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Members of the Texas Star Chapter of The Daughters of the Republic of Texas cordially invite you to attend the Historical Marker Dedication Ceremony for Major Leon Dyer, Army of the Republic of Texas, on Sunday, 28 April 2013 at 2 p.m. to be held at the Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery, Broadway & 43rd Street at Avenue K, Galveston, Texas.
Here is a historical mystery: who buried bodies at the former London home of Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of American independence?
The remains of four adults and six children were discovered by workmen during the £1.9 million restoration of Franklin's home at 36 Craven Street, close to Trafalgar Square. Researchers believe that there could be more bodies buried beneath the basement kitchens.
Today is the anniversary of one of the biggest twentieth-century disasters in the city of Boston. Genealogists normally like to study the current events of the times in which our ancestors lived. Wars are easy to study as they are well documented in history books. Yet other calamities of bygone times are often not so well known and documented.
One great disaster in the early twentieth century was the great Molasses Flood of January 15, 1919, in Boston, Massachusetts. This sounds humorous until one reads that 21 people died when an eight-foot high wall of molasses rolled down Commercial Street at a rather high speed. Two million gallons of crude molasses can move quickly when warmed by the sun. The result was an explosion heard many miles away. Half-inch steel plates of the huge molasses tank were torn apart. The plates were propelled in all directions, hard enough to cut the girders of the elevated railway.
The song that millions of people sing on New Years Eve is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. However, Burns never claimed that he was the original author. Instead, he once wrote, "I took it down from an old man." In fact, the ballad "Old Long Syne" printed in 1711 by James Watson shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns' later poem and it is assumed that even Watson's version was not the original.
The song's Scots title may be translated into English literally as "old long since", or more idiomatically, "long long ago", "days gone by" or "old times". "For auld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, is loosely translated as "for (the sake of) old times".
Anyone interested in American history might enjoy Don N. Hagist's online blog, entitled British Soldiers, American Revolution. It details the experiences of many of the enlisted men who were part of the British government’s effort to hold onto those thirteen rebellious North American colonies.
The British military record keeping of the eighteenth century often captured the reports and stories of officers but rarely did so for enlisted men. Hagist searches for records wherever he can find them.
Many of the men described in this blog eventually became Americans. Some deserted, others were captured as prisoners of war and then escaped, eventually disappearing into the American countryside where they were assimilated into American society. Some remained in British garrisons and continued serving as soldiers of the King.
A previously-unknown drawing emerged in a New York auction, purportedly from descendants of Caleb Loy, a former New York congressman, according to research by James Graham Baker, the retired Texas A&M University educator and historian who purchased it. The drawing is believed to be the oldest known surviving picture of Corpus Christi. The drawing is an 1849 image of the backside of Kinney's Trading Post and Kinney's Tank, a freshwater pond next to it that was Corpus Christi's first water supply.
(Click on the image to the right to see a larger version.)
The end is near. The world as we know it will end on December 21, when cataclysmic events will leave a trail of destruction and cause near-total human extinction on Earth. The claim is that the Mayan calendar treats the date as the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.
Well, some people think that will happen but I remain a bit suspicious this won't happen. After all, people have been predicting the end of the world on various dates for centuries and, so far, all have been wrong.
The present-day Mayans don't even expect a day of doom. They simply believe December 21, 2012 will be the beginning of a new, and better, era of enlightenment. However, many psychics, religious leaders, authors, and others continue to claim they have knowledge of the date the world will end. Looking back through history shows dozens of such predictions. Here are a few:
I wrote earlier about a recent excavation in Leicester, England to find and identify what is believed to be remains of King Richard III. The king, the last Plantagenet, ruled England from 1483 until he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. It is believed his body was brought to Leicester - but the exact whereabouts of the church have become lost over time. Using old records, archaeologists identified the location as being underneath a present-day car park.
An article in The Telegraph states that the remains have now been positively identified as those of Richard III. However, authorities apparently are withholding the news until a television documentary is broadcast in January.
Melissa Strojek wrote an interesting article that has been published in the Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal that should be required reading for all Americans. She writes (in part):
"Imagine traveling to a foreign country where you spoke very little of the language, had only the clothes on your back, what you could carry (children included), and had all the money you possessed in your pocket (in a lot of cases this was less than $20). The most discouraging part of all may have been traveling in the belly of a large ship in very poor, filthy, smelly conditions."
Genhis Khan, the 13th-century conqueror and imperial ruler, died 800 years ago. Historians, archaeologists, and grave robbers have searched for his tomb ever since he died. Germans, Japanese, Americans, Russians, and Brits all have led expeditions in search of his grave, spending millions of dollars. All have failed... until possibly now.
Legend has it that Khan’s funeral escort killed anyone who crossed their path to conceal where the conqueror was buried. Those who constructed the funeral tomb were also killed—as were the soldiers who killed them. One historical source holds that 10,000 horsemen “trampled the ground so as to make it even”; another that a forest was planted over the site, a river diverted. All of this is legend. No one knows if any of these stories are true or not.
The photos, capturing life in the then-48 states, show women working at plane plants, farmers surveying property and fairgoers having rousing fun. These are not war photos. The are images of the American lifestyle at home prior to and during World War II. Several of the images, which were gathered by the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, provide a glimpse of the quaint Vermont State Fair, which was held in Rutland in 1941.
This has nothing to do with genealogy but it does strike me as an interesting footnote to American history. A mysterious shorthand used by 17th century religious dissident Roger Williams has finally been decoded after more than 100 years of effort. A team of Brown University students has finally cracked the code.
Historians call the now-readable writings the most significant addition to Williams scholarship in a generation or more. Williams is Rhode Island's founder and best known as the first figure to argue for the principle of the separation of church and state that would later be enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
I wrote earlier (see http://goo.gl/TdDDh) about Richard III, the last Plantagenet, who ruled England from 1483 until he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. It is believed his body was brought to Leicester but the exact location of his grave was lost over the centuries, until this year. There is a strong possibility that his bones were recovered this summer.
Are the bones really that of Richard III? Probably. The king died in battle and the skeleton recovered was that of an adult male with signs of trauma to the skull shortly before death, perhaps from a bladed instrument, and a barbed metal arrowhead was found between vertebrae of the upper back.
William Shakespeare, writing more than a century after Richard's death, described the king as "deform'd, unfinished" and as a hunchback “so lamely and unfashionable that dogs” barked at him as he went by. Researchers said the recently uncovered skeleton displayed spinal abnormalities although not as severe as what Shakespeare claimed.
Irish genealogists may never have heard of Morpeth's Roll. After all, it has not been seen in public in the past 170 years. However, it is about to become visible to all online.
The Morpeth Roll is a unique testimonial document signed by over 275,000 people across Ireland in 1841, on the departure of George Howard, Lord Morpeth, from the office of Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Morpeth Roll is scheduled to go on public display until next year.
However, Christopher Ridgway, curator of Castle Howard, the UK stately
home where the Roll was discovered, will display the real thing at a
conference entitled The Gathering: Local History, Heritage and Diaspora,
on 24 November. As well as explaining what it is, he will be talking
about its potential value as a pre-famine census substitute for Irish
genealogy research.
The Testimonal Roll, which is wrapped around
a gigantic bobbin, is 429 meters (1,407 feet) in length and holds
around 250,000 signatures gathered from across the whole of Ireland in
just four weeks.
Where was the first Thanksgiving held in North America? If you guessed Plymouth, Massachusetts, guess again. In fact, that probably was not even the second or third Thanksgiving, although we cannot be certain.
On April 30, 1598, Spanish nobleman Don Juan de Oñate and a group of settlers traveling northward from Zacatecas, Nueva España (now Mexico), reached the banks of El Rio Bravo (Rio Grande). The first recorded act of thanksgiving by colonizing Europeans on this continent occurred on that April day in 1598 in Nuevo Mexico, about 25 miles south of what is now El Paso, Texas.
After having begun their northward trek in March of that same year, the entire caravan was gathered at this point. The 400-person expedition included soldiers, families, servants, personal belongings, and livestock. Two thirds of the colonizers were from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands). There was even one from Greece and another from Flanders. The rest were Mexican Indians and mestizos (mixed bloods).
The 10th century is meeting the 21st with the University of Exeter announcing the development of an app that will make medieval manuscripts available to the public. The app, which is being developed in collaboration with interactive museum technology company Antenna International, will allow students and the general public to study manuscripts that until now have been too fragile to be even exhibited.
One of Britain's leading genealogists is heading for the Phoenix pub
in Abbey Street, Faversham next Wednesday, November 14, with an
explosive theory that could rock the aristocracy. Anthony Adolph's
extensive researches have led him to believe Charles I was not father to
Charles II or his brother James II.
Anthony believes Henry Jermyn, the man who built St James Square in the heart of London, was the royal princes' true father.
Writer and editor Jason Rodriguez is an experienced writer, editor, and comic book illustrator. His books have been nominated for eight Harvey Awards honoring excellence in the comics industry and a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. Rodriguez is now editing graphic novels about colonial New England brought him to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
In an online interview, Rodriguez described his latest project this way:
I am sure you have read about the loss of tall ship HMS Bounty in the super storm Sandy. The ship was a replica of the famous HMS Bounty seized by Fletcher Christian and other mutineers in 1789. One crew member of the modern replica, Claudene Christian, has died and the ship's captain is missing. In an ironic twist, Claudene Christian was the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Fletcher Christian, the instigator of the original mutiny.
Where does a traveling genealogist go when he has a day off? To the cemetery, of course!
This week, I found myself in Eastern New Mexico with an extra day and nothing planned. Knowing there was a lot of history in the area, I decided to go see some of it for myself. I decided to visit the area's most famous resident, William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. but better known as Billy the Kid) and take some pictures.
Billy the Kid was one of the more famous outlaws of the American Old West. He is believed to have been born November 23, 1859 (his tombstone says 1860), in an Irish neighborhood of New York City. However, no record of his birth has ever been found. It is not known for sure who his biological father was, but his mother was Catherine McCarty, an Irish immigrant. There is some debate about whether McCarty was her maiden or married name. He also had a brother, Joseph McCarty.
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