Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Five "Fun" or "Different" Facts

And somehow I have fallen behind in my blog posts again!  Ah, well, I'm picking myself up and starting over (again).  That's all we can do, right?  So here I am for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  We all find "fun" or "different" information about ourselves, our relatives, and our ancestors in our genealogy and family history pursuits.  What are five "fun" or "different" facts in your life or your ancestors' lives?

2.  Tell us about your five fun or different facts in a comment on this post or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Thank you to Jacquie Schattner for suggesting this topic.

I had to think about this a little bit to come up with five stories.

• Starting with myself, something fun and different about me is that for a short while I was a professional drummer — as in was paid for a drumming gig.  This is prettty cool, since I'm not actually a drummer (as any real drummer can tell you), but a percussionist who can drum a little.  So I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity.

• After he passed away, I found out that my father had served in two different state National Guard units.  This was one of those accidental discoveries, as opposed to something I had been looking for.  My sister had consulted me about my father's obituary (as she should have, since I'm definitely the family genealogist).  She had included that Daddy had served seven years in the New Jersey National Guard.  I knew that couldn't be right, based on his age and when he had moved to Florida, so suggested she take it out.  She ended up revising it to served seven years in the National Guard.  The question prompted me to figure out how to request his National Guard personnel file.  The revision turned out to be accurate, because he served four years in New Jersey and three in Florida.  None of us had known previously that he served in Florida!  And I was happy the obit didn't have inaccurate information.

• Many years ago, I found a newspaper squib in an issue of the De Funiak Springs, Florida newspaper thanking my paternal grandfather for lending his collection of antique carpenter's tools to a display in the local library.  I saved it (of course!) and remember thinking at the time that I had had no idea my grandfather collected antique carpenter's tools and wondered what had sparked his interest.  Recently I was looking over documents my grandfather saved from when he was working at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the civil service and discovered that one of his early jobs there was as . . . a carpenter!  So one little genealogical tidbit fed into another.

• After being contacted by a cousin's husband (he's the genealogist in their family), I learned that my great-great-grandmother's older sister had an early marriage that was apparently annulled (so far the only annulment in my family that I know of).  I say apparently because I haven't found documentation yet (not sure what kind of documentation you can find for annulments), but it's definitely her in the marriage record, and there doesn't seem to be a divorce (and my cousin's husband thinks it was annulled).  Okay, so it's possible that she simply moved on without dissolving the first marriage and married two more times, which would make those bigamous.  Well, that would be a different kind of "fun" fact about a relative, wouldn't it?

• And for something different on my mother's side of the family, I was told that her father had played sandlot baseball with Jackie Robinson (yes, *that* Jackie Robinson) in Brooklyn.  I suspect I'll never be able to find any kind of documentation for that, but it's a cool story.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Did You Collect as a Youth?

This week's installment of Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun asks us to reminisce about our youthful collecting habits:

1)   Most of us collect dead ancestors and relatives now.  What did you collect when you were a child or teenager, or adult?

2)  Tell us about your collections in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.

The only thing I remember collecting before my family moved to Australia is dolls.  While most of the dolls I had were Barbie and other Mattel models, I also had a few vintage dolls.  I dragged them from California to Australia and then to Florida and back to California.  I used to make clothes for them, both sewn and knitted.  And yes, I still have them all.

I think I started collecting stamps while we were living in Australia, though I'm not entirely sure.  I might have started in California.  My grandfather used to own a stamp and coin store, and as I recall he started me off with several common stamps and a collecting book.  I remember having the stamps in Australia, and I brought them back to the States with me also.  One of my "themes" for collecting was trying to get stamps from as many different countries as possible.  I continued to collect stamps even into my first couple of years of college.  I finally sold my collection when I moved to the San Francisco area.

I believe I started my playing card collection while I lived in Australia, because one of the decks I have from there is an old game called Chook Chook, which is a resource game based on making as much money as possible from the eggs your hens lay.  (And I am stunned to learn that there is actually an entry for Chook Chook on Board Game Geek. I didn't know the game dated back to the 1920's.  I don't think my deck is that old.)  I still collect playing cards, and that's the most common gift I receive from my father and brother for my birthday and Christmas.  I must have several hundred decks.  Most are advertising for airlines or casinos.

In Florida, I began my collection of dice.  That started when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons and became fascinated with the different polyhedral dice used in the game.  Along with several different colors and sizes of polyedral dice, I also have lots of regular six-sided dice, including many from casinos.  Some of my dice are . . . unusual, to say the least, such as the "2-sided die" (essentially a coin) and a 7-sided die that Uncle Lou swore was balanced, but I don't know anyone who believed him.  I even have a 16-sided die that was made custom for a specific game and a 34-sided die that was created so people could randomly choose numbers for the Danish lottery.

I love maps and have always kept many relevant modern ones in the house, but when I began working at Chaosium, a small company that publishes the game Call of Cthulhu, set primarily in the 1920's, I began accumulating vintage maps.  Coincidentally, they're helpful with genealogy, also!  Nowadays I also download lots of images of vintage maps to keep for reference.

And while I did not collect baseball cards, my brother did, and I used to help him sort cards when he bought a big batch from someone.  The Topps 1972 cards had a distinctive design I can still picture in my mind.  My brother used to memorize players' statistics, and I would quiz him from the information on the backs of the cards.

I began collecting my dead relatives at the age of 13.  Like Randy, I have several thousand of those now.  I still have my original notes from when I interviewed family members.  And I also collect lots of documents, photographs, and ephemera related to my family.

I suspect collecting things is a common pastime among genealogists, as both hobbies tend to attract people with slightly (only slightly, mind you!) obsessive-compulsive personalities.

Wordless Wednesday

2014 Black Family History Day and Other Upcoming Events

This past week I have been very busy with running around, going to meetings, and doing research, but I wanted to let everyone know about some events coming up in the San Francisco area that are of interest to genealogists.  Maybe I will see some of you there.

The African American Genealogical Society of Northern California will be holding its 2014 Black Family History Day on Sunday, February 16, 1:00–5:00 p.m., at the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue.  While this is a particularly good way for beginners to start researching their families, it is also helpful for those who have already done some research to learn new techniques or get some help to break through a brick wall.  The page still has information about the 2013 days but should be updated soon.  And even if it doesn't get updated, come anyway!  I'll be one of the volunteers helping attendees with their research.

The California Historical Society (CHS) will host a reception on Sunday, January 26, 2:00–4:00 p.m., to celebrate the opening of a bilingual exhibit about Juana Briones (1802–1889), an important early settler and entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay area.  The exhibit will run from January 26 through June 8, 2014.  Part of Briones' original 1850's home was saved from destruction, and CHS has a project to help preserve it.

Remember the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, about women playing professional baseball during World War II?  According to the baseball scholars who will be speaking at the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), women's baseball began at Vassar in 1866!  SFPL will host a panel discussion on women's baseball titled "Linedrives and Lipstick:  The Untold Story of Women's Baseball", also to be held on Sunday, January 26, this from 1:00–4:00 p.m. (decisions, decisions).  The panel will include baseball scholars David Block, Jean Ardell, Dorothy Mills, Leslie Heaphy, and Monica Nucciarone.  The accompanying exhibit at the library will run from January 25 through March 16, 2014.

Family History in Unexpected Places

Even though I think about family history a lot, and it has become such a popular pastime, I am sometimes surprised where I see it pop up.  Recently a friend gave me a copy of The Illustrated London News from Christmas of 1956.  My friend gave it to me because of a painting showing the heraldry of the opposing sides at the Battle of Crécy in 1346.  While it was a fascinating painting, what caught my eye more was a page titled "Outcasts--Social and Melodramatic:  Family Problems of a Century Ago", which shows two mid-19th-century paintings focused on families.

The Emigration Scheme

The first painting is The Emigration Scheme (c. 1850), by James Collinson.  Migration from one country to another was not only a significant event in the lives of many people's ancestors, it often becomes a major focus of research, trying to trace immigrants back to their countries and cities of origin.  Emigration was considered a viable solution to unemployment, urban overcrowding, and rural poverty in England in the early 19th century.  The Petworth Emigration Scheme is an example of one such plan.  But many records from this period have not survived, and it can be difficult to determine when and from where someone traveled.

The Outcast

The second painting is The Outcast (1851), by Richard Redgrave.  Here the subject appears to be a daughter who has had an illegitimate baby.  She is being turned out of the house by her father while other family members look on in sorrow.  Beyond the sadness of the situation, one of the first things I thought was, "This is a brick wall in the making."  Perhaps the shamed daughter gives her baby to a childless couple, or marries quickly and never talks about her own family again.  It can take creative and time-consuming research techniques to reconnect such a woman to her family.

The other unexpected place I ran into family history was Sports Illustrated magazine!  In the December 3, 2012 issue, writer Tim Layden has a wonderful article about his great-uncle Johnny Evers, of the famed double-play combo Tinker to Evers to Chance.  Apparently Layden has been tossing his great-uncle's name around for years as a well known calling card but didn't really know much about the man himself.  He finally got around to doing real research on Evers' life after a comment by a colleague.  The article is a good mix of the facts he was able to find and the stories he wasn't able to verify, and has a nice twist at the end.