Genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have the box top, so you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like. As you start putting the puzzle together, you realize some pieces are missing, and eventually you figure out that some of the pieces you started with don't actually belong to this puzzle. I'll help you discover the right pieces for your puzzle and assemble them into a picture of your family.
I spent a mellow afternoon with two of my grandchildren for Halloween. We didn't carve pumpkins, we doodled on them instead. Our artistic talents produced an alien, a cat, and a big screaming mouth with sharp, bloody teeth.
Then they modeled their costumes for me before they went to a safe, socially distanced Halloween candyfest. We had a cheerleader, a "regular extreme fire ninja", and my daughter-in-law as a reindeer. The cat and dog declined to dress up.
It was a very good afternoon.
Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, blames this on FamilySearch, but I blame her, because that's where I first saw this.
She created a pedigree chart showing the causes of death of her ancestors.
It took me a few years to finally put my own togehter, and it doesn't look quite as pretty as Judy's, but this is what I have found so far as to what killed my ancestors.
I hope to be able to add more information to it for next year's Halloween.
How much do you know about what caused your ancestors' deaths?
Today is Hallowe'en, so it's to be expected that Randy Seaver would focus on that for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.
Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission: Impossible! music, please!):
(1) What are your Hallowe'en memories from childhood or adulthood? How did you celebrate the day? Do you have any photographs?
(2) What about haunted houses? Are there any in your family history? Black cats? Creepy neighbors? Or witches — are there any in your family history?
(3) If you were to make a genealogy-themed costume, what would it be?
(4) Tell us all about it in a blog post of your own, in comments on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook. Be sure to link to them in a comment on this blog post.
Well, let's see how I do with this.
1. The only Hallowe'en costumes I remember are from my teen years and later, when I traditionally dressed up as a hooker. I am sure that my brother, my sister, and I went out trick or treating when we were young, but I have no specific memories from childhood. So far I have found no family photos of my siblings or me in Hallowe'en costumes. I'm hoping there are some in my father's photos, which my stepbrother delivered to my sister. Her niece scanned a bunch, but so far nothing from Hallowe'en.
2. Two friends of mine were convinced that my house in Oakland, California, where I lived for 24 years, was haunted, particularly the front bathroom. I never felt anything. I know of no haunted houses or witches in my family history on either side of the family. We did, however, have a few black cats. I remember Shazam and her daughter Velvet from when my family lived in Pomona, California.
3. Does it count as a genealogy-themed costume if you dress up as an ancestor? That's the first thing that came to my mind. Or maybe dress as someone of the appropriate social class and ethnic background as an immigrant ancestor? I could dress as a middle-aged Jewish woman, either middle-class or peasant, from the Russian Empire circa 1890–1910 or so. Here's my great-great-grandmother Esther Leah (Schneiderman) Gorodetsky, who was middle class and lived in the Russian Empire. How about dressing up like that?
