Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

(+) The Westford Knight

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

NOTE: This article contains several photographs plus two drawings.

This story sounds like it came from a novel by Dan Brown. It mixes Knights Templar, the Holy Grail, Masonic rituals, and pre-Columbian history – in Massachusetts. Scottish Templar Knights in Massachusetts in the 1300s? Read on.


First, let's examine a few "facts."

So-called fact: The Pilgrims were the first Europeans to settle in America in 1620.

The truth: Jamestown, Virginia was settled in 1609. The Acadian French settled at Port-Royal (in what is now Nova Scotia) in 1607 and probably had even earlier settlements. The Spanish settled in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. In reality, the Pilgrims of Plimoth Colony were the "Johnny-come-latelies" of the New World.

So called fact: Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover the New World in 1492.

The truth: there were numerous explorers all up and down the East Coast prior to 1492. Besides, Columbus never made it to North America although he did see the mainland in Central America and the northern tip of South America.

Tales From Beyond the Grave in Montreal

Skeletons unearthed in Old Montreal will allow archeologists to travel back in time to learn more about the common-man residents of Montreal in the 1700s. The skeletons of two adults and one teenager unearthed at the steps of the Notre Dame Basilica this month are shedding light on the lives of Montrealers who walked these city streets centuries ago.

"From their bones and teeth we can determine their sex, age and size," said Gérard Gagné, a bio-archeologist with Arkéos Inc. who takes an obvious delight in deciphering the tales the dead can tell. "We can also find out what their dietary habits were like, if they smoked a pipe or not, what ailments they might have had, like fractures or tumours."

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, or What the Pilgrims Really Ate at Thanksgiving

Millions of American families will sit down to dine together in this month's annual Thanksgiving Day celebration. Menus will vary a bit but most will feature turkey along with stuffing, gravy, squash, cranberries, and other vegetables. Pumpkin pie has always been popular with my family as well. Did you ever wonder what the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag Indian guests ate during their first Thanksgiving in 1621?

Unfortunately, we cannot be certain. The Pilgrims did not print menus for their guests. After all, none of their Indian guests could read, nor could very many of the Pilgrims themselves. Most were illiterate. Luckily, several colonists who were literate wrote personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and those accounts have survived. These accounts give a few hints as to the menu.

Footnote.com Holocaust Collection Update

I published an announcement about the new Holocaust Collection on Footnote.com on 29 September 2009. I am republishing the announcement below. At that time, Footnote.com planned to have these records open to the public for only the month of October.  However, I have been told there is now a change in those plans.

Due to the popularity of this collection, the folks at Footnote.com have decided to keep the records available free to the public through the rest of this year. This is a great opportunity to catch up on research that you missed earlier.

Confederate Pension Records

The National Archives and Records Administration does have the surviving military service records for Confederate soldiers. However, the National Archives has no Confederate pension records in its files. To order these, you need to contact the state from which the Confederate soldier served.

Harry Houdini Died on Halloween

It may seem appropriate that the world's greatest escape artist and illusionist, Harry Houdini, died on the day when many people try to portray themselves as something other than what they really are.

Houdini always claimed that he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 6, 1874. However, a birth certificate found after his death revealed that he was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. He was the son of Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz (1829-1892) and Cecilia Steiner. At birth, his name was Ehrich Weiss (or Weisz). He immigrated at the age of 4 on July 3, 1878, on the SS Fresia with his mother (listed as Cisy), sister Aurine, and brothers Nathan and Willi. At first, the family lived in Appleton, where Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz served at the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. In the 1880 U.S. census, the family was living on Appleton Street. His name was listed as Ehrich Weiss, but friends called him "Erie" or "Harry."

De-Classified Records on Amelia Earhart's Disappearance Now Online

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com Allows Americans to Investigate for Themselves, 'What Really Happened to Amelia Earhart'

PROVO, UT -- 10/23/09 -- There are multiple theories surrounding the mysterious disappearance of iconic aviator Amelia Earhart in 1937, but a unique case file published online for the first time ever by Ancestry.com reveals more details. Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, has published a 73-page file consisting of letters and telegrams sent in the 1960s by an interesting cast of historical characters, including Congressman J. Arthur Younger, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur II and members of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Department of State.

Matthew Brady Doctored His Photographs

I have always been fascinated by Matthew Brady's photographs from the U.S. Civil War. He and his associates took thousands of photographs and many of them have been preserved. They are available on Footnote.com and elsewhere on the Web. However, all were not as they seemed.

Time Magazine points out that "Generally regarded as the world's first commercially successful photojournalist, Matthew Brady was also one of the medium's most accomplished manipulators."

As an example, Time shows a photograph that Brady took of eight Civil War generals. The problem is that one of them wasn't there. Time then shows the original photograph that shows seven generals. The "doctored" version had General Francis P. Blair added, even though he wasn't present when the original photograph was taken. A rather plush looking drapery was also added. All this was done without Photoshop!

Northernmost Battle of the U.S. Civil War

On October 19, we celebrate the northernmost land battle of the Civil War which was fought 145 years ago. However, most people won't be celebrating as they never heard of the battle. So where was the northernmost land battle of the war fought?

Many people might guess that it was in Pennsylvania. If so, they would be off by several hundred miles. In fact, the northernmost land battle of the U.S. Civil War was fought in Saint Albans, Vermont, about 15 miles from the Canadian border.

The Great Miramichi Fire

File this article under “history.” It also may explain why your ancestors left New Brunswick in the late 1820s.

We often forget just how difficult life was for our ancestors. Oh, we may talk about their "trials and tribulations," but what does that mean? Just how tough was it? For thousands of residents of New Brunswick, Canada, the summer of 1825 and the succeeding years were indeed terrible. I had ancestors in Miramichi, New Brunswick, at that time, and apparently so did tens or even hundreds of thousands of today's citizens.

Sons and Daughters of the Southern Cross

An amateur historian with a ''bean counter's approach to history'' is leading Australians to an unsung group of ancestors, the first generation of home-grown colonists. These sons and daughters of the Southern Cross have become the devotion, if not obsession, of a Canberra family doctor, Craig James Smee.

Some surprising statistics:

Forty-eight per cent of these children were ''illegitimate'';

New Project to Digitize Ship's Logbooks

The BBC reports that researchers are digitizing the captains' logs from the voyages of Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle, Captain Cook from HMS Discovery, Captain Bligh from The Bounty, and 300 other 18th and 19th century ships' logbooks. Nearly 300 Royal Navy captains' logs from voyages dating back to the 1760s. The logbooks will be available on the National Archives website next year.

Great Chicago Fire of 1871

One dark night, when people were in bed,
Mrs. O' Leary lit a lantern in her shed,
The cow kicked it over, winked its eye, and said,
There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

138 years ago next week, a great fire roared through the city of Chicago. No one knows for sure whether a lantern-kicking cow of the O'Leary's was really responsible for starting the Great Chicago Fire on October 8, 1871. In fact, some believe the fire was started by a comet from outer space.

The fire started in the cow barn at the rear of the Patrick O'Leary cottage at 137 DeKoven Street on Chicago's West Side. The blaze began about 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, 1871. By midnight the fire had jumped the river's south branch, and by 1:30 a.m. the business district was in flames. Shortly thereafter the fire raced northward across the main river. With the limited firefighting equipment of 1871, the city's fire department was helpless as the flames jumped from building to building.

Unemployed Man Finds Anglo-Saxon Gold and Silver Treasure with Metal Detector

For the jobless man living on welfare who made the find in an English farmer’s field two months ago, it was the stuff of dreams: a hoard of early Anglo-Saxon treasure, probably dating from the seventh century and including more than 1,500 pieces of intricately worked gold and silver whose craftsmanship and historical significance left archaeologists awestruck.

When the discovery in Staffordshire was announced Thursday, experts described it as one of the most important in British archaeological history.

This Day in History: Is There a Chiropractor in the House?

On September 18, 1895, the first chiropractic adjustment is performed, and a new field of medicine is born, along with a healthy number of skeptics. Daniel David Palmer was at various times a beekeeper, school teacher and grocery store owner. He was also a student of mysticism and was interested in physiology.

Palmer was born March 7, 1845 in Pickering, near Toronto, Canada to Katherine McVay and Thomas Palmer. At age twenty he moved to the United States with his family. While living in Davenport, Iowa in 1895, Palmer met a deaf janitor with a back problem. Upon examination, Palmer located a lump in Harvey Lillard’s back. Palmer had already advanced the theory that spinal abnormalities caused most, if not all, diseases and conditions by virtue of disrupting normal nerve flow. When he performed an adjustment on Lillard, which involved the manual manipulation of the spine and surrounding joints, the man’s deafness vanished. Palmer knew he was onto something big. (Lillard’s later account of the event is quite different from what Palmer claimed.)

Bachmann Publick House Could Be Sold to Genealogy Society for a Dollar

The 1753 Bachmann Publick House in Easton, Pennsylvania was once owned by Declaration of Independence signer George Taylor. It served as a meeting place for treaty talks during the French and Indian War and also hosted notables such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. The building also served as Easton's first courtroom. Now the county finance committee has recommended selling the Bachmann Publick House to the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society for a dollar.

Kings County, N.S. Historical Collection to Become a Public Searchable Database

Great progress is being made in the development of a searchable electronic database for an archival collection rich in King's County, Nova Scotia history - and you can help.

The collection was put together over many years by the late Kings County historian Leon Barron, and was donated to the Kings Historical Society by Barron’s wife, Mary, following his death. She said Leon would spend many hours in the Acadia University library conducting research.

The Origins of the Melungeons

Melungeon is a term applied to many people of the Southeastern United States, mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia: East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and East Kentucky. The most common adjective used to describe the Melungeons is “mysterious;” no one seems to know where the Melungeons originated. The Melungeons often did not fit into any of the racial categories that define an individual or group within American society; their neighbors considered them neither white, black, nor Indian.

The Melungeons appear to be of mixed ancestry, and contradictory claims about the origins of these people have existed for centuries. Most modern-day descendants of Melungeon families are generally Caucasian in appearance, often, although not always, with dark hair and eyes, and a swarthy or olive complexion. Descriptions of Melungeons vary widely from observer to observer, from "Middle Eastern" to "Native American" to "light-skinned African American."

Historic Weather

What was the weather on the day you were born? When your Dad talked about going out in that great blizzard, just how bad was it?  Wolfram Alpha has a number of helpful tools to answer your weather questions, including historical data from weather stations located all over the world.

Archivist Seeks Help Identifying NZ WWII Flyers

An Australian researcher is asking the public to help her identify Kiwi airmen depicted in over 100 photos found and retrieved from a military rubbish dump. The airmen all belonged to the RNZAF No.6 Flying Boat Squadron, formed in 1942 and charged with hunting Japanese boats in the Pacific during World War II.

Australian archivist Jenny Scott is asking for assistance. Her father, Flight Lieutenant Alastair Scott, originally rescued the photos.