Wordless Wednesday

 

Ginny in Black and White

Today is the birthday of my stepmother, Virginia "Ginny" Ann (Daugherty) Truby Sellers.  She and my father were married December 4, 1980.  She was my father's third wife; he was her second husband.  Their marriage lasted longer than both of his first two marriages put together.

I am sure my father took this photograph because it's in black and white.  He loved working in black and white.  The photo was in the bonanza that my sister sent me a year and a half ago (I'm still working my way through it!).  My best guess is that it was taken during the 2010's, but I can't narrow it down more than that.

I'm not sure what to make of the look on Ginny's face.  It's kind of like she's giving Daddy the evil eye for taking her photo.

Well, evil eye or not, Ginny, happy birthday.  We miss you.

Happy Birthday, Baby Brother!

It's my brother's birthday!  So I decided to celebrate by posting this black and white study that our father took of him.  This was at our father's house in Mary Esther, Florida, but I don't know what year (maybe Mark will know).  Since it's in black and white, Daddy may have developed it himself, although I don't remember him having a dark room at this house.

Wordless Wednesday

 

The Invisible Man Turns 75

That's not actually what people used to call my stepfather.  They didn't say he was invisible.  They used to question whether he existed at all.

Ric was (and is) a very hard-working man.  So if we were going on a trip, he opted out, because he stayed at home and kept working.

So the running joke from people outside the immediate family became that he wasn't really there at all, and that my mother had made him up as a cover story.

But he's real, and he's still here.  He took good care of us after my parents divorced and he married my mother.  He took good care of her, or as good as he could, even when she didn't make it easy to do so.

And he has made it to 75 years old!  Something he had seriously questioned whether he was going to do.

I figured he would make it.  He had a good role model with his mother, our Grandmama, who lived to see her 90's.

So happy birthday, Ric, and congratulations on making it to three quarters of a century!  Let's see you make it to 100!

We love you!

Three Grandmothers with the Same Birthday

It's easy to say that something is against the odds, but how do you determine the odds?

I've read about statistics that once you get something like 50 people together in one place, it's almost guaranteed that two of them will have the same birthday.  (I've read it, but I still don't understand it.)  But what about when you're dealing with only two or three people?  The odds have to be much lower, right?

Yet low odds are not impossible odds.

For our example here, we have my half-sister, Laurie.

We have the same father, so we share a paternal grandmother.  Anna Gauntt was born January 14, 1893.

Laurie's maternal grandmother, Louise Elsie Gaynor, was born January 14, 1903.

Okay, all you statisticians out there, can we figure out the odds of that happening?

But I'll go one step further.

Our paternal grandfather married twice after living with our grandmother.  His third wife, to whom he was married before I was born, and who can reasonably be called our stepgrandmother (my mother certainly always told me to call her Grandma), was Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  And she was born January 14, 1914.

What are the odds on that particular situation?  I certainly don't know.  Maybe our brother or sister-in-law can figure it out.  They're the mathematicians in the family.  Which I realize is not the same as a statistician, but it's the closest we have.

So today, on January 14, I'll wish a happy birthday in heaven to three of my sister's grandmothers.

This is the type of thing I noticed while going through a year's worth of births, marriages, and deaths in my family.

Family historians are a strange breed.

A Cast at Christmas (and maybe his birthday also?) Couldn't Have Been Fun

It's my father's birthday today.  If he were still here with us, he would be 89 years old.

Growing up, my mother used to joke about how my father had broken one arm and one leg each three times, one on the left side, the other on the right.  She never said how or when he had done that, but I took it on faith that it was true.  He told me that he had broken an arm once racing cars when he was young, but he never mentioned a broken leg.

Going through my photo bonanza, I discovered two photos of my father wearing a cast.  So now I can document at least part of my mother's story!

This photograph was taken at a Chevron/Standard Oil station, but I can't guess anything beyond "somewhere in the Los Angeles area."  It might have been a station my father worked at, because I don't recall that he ever owned a Chevron station.  I think his mechanic businesses were all independents.  I've been told the car might be a 1958 or 1959 Buick, but I'm working on pinning that down more definitively.

Here's another photo of Daddy with a cast, which appears to be the same as in the other photo.  The angles are different and the second photo doesn't show his hand as clearly, so I'm not 100% certain, but it's a pretty good match.

This broken arm had to be different from the one he told me about, because that one was while he was still living with his mother, before he was married.  So I guess that means I've somewhat documented two of his broken arm events that my mother talked about.

After a little online research, the thing Daddy is playing with in this photo is a Johnny Astro Luna 3, which seems to have come out in 1967.  The stockings attached to the fireplace bricks indicate this might have been around Christmas, so maybe the Johnny Astro was a present, although there's no way to tell from the photo whether it was for him or one of us kids.  He might just have been testing the toy to make sure it worked, like so many other parents.  I don't recognize the room so don't know if it's our house or someone else's, or where it could be.

Obviously, I have more research to do!  But I feel I was able to identify enough to post this for Daddy's birthday.

These are two photos of the Johnny Astro and its components.  I think the small oval white thing next to one of the stars on the launching station in the first photo might be the astronaut.  And next to it appears to be a clear piece of plastic, which might be a bag of some sort; maybe inside it are one or two of the vehicles?

According to the box, the original came with a "control center, 3 space vehicles, astronaut and capsule, and launching station."  There was also a sheet of paper, which was most likely the instructions.

Wow, if we still had the Johnny Astro now, I wonder how much it would be worth?

Happy Birthday to My Nephew!

I recently discovered that WPMI, the NBC affiliate in Mobile, Alabama, has had a feature for several years called "Salute to Our Veterans."  I don't know how they choose the veterans they salute, but on November 21, 2018, they chose my nephew Joel Richard Kent III and honored him for 20 years of service in the U.S. Navy.  At the time he was a Lieutenant Commander and living in Florida.  As it turns out, November 21 is just a few days after his birthday, so maybe that had something to do with when they featured him.

Anyway, I think that's really cool, so I figured I'd make sure everyone knew about it!  The version on the WPMI site doesn't quite finish before another tribute comes in over it, and an ad runs before it, so a very nice person there (thank you, Keith!) uploaded Joel's Salute to their YouTube channel so I could share it with everyone.  And now you can watch it here.

Happy birthday, Joel!

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's . . . .

Today is April 15, now probably most famous in the United States for being Income Tax Day, the deadline to file one's federal (and often state) income taxes, or at least make your payment while you extend your filing date for six months.  The date was codified in 1955 and varies sometimes depending on holidays, weekends, and events such as the COVID pandemic.

In 1912, the RMS Titanic sank on April 15, after having glancingly hit an iceberg the night before.

And in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died, succumbing to the gunshot wound inflicted on him by John Wilkes Booth on April 14.

But even more important than any of these events, April 15 is my little brother's birthday.

Happy birthday, Mark!

Me and Mark, about 1964–1965

Wordless Wednesday

 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Four Things!

Well, I certainly haven't posted in a while!  My last post was January 15 for my blogiversary, and before that it was December 1.  I have nothing but my health to blame, but I've decided I need to start writing again anyway, and what better day to start than on my birthday?  I turned 60 today, and coincidentally Randy Seaver provided a theme for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun that works nicely with a birthday — writing about myself.  So let's get back in the blogging habit!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music here), is:

1.  Let's have some genealogy fun tonight and answer some family-history-related questions with four responses (Four Things!).

2.  Share your answers with us in your own blog, in a Facebook or Instagram post, or in the comments on this blog post.  Please leave a link to anything you post elsewhere in a comment.

Okay, here are my answers.

Four Names I Go By
1.  Janice
2.  Jan-Jan (but only for my maternal grandmother)
3.  Bubbie
4.  Amanda Rycroft (Faire character)

Four Places I've Lived (Resided)
1.  Maroubra Junction, New South Wales, Australia
2.  Niceville, Florida
3.  Oakland, California
4.  Gresham, Oregon

Four Ancestral Places I Have Been
1.  Mount Holly, New Jersey
2.  Manhattan, New York
3.  Miami, Florida
4.  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Four Interesting Places I Have Been
1.  Athens, Greece
2.  San Sebastian, Spain
3.  Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
4.  Tallinn, Estonia

Four Favorite Ancestors
1.  Ann (Ridgway) Gaunt, 1710–1794
2.  Gershon Itzhak Novitsky, ~1858–1948
3.  Minnie Zelda (Nowicki) Meckler, ~1880–1936
4.  Moses Mulliner, 1741–1821

Four Favorite Genealogy Record Collections
1.  Historical newspapers
2.  Religious records (all, not just BMD!)
3.  Probate files
4.  Military pensions and service records

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Newspaper Headlines on Your Birthdate

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver has us doing an online scavenger hunt for newspaper front pages.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1) What is your birthdate?

(2) Find a newspaper from your hometown, or a nearby larger town or city, that was published on that date.  What was the major headline on page 1 of that issue of the newspaper?

(3) Share your headline with us in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook post.

NOTE:  For those who don't have access to digital newspapers behind a subscription wall, find FREE digital newspapers using Kenneth Marks' The Ancestor Hunt site at https://theancestorhunt.com/newspapers.html.

(4) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

1.  I was born April 9, 1962 in Los Angeles, California (East L.A., to be specific; I have my own theme song!).

2.  I started my newspaper search on Chronicling America, because it's a free site that everyone has access to (your U.S. tax dollars at work!).  I found two newspapers there published on April 9, 1962, but they were from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.  Not exactly my hometown; not even the right side of the country.

Next I tried Newspapers.com, because I have a subscription.  I found two different isssues of the Los Angeles Times, a morning edition and a midday edition!

The top headlines for the morning edition:
• Cuba Price for Invaders:  $62 Million or 30 Years
• French Voters OK Algera Cease-fire
• Blood Flows as Algeria Vote Wins
• Sino-Soviet Split Called 'Inevitable'
• Sailors Quit Ship, Taking Grain to Reds

The top headlines for the midday edition:
• Hounds Track Fleeing Convicts
• Border Gun Fight:  Tourists See Norwalk Man Die
• Gunpowder Blast Kills 20; 500 Flee
• 2 Yanks Die, 2 Held in S. Viet-Nam
• Caliente Race Fans Panicked
• And a photo of Richard Burton in Rome

I found it interesting how different the stories were from the morning to midday.

Happy Birthday, Sissie-poo!

Today is the birthday of my older sister (technically half-sister), which I've decided to celebrate on my blog, just because I can.  Oh, the joys of having a blog devoted to family history!

Laurie is my father's daughter from his first marriage.  Because my mother was very family-oriented, my siblings and I probably would have known about her anyway, but we really got to know her and her mother because they used to live with my immediate nuclear family when I was a child.  We were very forward-thinking for the 1960's, I know.  There's even a photo of the four of us from 1968:

After Mary Lou and Laurie moved out of our house, they were in California for a while before moving back to the East Coast.  But I always stayed in touch with Laurie by writing.

When my family moved back to the United States in 1973 after two years of living in Australia, we also went to the eastern part of the U.S., albeit in Florida, and I continued to write to Laurie.  My brother and sister got to know her better than I because at different times they both ended up in her area and were able to visit in person.

Then, in 1991, plans were made for my mother, my brother, and me to visit San Antonio, where my sister lived, for a big family Christmas.  And my sister decided to surprise everyone else by having Laurie show up.

They plotted and planned.  The day I was scheduled to fly in, Stacy went to the airport to pick me up and had Laurie come along.  Laurie was waiting in the area through which passengers exited.

I was walking along, looking for Stacy, when suddenly someone I had just passed said, "What's the matter?  Don't you recognize your own sister?"

I turned and had to take a few seconds before I realized that Laurie was standing there in front of me.  She later commented with great joy about me standing there with my mouth hanging open.

She also mentioned that after this wonderful surprise had been planned, for several days she had been telling her coworkers, "I'm going to see my sister I haven't seen for 23 years!"  Which of course just begged for an explanation she was happy to share.

Because we had all four siblings together again, we commemorated the occasion with another photo, all of us in the same relative positions as in the one from 23 years prior.

Which is one of my favorite family photos that I have.

Happy birthday, Laurie!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Telling Part of My Story: My Tattoo

It's my birthday today!  Yes, I have survived one more revolution around the sun and am now 58 years old.  Not the oldest person around, certainly, but since I had some people predict I wouldn't make it past 30, a lot better than it could have been.

One of the recurring themes for family history during the past few years has been that along with documenting all of those ancestors, the family genealogist should also remember to document his own life.  So starting today I decided I will write something about myself for my blog on my birthday.

After such a momentous decision, however, comes the next one:  what to write about?  What is interesting about me or my life?  Or interesting to me about my life?

I finally settled on a topic that in some ways is intrinsic to my identity, or at least to identifying me, but which for years my family knew nothing about.

I have a tattoo.  Meet Dart.

My inspiration for having a tattoo started when I was very young:  My father had a tattoo, and I loved it.  (It occurs to me now that I don't know if we have any photographs of it.  My sister and I think it was on his left arm.)  It was of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of wind, air, and learning.  And I thought it was so cool, I wanted a tattoo also.

Actually following through on that took a long time.  I had to work myself up to it.  I found someone to do the artwork about 1983.  I wanted a dragon for strength.  I don't remember the name of the guy who did the drawing (which I admit is bad), but he let me have the artwork to take somewhere else.  My roommate at the time got a tattoo the day before she was going to be commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy (because you're not supposed to get tattoos after you've become an officer) and vetted the tattoo artist as doing clean work.  (It used to be you worried about getting hepatitis from an artist who didn't use clean needles, but by this time you had to worry about AIDS.)

The artist was Bob, and the place was Spotlight Tattoo on Melrose Boulevard in Los Angeles (and they're still there!).  I remember it cost $75 and took one hour for the tattoo.  But during that hour Bob asked me something like four or five times if I was okay.  He finally said he had never seen anyone stay so white for so long.  (Um, yeah, low pain threshhold, sorry, dude.)

So I finally had my tattoo!  And I loved it!

I named the dragon Dart after the dragon in the Roger Zelazny short story "The George Business" (I'm sure this transcription of the story violates copyright), which I read in the anthology Dragons of Light, edited by Orson Scott Card.  Dart was strong and intelligent, which I thought was a great combination.

And no one in my family knew about him until about 2007.

See, my maternal grandmother was Jewish.  And Jews traditionally aren't supposed to get tattoos.  I've always been told that you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have a tattoo.  And I didn't want my grandmother to know that I couldn't be buried in a Jewish cemetery, because I was the grandchild the most interested in our Jewish history.

So to make sure that Bubbie (my grandmother) wouldn't know, I figured the safest thing to do was not to let anyone in the family know, just in case it might somehow accidentally come up in conversation sometime.  I never wore anything sleeveless around family members.

And I managed to keep that secret.  Bubbie died in 2006.  At that point I had conditioned myself so well that it still didn't occur to me to mention it to family.

Until I watched a program that explained how a body was identified because of the tattoo the person had.  Investigators publicized the tattoo, and someone who recognized it was able to identify the deceased person.

I realized it was unlikely, but it occurred to me that if something similar were to happen to me, investigators could publicize the tattoo all they wanted, and no one in my family would know it was me.  Because they didn't know about the tattoo.

So I told them.  And I stopped worrying about being an unidentified body.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Number One Songs

When I saw the title for this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, I thought it was going to be talking about our favorite songs.  But that wouldn't be very genealogically oriented, would it?  No, Randy Seaver had something else in mind.

Tonight, we're going to go down memory lane a bit.

(1) What was the #1 song on the day you were born?  Or on your birthday when you were 15?  When you were 18?  Or when you married?  Or some other important date in your life.

(2) Go to http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/birthdayno1, enter the date, and select from UK, US, or Australia record lists.  Note:  The first date available is 1 January 1946. 

Alternatively, go to Wikipedia.org and search for "number one songs in yyyy" (insert your year), enter the month and date, and see a list of number one songs for each year since 1940. 

(3) Tell us what your results are (if you are sensitive about your age, don't list the date or year) in a blog post of your own, a comment to this post, or a Facebook status line or note.

So, let's see what I came up with.

• Birth date April 9, 1962:

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song in the United States was "Good Luck Charm" by Elvis Presley, also #1 in Australia on that day.  (YouTube says that the song hit #1 the week ending April 21, which means spanning April 15–21, so the "This Day in Music" site may not be entirely accurate?)

• 15th birthday, April 9, 1977:

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song in the United States was Abba's "Dancing Queen", which was also #1 in Canada on that day.

• 18th birthday, April 9, 1980:

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song in the United States was "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" by Pink Floyd, another song which was also #1 in Canada on that day.

• 25th birthday, April 9, 1987 (which was important to me because I turned a quarter of a century):

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song in the United States was Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", which was yet another song that was also #1 in Canada on that day.

• I haven't been married, but my anniversary date with my ex is February 14, 2007:

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song was Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" (which I've never heard of, but I haven't heard of any of the other songs from that date either).

• 50th birthday, April 9, 2012:

From "This Day in Music", the #1 song in the United States was "We Are Young" by Fun (featuring Janelle Monáe), would you believe another song which was also #1 in Canada on that day.

The year 2012, when I turned 50, was also the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and I celebrated my birthday at a costume ball commemorating the ship.  According to one site, the most popular song that year was "That Haunting Melody" by Al Jolson, but I can't find anything for a specific date.

"This Day in Music" also provides the #1 song in Australia and in Germany, by the way.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Earliest Known Birth Date in Your Family Tree

It figures!  I'm out of town, so this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun requires I have access to my family tree database, which I don't have on my travel computer.

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Who is the person with the earliest known birth date in your family tree?  Describe how you figured this out.

(2) Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook or other social media post.  Please leave a link to your information on this post in a comment.

(3) Extra credit :)  Who is the person with the earliest known birth date in North America in your family tree?

Since I don't have access to my database, I'm going to make an educated guess and then check it when I return home tomorrow.

I believe the person with the earliest known birth date entered in my family tree is Georg Söller, my umpty-umpth-great-grandfather on my Sellers line.  I remember he was born in 1615 in Weinheim, Baden, but I do not recall the exact date.

I got the date from research work done by Edwin Jaquett Sellers (1865–1946), a lawyer and genealogist from Philadelphia.  He self-published several books about his family research, including two books on the Sellerses.  The first (available as a download through Google Books) was in 1903, and he put out a revised edition in 1925.  I've double checked most of the information I have found in the books and found it to be accurate, so I think Georg's birthdate is probably correct.  As for how I checked it within my tree, I just remember these things, plus I don't have many lines back that far.

The person with the earliest known birth date in North America is probably someone on my Gauntt line, but I have no idea who.  That I will also need to check when I return home.  So look for an update to this post in the near future!

=====

And here's the update:

I was only partially correct about (Hans) Georg Söller.  I have his birth year, which is 1615, but not his actual birth date.  The earliest birth date I have recorded in my tree is Georg's grandson Hans Paul Söller, who was born February 26, 1667/1668 in Weinheim, Baden.  Paul is the brother of my ancestor Hans Adam Söller, who was born December 13, 1669, also in Weinheim.

The earliest North American birth date in my family tree appears to be that of Ann Pharo, who was born about December 14, 1677, probably in New Jersey.  She married Thomas Ridgway, and they had a dughter, Ann Ridgway (October 10, 1710–February 6, 1794), who married Hananiah Gaunt (March 2, 1706/1707–Aptil 1792).  He is the oldest Gaunt I have entered in my family tree so far, although I have information going back to 1508.  So the earliest known birth date in North America in my tree is indeed someone on my Gaunt line, even if not born a Gaunt herself.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who in Your Database Has Your Birthday?

In this week's challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver has us crunching data in our genealogy databases:

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:

(1) Are there persons in your genealogy database who have the same exact birth date that you do?  If so, tell us about them — what do you know, and how are they related to you?

(2) Are there persons in your database who are your ancestors and share your birthday (but not the year)?   How many, and who are they?

(3)  Are there other persons in your database who share your birthday (but not the year)?  How many, and who are they?

(4) For bonus points, how did you determine this?  What feature or process did you use in your software to work this problem out?  I think the Calendar feature probably does it, but perhaps you have a trick to make this work outside of the Calendar function.

(5) Share your answers on your own blog, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.  Be sure to leave a link in Comments to your post.

So here's my little data dump.

(1) No one in my database has the exact same birthday that I do, April 9, 1962 (my birthday was a week ago Sunday).  Like Randy, I didn't really expect to find anyone.

(2) None of my ancestors for whom I have complete birthdates was born on April 9.

(3) Of the people in my database for whom I have complete birthdates (I don't know how many that is), only six persons were also born on April 9, and they're all in the 20th century.

• April 9, 1907, George Wendel Votaw, 4th cousin twice removed
• April 9, 1917, Anna Marie Stayton, grand-aunt-in-law
• April 9, 1945, Cecelia Keselman, ex-4th cousin-in-law
• April 9, 1980, Patricia Marie Gauntt, 2nd cousin
• April 9, 1995, Jacob Berkowitz, 3rd cousin
• April 9, 1996, Yoni Monat, 3rd cousin

The only one I remembered beforehand is my cousin Yoni.  I do have several people with only the month of April and no specific day, so it's possible there are a few more.  I so need to have time to work on my own family research.

(4) This did not work as well as it should have.  I use Family Tree Maker v. 16, which does have a calendar function.  Unfortunately, when I ran it, it gave me 57 copies of each month, and every single one was empty, even though I double-checked to make sure it was supposed to be searching through the entire database.  So I had to do a manual search in the birthdate field.  For my search term I used "April 9."  Also unfortunately, this too did not work as well as I had hoped.  It picked up all birthdates that started with "about", "before", and "between" and anything with just a year.  Altogether, I paged through 1,806 entries to come up with my list of six people.  You could say I'm a little . . . disappointed in FTM's performance.

My database, by the way, has only 7,956 individuals in it, as compared to Randy's 47,500 (which I am just astounded at!).  Randy had .14% of the people in his database with the same birthdate but a different year.  For me the figure was .07% of my database with the same birthdate.  Pretty small numbers there for both of us.