My family tree is laden with precious stones, flowers, and famous names. There are Pearls and Rubies, Lilies, Roses, Irises, Daisies, and a lot of Violets. On other branches, dangle George Washingtons and Daniel Boones, Benjamin Franklins, Napoleon Bonapartes, Marquis Lafayettes, Abraham Lincolns, Robert E. Lees, Andrew Jacksons, Zachary Taylors, William Henry Harrisons, and a fictional hero, too.
You know how you think you’ll remember a date, but when you go to retrieve it, it just isn’t there? I was having one of those moments. I was trying to get a better picture of my grandmother’s sister Meredith. I knew someone had once tried to snatch her from behind a bank in town, and I knew that the incident happened not too long ago, genealogically speaking—in the 1970s.
This case is a little different from my usual orphan heirloom mysteries, and I suppose I should start out by fessin’ up that I came up a little shy in terms of resolution. But just as I was about to select a typical submission to research, I received an e-mail with a conundrum I simply couldn’t resist.
Who: Alton Brown, author, food-wizard, and television host
What: Looking for food heritage—and real American road food—with his latest show, the Food Network’s Feasting on Asphalt
Why: “For the vast majority of human history, hotels didn’t exist and eating meant lighting a fire,” says Alton.
Lilian Hough inherited a number of things from her dad—her eyes, her laugh, her smile. But her favorite inherited feature is her love of the outdoors. Before she could even read, Lilian’s dad had her learning to ski in the winter and hiking near their Vienna home in the summer. The pair stayed active together, even across miles, well into Lilian’s adulthood.
We admit it—we loved our March/April cover girl. What we didn’t know was how much everyone else did, too.
“When I saw the cover, I let out a scream because the girl on the cover is an old, old friend …”
“Where did you get the photo?”
“The woman on the cover is my mother.”
Wait a minute—our cover girl has a story?
Did you find an ancestor with a truly unique occupation? Whether they were vaudeville performers or vaccine inventors, we want to hear about it.
a2a_linkname=”Earning Their Keep”;
a2a_linkurl=”http://www.ancestrymagazine.com/2007/05/you-said/odd-jobs/”;
(Photos courtesy of Bill Chapman, Enon Hall; for more information, visit www.enonhall.com.)
Tomorrow is the big day. We will close on Enon Hall at 4:00, ending what has been a very long process. I first saw the home in a photograph … in a book called “Hathaways of America” that was published in 1970.
Old houses are full of fascinating family history. But not everyone is so lucky as to land a house that formerly belonged to their own family. So how do you find out more about the history of the house you live in?
Study the architectural style of your home. Is it from about the same time period as the houses around it?
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.