Visiting the homeland? Climbing the same mountain Grandpa did? Tell us how you spent–or how you’re spending–your summer vacation, ancestor-style.
a2a_linkname=”Walking in Their Footsteps?”;
a2a_linkurl=”http://www.ancestrymagazine.com/2007/03/you-said/footsteps/”;
Magdeline Lemberger rose before dawn on a cool September morning in 1911. Checking on her sleeping children, she found their bedroom window was propped open. Seven-year-old Annie was gone.
Magdeline rushed to wake her husband, who ran to the house next door in their working-class neighborhood known as the Bush in Madison, Wisconsin, to call the police.
I never thought I’d begin an article like this, but I have to start this one by asking you to pay close attention. This orphan heirloom case was such a doozy of a ride that it was hard for those of us involved to hang on, so it’s going to require some careful explanation. It began, as usual, with an e-mail.
I remember a story about a woman who always cut the end off the roast. Asked why, she said it was because her mother did. Someone asked her mother, and the mother said the same thing—because her mother did. Grandmother, tracked down and asked the same question, said, “Because I never had a pan big enough.”
Tradition lives on in our kitchens, at least through some of the foods we eat.
In the world of genetic genealogy, I descend from Helena, a “daughter” of ancestral Eve. My father descends from Jasmine. We know this because we tested our mitochondrial DNA. The results identified us as descendants of certain “clan mothers,” but more importantly, the results provided us with the potential for finding other people who descend from the same line of women.
In the Name of Taxes
It all began very innocently one Saturday afternoon sitting at the dining room table with my husband, Dave. We were discussing our bills.
Before reading any further, see if you can answer the question. And here is a hint—you’re looking for something that’s not there.
You’re looking for children who aren’t in the photo. You can tell the couple had at least five children by the gaps in the ages of the children pictured.
Finally we can all have a reason to like taxes–we can put them to USE when LOOKING for our family history.
Never has a government said, “Golly, we don’t feel like collecting taxes this year. Let’s just skip it.” You pay taxes. Your children will pay taxes. And your ancestors before you paid taxes.
Forget trees. When it comes to family history, mixed media artist Valerie Atkisson relies on everything from paper clips to tanned goat skin to celebrate her family history.
“I wanted to bring life into the raw, vital information that you get from genealogical research,” says Atkisson.
When Eliza Jones, a former slave living in South Carolina, went to register for a savings account in 1871, she couldn’t sign her name for identification, nor could the bank afford to take a picture of her. But the bank wanted some way to distinguish Eliza from other would-be claimants.