Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: The Date Your Grandmother Was Born

Randy Seaver has a fun challenge 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 day of the week was your grandmother born (either one)?  Tell us how you found out.

(2)  What event was a headline in the newspapers on that date?  Tell us how you found out.
 
(3) What has happened in recorded history on your grandmother's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out and list five events.

(4) What famous people have been born on your grandmother's birth date?  Tell us how you found out and list five of them.

(5) Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

Here's mine:

1.  I chose my paternal grandmother, Anna Gauntt, who was born January 14, 1893, a Saturday, in Westhampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.  Her parents were Thomas Kirkland Gauntt and Jane Dunstan.

Method:  I confirmed Nana's birth date and place by finding her birth registration in Burlington County, New Jersey records.  I found the day by checking http://www.timeanddate.com/.

2.  In the Los Angeles Herald of January 14, 1893, the first story on the front page was "Charges against Carnot / Enemies of the President [of France] Tell Ugly Stories", with a dateline of Paris.

Method:  I looked on Chronicling America for front pages of newspapers published on January 14, 1893.  I wanted to find one from New Jersey, but there weren't any, so I settled for a Los Angeles newspaper, because that's where I was born.

3.  Historical events that occurred on January 14:

• A.D. 1301:  Andrew III of Hungary died.

• A.D. 1539:  Spain annexed Cuba.

• A.D. 1784:  The Congress of the United States of America ratified the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain.

• A.D. 1907:  An earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica killed more than 1,000 people.

• A.D. 2004:  The national flag of the Republic of Georgia was restored to official use.

Method:  I looked up the date on Wikipedia.

4.  Famous people born on January 14:

• 83 B.C.:  Mark Antony, Roman general and politician.

• A.D. 1273:  Joan I of Navarre, queen regnant of Navarre and queen consort of France.

• A.D. 1741:  Benedict Arnold, American-British general and traitor.

• A.D. 1836:  Henri Fantin-Latour, French painter and lithographer.

• A.D. 1919:  Andy Rooney, American soldier, journalist, critic, and television personality.

Method:  I looked up the date on Wikipedia.

I didn't think Nana's birth date was as boring as Randy thinks his grandmother's was.

Ohio-bound in 2019

The Ohio Genealogical Society recently sent out contracts to the speakers chosen for its 2019 conference, "Building a Heritage", scheduled for May 1–4 in Mason, Ohio at the Great Wolf Lodge.  And I was the happy recipient of one of those contracts!  It will be a relatively Jewish conference for me, as the talks they selected are "Jewish Genealogy:  How Is This Research Different from All Other Research?" and "Online Resources for Jewish Genealogy."

I'm already looking forward to the conference.  Not only will I enjoy giving the presentations and learning from other speakers, I'm sure I'll get to visit some extended family members who live in the area.  Plus Mason isn't that far from Cincinnati, and a con man I am researching was from near there.  The last time I was in Cincinnati, I was able to find a lot of information about him, but I left some stones unturned at the time.

So watch out, Ohio!  I'll be seeing you next year!

Wordless Wednesday

Third Anniversary

Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Who Is Your Second-most Recent Unknown Ancestor?

This week's Saturday Night Genealotgy Fun challenge is a rather logical extrapolation of a previous one.

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

(1) Who is Your SMRUA — your Second Most Recent Unknown Ancestor?  The one that you don't have a name for, or any information.  The one completely unknown to you.  

(2) Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently?  Why don't you scan it again just to see if there's something you have missed? 

(3) What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your SMRUA?  What about DNA matches?

(4) Tell us about him or her, and your answers to (2) and (3) above, in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+. 

NOTE:  We've done Most Recent Unknown Ancestors before.  Feel free to work down your list to someone you haven't written about before.

Here's mine.

I have written previously about my Most Recent Unknown Ancestor, which is my paternal grandfather's biological father.  I have found two close Y-DNA matches to my father, which have led me to the hypothesis that my biological great-grandfather was a Mr. Mundy.

When I looked through my family tree, I was surprised to see that my second-most recent unknown ancestor is . . . Mr. Mundy's father, my great-great-grandfather!  Yes, even though I am Jewish on my mother's side, I have at least a given name for every one of my great-great-grandparents on that side, and I have complete names for most of them, as well as for everyone on my paternal grandmother's line.

Obviously, finding my great-great-grandfather's name is entirely dependent on identifying my great-grandfather first.  I guess this challenge is a hint that I really should get back to working on tracing those Mundy lines backward and then forward in time, so I can try to find some living Mundy descendants with whom to communicate.  Maybe I will be lucky enough to find one or more who have already done autosomal DNA testing, so I can try to confirm my hypothesis that Bertram Mundy was my grandfather's biological father.

Like I always say, hope springs eternal!

Wordless Wednesday

Father and Grandfather

A few years ago I was lamenting the fact that I didn't have any photos of my father and his father together.  Recently, however, as I was doing more unpacking after my move, I discovered two old photo albums with the "magnetic" sticky paper.  I decided I really should take all those photos out as soon as possible, and in doing that, lo and behold!, I found what may be the only photograph of my father and grandfather together.  So here it is, in honor of Father's Day.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Did Your Father Love to Do?

Tomorrow is Father's Day, so I expected Randy Seaver to make the theme of this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun related to that, and he did not disappoint.

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

(1) It's Father's Day in the USA on Sunday, so let's talk about our fathers.  

(2) What did your father really like to do in his work or spare time?  Did he have hobbies, or a workshop, or did he like sports, or reading, or watching TV?

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.

The two things my father has always loved are cars and music.  He did things with cars both for work and his free time, and he played music in a lot of his spare time.

I don't know how young Daddy was when he first got hooked on cars, but I know he started racing when he was just a teenager.  He told me a story once about how he broke an arm when he was racing but was supposed to be doing something else, and he tried to hide it from his mother (my grandmother).  Years later he discovered that she had known all along that he was racing that day.

Daddy raced in Florida, California, Australia, and Texas, that I know of.  I think he mostly raced stock cars.  I don't know if he raced in New Jersey before moving to Florida.  He has lots and lots of trophies, which he has been threatening to get rid of, although I've told him he better not and that he should send them to me instead.  Somewhere (I have no idea where!) I have a photograph of him working on a car engine and my mother's brother hanging over the engine compartment on the other side.

When my family lived in Southern California, we would sometimes go with Daddy to racetracks, such as Pomona Raceway.  Years ago, while I was still living in Southern California, I was driving east on I-10 and drove through Ontario.  To the north side of the freeway was this massive empty lot with a huge pile of dirt in the middle.  There was nothing identifying the place, but it looked familiar to me.  I kept looking at it as I was driving past, and it suddenly dawned on me that it was the location of the former Ontario Raceway.  I couldn't have been there many times, but I somehow recognized it, even in its stripped-down state.

And Daddy's profession was being a mechanic.  He had shops of his own, and he worked for other people.  When we lived in Australia, he was photographed using a piece of expensive equipment for an ad that ran in the newspaper.  (A friend of mine told me that not any mechanic could use that equipment properly, so my father had to have been a damned good mechanic, which I knew already.)  When we moved back to the States and ended up in Niceville, the garage he had there became our place of refuge during Hurricane Eloise in 1975.  So I grew up around garages and racetracks, and the smell of engine grease is still oddly comforting to me.

My father's other great love is music.  He played guitar for my siblings and me when we were little, and we learned songs such as "Sixteen Tons", "Abba Dabba Honeymoon", and "Mairzy Doats" by heart.  Before he was married, he competed on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour with a swing band (The Court Jesters) that came in second to a very young Gladys Knight.  And he played piano and organ also; he always had a piano or organ in the house.  He recently decided to sell the organ he had, because he can't play anymore due to arthritis in his hands.  That was a sad day.

Wordless Wednesday