Faces of America

Are you watching Faces of America on PBS? You should be (also check out African American Lives and African American Lives 2).

Pete and I watched African American Lives with his family two Christmases ago and it inspired us to get our own DNA tests.

Faces of America has been pretty interesting so far, though it does tend to highlight family members who pulled themseves up by their bootstraps and succeeded in America because they just never gave up, at the expense of the louts and ne'er do wells that exist in every family tree. I can just imagine Prof. Gates doing my "Book of Life": Well, shall we start with your syphiltic great-grandfater or those DeAngelis cousins who were executed by the Allies after WWII? Maybe those draft dodgers in Argentina instead?

Still, I like to watch. It inspires me to use my research skills on my own family tree and, exhausting that, Pete's family tree.

Episode 3 airs tonight (Wednesday, February 24th) at 8:00 on PBS.

Emma and Judy

I apologize for the lack of new posts lately. Gravestones usually get pushed to the back burner during this time of year.

In our family, this hidden week between Christmas and New Year's is often devoted to working on family history and going through old photographs. This year, I've been helping Pete's mom scan several hundred photographs from the Pownall family (Pete's paternal grandmother's family).

There are plenty of wonderful photos in the set, but by far my favorite is this picture of Emma Mathilde Rathke Pownall (Pete's great-grandmother) holding her daughter, Judith Jean (Pete's great-aunt). Judy was born in November of 1915 and her mother died in March of 1919 while giving birth to Pete's grandmother, Amy. In this photo, Judy is almost 2 years old, Emma is not visibly pregnant, and they are outside without coats, so I think it was taken in the late summer/early autumn of 1917.

We have boxes and boxes of studio photographs of this generation, but few candids. Though this picture is posed, you can't pose the smile on Judy's face. It's tragic that these two little girls grew up without a mother and heartbreaking to find a photo of their happiness before it was shattered. Still, it is a lovely photograph and I will be making a copy for myself, even though I'm only associated with them by marriage.

Emma Mathilde Rathke Pownall

1893-1919

Judith Jean Pownall

1915-2005

In a good hat!

Amy Dolores Pownall

and

Judith Jean Pownall

The Cary Family of Brockton, MA

After my post on Bible names with trend potential, commenter Heather Rojo sent me on a quest to find colonial New Englanders named Vashti. Result: there are way more of them than I would have expected.

While poking around, I found the Cary family of Brockton, MA. What a fantastically eclectic group of names! Here is a sampling from their family entry in the Vital Records of Brockton, MA:

Lois Cook Bartlett, Matriarch

I haven't been able to track down any information on Lois Cook Bartlett of Brunswick, ME, but I was enchanted by her headstone.

LOIS COOK BARTLETT

1768-1857

Mother of

Clarissa Bartlett Spear

& Grandmother of

Elizabeth G. Spear Wing

& Great-Grandmother of

Louise E. Wing Varney

& Great-great-Grandmother

of

Luigino E. Varni Gardinier

"Arise Daughter and go to thy Daughter

for thy Daughter's Daughter has a Son."

An inscription on the gray stone underneath the marble notes that five generations of descendants attended Lois' burial.

Does anyone recognize that daughter's daughter quotation? I poked around on the internet and found a few similar quotations in New England captivity narratives, but I'm not sure of the source. It sounds scriptural, but, as far as I can discover, it isn't.

This stone is a late example of the practice of noting the extent of an elderly person's posterity on his/her gravestone. While not tremendously common, these stones crop up all over New England.

Daniel Tyler

d. 1802

Brooklyn, CT

A friend of mine who recently traveled to Utah for a grandmother's 90th birthday party assures me that modern Mormon gravestones often list the deceased person's children (you see this in New England sometimes, too). I don't know if that's a long-standing tradition that goes back to the Mormons' genealogical links to colonial New England or if it is a new trend.

Sealing Child?

Does anyone know what the term "sealing child" means in the context of LDS baptism for the dead?

I've been doing some research on Pete's ancestors and have run into the phrase several times. Here's a RootsWeb entry for Pete's great(8x)-grandfather, William Thompson Jenckes:

I've found some good information about LDS baptism for the dead, but am having no luck tracking down "sealing child." Any ideas?

"I Come From Vikings"

For Christmas this year, Pete and I bought our families DNA tests from Ancestry.com. There are two kinds of tests: Y-chromosome tests (father's father's line) and mitochondrial DNA tests (mother's mother's line). My family hasn't taken them yet, but Pete's has and we just got the first round of results.

It turns out that Pete's Y chromosome belongs to the R1a haplogroup, which is actually slightly surprising. We've been trying to trace Pete's paternal line genealogically, and have succeeded in placing his paternal ancestors in Wales in the early-mid 18th century. Since almost everyone with British ancestry is in haplogroup R1b, I wasn't expecting anything else.

R1a distribution in Europe:

R1b distribution in Europe:

Here's what Ancestry says about R1a:

Today the R1a1 haplogroup can be found in high frequencies among groups living in the Ukraine, Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland. Haplogroup R1a1 is also found at rates of 50% in Ashkenazi Jewish populations, who ultimately settled in the Rhineland, now Germany, and have a deep and detailed contemporary history.

Other places where many men have the R1a Y chromosome: Northern India, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

According to the wisdom of the internet and at least one named source, this Y chromosome result is "the only unequivocal indicator of Viking ancestry in Britain." More sophisticated tests and additional genealogical work might tell us whether this is believable in Pete's case, but he's not waiting on further investigations. He's been dancing around declaring, "I come from Vikings" and suggesting potential Viking-y names for our hypothetical future children.


There'll be no living with him after this.

I (Apparently) Married Into the Beecher Family

While working on Pete's family tree, I found a fun family history fact: Pete is the second cousin (seven times removed) of Lyman Beecher, which, I think, makes him the third cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Pete's great-great-great grandmother, Marcia Willis Allen, was the daughter of Sylvia Beecher, whose great grandfather, Joseph (b. 1698), was the brother of Nathaniel Beecher, who was Lyman Beecher's grandfather. I've drawn a diagram, which is slightly more effective at showing this relationship, but it's tough to reproduce on the computer. Here's the best I can do (the vertical arrows indicate a parent/child relationship):

I'm not a genealogy expert, so please let me know if I've gotten the terminology wrong here. In any event, Pete can now trace one strand of his family back to the Great Migration and a specific location in England (Kent), so that's exciting.

Also, his ancestors inspired mobs to burn down convents.

Update (1/18/09): Ok, another big "duh" moment for me. I've been going around telling people my husband is a second cousin of Lyman Beecher and have been sort of surprised that most people are underwhelmed by this news. I couldn't figure it out until I realized that "Lyman Beecher" probably meant nothing to my in-laws or their friends. When I started saying "third cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe" instead, I got much better reactions. Thus, I am adding an updated diagram that includes Mrs. Stowe and am laughing at myself for not thinking of adding her in the first place.

John Boyle's Diary and the NEHGR

For the last few weeks, I have been toying with the idea of working with the John Boyle diary in some serious way. It's not the most compelling project I can think of, but it is an important source, and I think that annotating and publishing it would be a great help to many researchers.

This morning, I went to Widener and copied the transcription that appeared in the 1930-1931 volumes of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR). The transcription is preceded by a short introduction, which contains a brief biography and genealogy of John Boyle, as well as the following note:

In this article, the REGISTER presents a verbatim copy of John Boyle's "Journal," only a few passages — chiefly verses of no historical or genealogical importance or certain entries hardly suitable for publication — being omitted.

As you might imagine, the entries that discuss rape and genital mutilation that I presented here are deemed "hardly suitable for publication." I have found 12 entries that have been wholly or partially redacted, including a tantalizing entry discussing a Sons of Liberty dinner that ends enigmatically:

After an elegant Repast a Number of Patriotic Toasts were drank . . .

I'll be in the archives this afternoon and will report back on the unspeakable debauchery.

A Little Family History

I recently received an email from a couple who had come across some information I posted on Ancestry.com about my family history. They noticed that my paternal grandmother's family is from Celenza Valfortore in Foggia, Italy, and sent me a link to their Celenza Heritage website. I wanted to mention it here because it's always exciting to find referenced to your family history online. They have a whole page on Celenzani in Waterbury, CT, which is where my grandparents live. I sent the link along to my grandma - I hope she contacts them because she loves to tell stories about her family.

My paternal grandfather was born in Sassinoro in Benevento, near Naples. This is a picture of him when he was a baby. I love his dress! We have other photos of his babyhood, but they involve nudity and artful bunches of grapes, so I'll spare him the indignity. He must have been the most photographed baby in town because his father had gone to America for work and his mother liked to send him pictures.

My grandfather's father was born in Buenos Aires - we have a great photograph of his family from around the turn of the century, but I don't have a copy on my computer. In it, my great-great grandfather is wearing a huge, fur-trimmed cape, a rakishly cocked hat, and a luxuriant mustache. I'm not entirely sure how he ended up in Argentina - family legend says it had something to do with not wanting to serve in the Italian army. I'm also not sure whether having a great grandfather who was born and lived in Argentina makes me technically part Hispanic. I lean on the side of "no" since they were always ethnically Italian. Though, that does raise the question of how long you have to live somewhere in order to claim that ethnicity. When I was a teacher, I had a student whose family was German-Argentine, and the school categorized her as "Hispanic," right alongside the kid whose family spoke Nahuatl at home and (inexplicably) the Portuguese students. My point is that "Hispanic" is a broad and ill-defined category, but one to which I do not feel I belong.


My maternal grandfather is also Italian, though he and all his siblings were born in America. This is one of my favorite pictures of him. My Papa is the smiley one on the right, his older brother is on the left. Papa served in the Air Corps during WWII, serving as the radio operator with the 27th Troop Carrier Squadron in China-Burma-India. He has a hatful of medals, including a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

My paternal grandfather served too, but he was an officer and never went overseas. He stayed in the US and trained troops (including the 442nd Infantry) and was on a transport in the Pacific Ocean when the US bombed Hiroshima.

Papa's father was an immigrant and spoke mostly Italian, but his mother came over when she was two and was very proud of her perfect English. My mother is named after her, and I grew up with stories of her. She merits two pictures: the first (with her husband) too adorable to exclude, the second (mocking the baby - my mother - crying in her arms) more representative of her personality.





There is some question over my maternal grandmother's ethnicity. Her mother was definitely Irish, but her father (who died before she knew him) is more of a mystery. He definitely spoke French, and was born in Canada, and family legend has him belonging to a French-speaking Micmac community. Good historian that I am, I can't just accept that without further investigation, but I haven't done the necessary research, so I'll throw it out there with my reservations duly noted.

My Naunie and Papa on their wedding day in 1945. Aren't they cute?