuum cleaner bags–I never did find those–that I stumbled across the letters. I quickly scanned the through one on top of the stack and realized it was chock-a-block with information about my great grand grandmother’s family back in Ireland. I called my mom, and got some more basic info from her, then I went to work.
If you’ve never done any sort of genealogical research, it’s an interesting puzzle. You can search and search and search for one piece of information, hit a brick wall, and then weeks, months, or even years later, stumble across it. Or you may never find it. On those occasions when you are able to locate a key piece of information, it can be a bit like decoding the Rosetta stone. One simple date can make everything fall into place. Or, if you’re having a bad day, it can make everything fall apart.
I’ve been able to make a good bit of progress in a very short amount of time. I’m very lucky in that the family name, though very uncommon here, is common in the part of Ireland my great grandmother is from. I expect they’re all related in some way, and it’ll be an interesting puzzle trying to figure out how everyone fits into the big picture.
Another piece of luck is that there are some active genealogists in County Mayo. A lot of vital records have been transcribed and are online, with more being processed all the time. From what I can tell, most of that information is so new that it has not yet hit the bigger genealogical search databases, like World Connect or even the LDS’ Family Search. (And, yes, I’ve encountered a few Basquills who have been co-opted by the LDS. I wish they’d knock it off with the baptizing of long dead people who are not even Mormon. Hrmf!)
So, that’s what I spent my weekend doing, instead of arting. My hand is just about crippled from writing. I have a ginormous dent in my middle finger and the tip of my thumb is completely numb. On the bright side, I forgot how yummy the ozone produced by laser printers smells. Mmmm. Every time I run it, I get a blast of ozoney goodness.
I’ve been searching through ships’ manifests. It’s interesting what information is contained in them, and how it’s recorded. For instance, apparently young girls from Ireland had what were considered “fresh” complexions. As opposed to what, “not fresh”? Also, someone had a partially descended testicle.
M’kaythen!
They just don’t make ’em like they used to.
So, as I’ve been going through all this genealogy BS, I’ve come across a metric fuck-load of references to the phrase “sealed to parent/child,” along with recent-ish dates. Wondering what on earth that might mean, I went a-Googling. Lo and behold, it refers to LDS baptism and binding. Basically, no matter when you died, or, apparently, what your faith was when you keeled over (boggle), your present day descendants, if they are endowed[1] LDS members, can opt to have you baptised and sealed to them. In other words, your spirits are then eternally bound together.
Now, I’m all for folks practicing whatever sort of mumbo-jumbo floats their boats, but I think it’s of the utmost importance for people to have free choice of which flavor of Kool-Aid they prefer to drink. I’m squicked out by the thought that hundreds of years after someone’s death, their descendants can fool around with their eternal souls.
I think that definitely qualifies as spiritual “Bad Touch.”
I’m just trying to imagine how some of the Quakers I’ve been researching would react if they found out their souls were being enshrined against their wills in some sort of Mormon death cult. I mean, these were folks who took their own brand of religion seriously enough that they were willing to come to this country in order to practice it freely. They also don’t strike me as folks who were into super secret rituals.
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[1] What endowment means is anyone’s guess. It apparently entails participating in an uber-s00per-s33kr1t ceremony that none must speak of ever after.
red paper boat 