genealogy hurts my head


sorabji.com: The Stalking Post: genealogy hurts my head
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).

By droopy on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 12:51 am:

    within the past couple of days i have become the historian/archivist for my family (at least my mother's side - the texans). not only does this mean going through hundreds of names and dates, it also mean i have to go through hundreds of old pictures, diaries, ledgers, letters, and god knows what else.

    enough to make your brain explode.

    something that brought a smile to my face just now was discovering that, way back in 19th century austin, texas, there was a mark thomas. it's possible it's just a coincidence. but maybe it's just possible that every generation of mine has had a mark thomas somewhere, following us like some guardian angel. or maybe a devil.


By Dr Pepper on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 01:06 am:

    droopy, you related to mark thomas??? LMAO!


By agatha on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 10:52 am:

    You will be working on that shit for-EVER. I have patrons in my library that have been coming in three or four days a week since I started my job (and probably before that) to work on their family histories. It is satisfying, in teeny tiny increments.


By Spider on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 12:53 pm:

    You're probably an ideal genealogist from the archivists' point of view, because I can't imagine you chewing an archivist's ear off with news of your latest find, or expecting your family's life story to be neatly collected and summarized within the material.


    Did you see "African American Lives 2" on PBS a few weeks back? Fascinating look at what genealogy can uncover.


By droopy on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 01:52 pm:

    agatha - a few days ago i was doing a google search on one of my ancestors, and came across a guy asking for ancestors of the same a man. i recognized both his first and last names as family names, so i emailed him. it turned out we are actually distantly and my mother had met him a couple of times. he's in his mid- to late sixties, lives in a little texas town i'd never heard of until now, and has been working on our family line since 1972. he has a list of over 8,000 names and a genealogical record he wants to send me that, if printed out, would be over 400 pages long.

    i don't i want to end up like that: obsessively documenting every single distant bloodline to the tiniest capillary. i think i'd just rather concentrate on my family line.

    i have seen those "african-american lives" documetaries. they were at least one inspiration for my project. it also made me consider the fact that, since my family has always lived in southern states (virginia and kentucky) since before 1865, it's quite possible that they were slave owners.

    i started all this because one of my cousins is starting a family website. we still own the land outside of austin my family settled on in 1871. with each generation, that land is under the threat of being lost - slowly sold off. every time i go down there more of the surrounding area - the hill country that i personally find beautiful - is more built up. we're trying to start a sort of "preservation society". i'll be down austin this weekend to visit the old farmhouse, and i'll be seeing with new eyes having read some of the stories i've come across lately.


By patrick on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 04:41 pm:

    i think we all have a 19th century mark thomas in our lineage no?


By semillama on Thursday, March 27, 2008 - 11:13 am:

    I don't, at least not that I know of.

    I do have confederate soldiers in my lineage, though, as well as a Jamestown resident from 1620. All through my paternal grandmother. Her side of the family has all the excitement.


By ... on Thursday, March 27, 2008 - 04:39 pm:

    My dad went on a genealogy kick around 1999 and 2000. His work culminated in him reading the family tree (as much as he knew of it) to my sister and me. He made me tape record it, and I listened to the tape a couple of years later. It seemed like every generation he mentioned had a suicide, a death by alcohol poisoning, or a death under suspicious circumstances.

    Our family tree discussions virtually always focus for an extra moment on the one bazillionaire in our tree. The guy who founded Outback Steakhouse is my second cousin.

    My dad's sudden interest in the family tree seemed ludicrous to me. He suddenly waxed reminiscent about living and dead family members he'd never met, never seen, and in some cases never even heard of. Yet he rather sanctimoniously became the keeper of the family tree, mailing me drunken type-written ramblings of his findings. He sent me a copy of the family tree, and it now sits in my safe. I've never looked at it, never even opened the envelope.

    For a year or so I worked as a cemetery photographer. Forensic genealogists, treetracers, historians, and other types hired me to get photos of tombstones. The hope was that the marker held information not recorded anywhere else, and this turned out to be the case a surprising number of times. Almost as common was finding mistakes and omissions on tombstones. And that's when I found tombstones at all. In the big Catholic cemeteries around here I'd guess as many as two-thirds of the burials are unmarked, and many of the older markers are either unreadable or deteriorated into dirt.

    For a while I walked through graveyards and photographed hundreds of tombs, posting the photos (with transcriptions) to web sites, hoping to randomly connect with people doing research into their forebears. I still do this once in a while. I probably posted 300-400 photos in various places. As recently as last week I heard from someone who randomly found my photo of the burial site of her great-great-great grandfather. Other connections made have been pretty cool. A woman who thought her g-g-g-grandfather was a man of modest means was amazed to do a web search on his name and find that he was interred in a rather handsome mausoleum. Another treetracer whose g-g-grandfather's magnificent mausoleum was the stuff of family legend was amazed to find my photo of it. Information about the location of that mausoleum never got passed down, so no one in the family had ever seen it or even knew where to look for it until then.

    Our family tree does not go back too far, and I wouldn't much care if we had paperwork going back to Adam. I am East Tennessee hillbilly on my dad's side and Czech immigrants on my mom's side, with purported (and somewhat doubtful) connections to Henry Hudson and president Taft.




By Antigone on Friday, March 28, 2008 - 12:28 am:

    You semantically map the dead.


By semillama on Friday, March 28, 2008 - 10:58 am:

    East Tennessee hillbilly? My grandma was West Tennessee hillbilly. I'm probably related somehow to half the village of McEwen.


By Dr Pepper on Friday, March 28, 2008 - 11:04 pm:

    semillama, what county in West Tennessee? I am curious.


By Nate on Saturday, March 29, 2008 - 04:31 pm:

    i can't believe how late it is.


By semillama on Monday, March 31, 2008 - 12:23 pm:

    Humphrys County, according to the map.


By droopy on Monday, March 31, 2008 - 01:08 pm:

    got back from my trip down to the old homestead - known as "rockmoor" - yesterday. i didn't get as much done as i had planned; since my mother was down there with me, we drank wine and "dripping springs texas vodka" all night every night. but i did find one thing while looking through one of the old boxes of letters that are down there (there are hundreds going back as far as 1919). it had belonged to my g-g-aunt nina, who had been born with a clubfoot (meaning the ankle of her right leg turned at a right angle from the leg so that the sole of her right foot faced the side of her left foot). it was small card that read:

    member of
    the national cheerio circle
    an undenominational christian fellowship to provide good cheer, comfort and inspiration for handicapped, shut-in and lonely folks.

    the card certifies that the undersigned is a member as of the period of: may 31, 1944.

    she signed her name:

    (miss) nina v. morgan
    a club foot cripple


    it was a letter writing circle where misfits from around the country wrote letters to each other. so not only did they have a mark thomas, they had a sorabji.


By agatha on Monday, March 31, 2008 - 01:16 pm:

    I love that story. You got a good break with that fella that did all that work on your family. That should save you some time if you really decide to see this thing through generations back. I've often thought it would be really interesting to trace my family tree- my dad is a Russian Jew, and my mom comes from a line of Protestant Ministers in England and Wales, so I think there would be some interesting variety there. I'm not prepared to take the plunge just yet, but maybe when I'm older. The genealogists at my library are a tenacious lot- they all know each other. It's pretty cool.


By Dr Pepper on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 12:20 am:

    well, humphrey county is between western and central tennessee, I have always like country in tennessee, it is uplifing.


By Nate on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 08:57 pm:

    you must have a nice muffin.


By heather on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 10:36 pm:

    i want to hear music by droopy + nate


    maybe about nina, the club foot cripple


By droopy on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 11:16 pm:

    i had already written a song called "cripple's blues" (there's a first draft of the lyrics on here somewhere) and gave its first public performance at "rockmoor" last weekend in nina's honor. it got mixed reviews: my mother liked it; but my cousin just frowned and said, "that's not funny."


By Dr Pepper on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 11:59 pm:

    droopy, write a music called "bus stop blues", will ya? It seems that you have very interesting story about bus stop.


By agatha on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - 12:13 pm:

    Maybe this can be a multi-level project where you map out your family tree and then write songs about all of the strange family members you discover? Better yet, some of them could be incorporated into your novel that you're writing with Nate. Yeah, you know, that novel? That you're writing? With Nate?


By jack on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - 10:40 pm:

    what about droopy writing a rock opera with dr. pepper?

    that would rule.




By Dr Pepper on Thursday, April 3, 2008 - 12:28 am:

    Hey Jack! good to hear from you! How are you?


By Nate on Thursday, April 3, 2008 - 07:12 pm:

    I HOPE SHE KEEPS YOUR PENISIN THE FRIDGE< DRPEPPER.


By Dr Pepper on Friday, April 4, 2008 - 12:24 am:

    Nate.. who's she?


By Nate on Friday, April 4, 2008 - 11:02 am:

    i don't remember. but it was important.

    i was reading this ebook on 829 indicators that your man is cheating on you. it is written by a woman with 8 cats and a "new" husband named manley.

    it makes me remember this one girl i lived with so long ago. every day i'd come home from work and catch hell for whatever oprah had talked about.

    manley the 9th cat.


By Dr Pepper on Friday, April 4, 2008 - 11:11 pm:

    Oh Nate, I take it, you have issue with a man who cheats on you? I have know many of them cheats on their lover, doesn't matter if it is man or woman. I have seen it enough.....


By Jim aka Pajama on Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 05:07 pm:

    I'm glad to see that this place is still rife with monosyllabic scholars who wouldn't know grammar unless it bit them upon their posterior.

    That being said, though, SUP dawgs?


By Dr Pepper on Sunday, April 6, 2008 - 05:13 pm:

    looks like mark thomas clock a little off...


By droopy on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 04:13 pm:

    typ patent
    ref VPB 29:90
    dat 15 Dec 1749
    to Mason Bishop [to Jeremiah Morgan?]
    con 30Sh.
    re 275a Lunenburg/ on both sides of Kittlestick Creek
    loc 50161 -58532 F127 L0 P255
    pt A) at Macklin's corner Spanish oak on the same
    ln S75E; 82P; Macklin
    pt B) ro
    ln N30E; 96P;
    pt C) ro in the Head of a Meadow
    ln N10W; 116P; from the Head of a Meadow
    pt D) p
    ln N30W; 150P;
    pt E) p
    ln S65W; 108P;
    pt F) p
    ln S; 174P;
    pt G) wo in Edloe's Line
    ln S45E; 100P; Edloe
    pt H) small Ash on the Creek
    lm ; 6p; down Kittlestick Creek 6 Poles
    end

    typ deed
    ref LUDB 5 p525-526
    dat 10 Oct 1759
    frm Charles Gee Senr. of Sussex
    to son Neavel Gee of Lun
    con love & affection
    re 266a Lunenburg/ brs of Crooked Cr,
    !adj. Booker & Cock, [Ragsdales/Riddles?], Edloe, Booker;
    Wit John Ragsdale, Joseph Ragsdale, Henry Gee
    ![to Jeremiah Morgan?]
    end

    typ grant
    ref CGB E:p628
    dat 1 Sep 1780
    to Jones Jones who is heir at law to
    !John Armsted Vollintine alias Jones
    Con A.C. 10 Shillings Sterling
    !68a by Survey bearing date the Second day of March 1775
    ref 68a Lunenburg County on the Branches of Kettlestick Creek
    loc 51489 -59908 F127 L0 P255
    pt A) at Jeremiah Morgans and Edward Ragsdales corner pine on a Br.
    ln N17W; 56P; Morgan
    pt B) two pine
    ln N5E; 140P;
    pt C) pointers
    ln S29E; 186P; Edward Ragsdale
    pt D) a Red Oak
    ln S70W; 96P;
    end
    !


By semillama on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - 10:48 pm:

    Jimbo, what's the word?!


By Jim aka Pajama on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 10:13 am:

    sem, not a whole helluva lot. just livin' life. about to turn 39... for the first time. ha! seriously what's the big deal about 40? i'm just happy as fuck to still be around to be approaching it! how boutcherself?


By semillama on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 03:01 pm:

    Bout to turn 36 myself, trying to find paying projects for my company, and bitching about the economy. Still, it's spring, migrating birds are showing up, flowers are blooming and leaves are coming out, and my wife is on her way home from Toronto, so hey. Not bad.


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