17 May 2010

JOE MOZINGO makes the FRONT PAGE OF THE LA TIMES for his three part article on TRACING HIS FAMILY HISTORY

"One came from an acquaintance who said he found a bunch of Mozingos in a phone book in the Imperial Valley and was told they all were Basque shepherds. On this authority, we became French Basque.

Next we heard that "Mozingo" was an Americanized version of "Mont Zingeau," a mountain in France or maybe Switzerland I could never find on a map.

All of this was beginning to feel a bit dubious when I met Sherrie Mazingo, whose name is a variation of ours. Sherrie was a broadcast journalism professor at USC when I was a grad student there in 1996.

She was black — and she had news." Joe Mozingo


I READ THE STORY ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE MAY 16, 2010 LOS ANGELES TIMES in paper... Link now to the internet version.

15 May 2010

REINCARNATION EXPERIMENT . ORG

As you may know, I find reincarnation fascinating and tend to be a believer.

Using genealogy to help a person find themselves in a past life is even more intriguing.

This has to be one of the most interesting sites I've found on the net since I began this blog... check it out!

11 May 2010

ARE YOU PART NEATHDERTHAL? GENES MAY SAY YEA

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer : Between 1 percent and 4 percent of genes in people from Europe and Asia trace back to Neanderthals."

Click on the link above to get to the full story!

10 May 2010

MOTHERS DAY - YOUR MATRIARCHAL LINE

EVERY ONE OF US HAS HAD A MOTHER and FATHER, and some of us are lucky enough to still have them in this life. Tracing the female ancestors can be a challenge... a feminist challenge. Our mothers and matriarchs do not appear in records as often as our fathers and patriarchs. Make a special effort to celebrate the women in your life today.

ARE YOU FOLLOWING THE MATRIARCHAL LINES in your family charts?

08 May 2010

CHILDRENS GIVEN NAMES ARE GETTING MORE BIZARRE

CLAIRE SUDDATH of Yahoo News reports that the Social Security Administration has released the top baby names for 2009 were Isabella and Jacob but are people naming their babies after vampires?

"Cullen is also part of a larger trend: two-syllable male names that end in the sound en. Aiden is another example (12th most popular name). So is Jayden (No. 8), Logan (No. 17), Nathan (No. 24), Kevin (No. 44), Justin (No. 46) and a name I'd never heard of before: Brayden. At No. 47, it means I'll probably start meeting a number of Braydens in about 20 years. Likewise, nearly half of the 50 most popular girl names end in the letter a, like Isabella. Why does this happen? Why do parents so often choose the same names for their newborns?" .

Read more about the TWILIGHT EFFECT!

05 May 2010

ELLIS ISLAND GETS UNFAIRLY BLAMED FOR NAME CHANGES

In my experience, the often repeated idea that the authorities at ELLIS ISLAND, the dropping off point for STEERAGE PASSENGERS in the port of New York for a long period during the industrial boom, CHANGED THE NAMES of those coming through is completely false.

MAYBE SOME ANCESTOR used this as an EXCUSE for their own decision to change their name. However this was absolutely not within the authority or practice of those harried clerks, most English speaking only, maybe some who knew German, who had a huge number of people to process.

On most ship manifests I've read I see that immigrants were often counted by ethnicity. That is to say, you see Poles with Poles and Hungarians with Hungarians, and Jews with Jews, per CLASS of ticket.

Having used both microfilms and databases I have read a lot of BAD HANDWRITING (which then gets transferred at the typists best guess into databases) and a lot of names that were given a phonetic spelling. I've found the same passenger's name spelled one way on the HAMBURG lists (the departure point of many steamships) and another on the manifests coming into New York. READING BOTH is a good idea.

I believe that mistakes were made with misunderstandings due to not knowing the language spoken or out of hurry and exhaustion. Further, I have seen these same kind of mistakes on census where certain assumptions were also made. For instance a child might be listed as "SARAH" because a parent called her "SALLY" when her real name is something else.

Given documentation and over time, the family always seems to revert to the given name, or is in agreement about a spelling or name change. The exception to this truism - and every case is different - is in African American familys shortly after slavery.

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04 May 2010

BOOK EXCERPT: MAYFLOWER by NATHANIEL PHILBRICK

MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Viking Press
C 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick

Massasoit was a local Native American leader. In this scene of the book he is dying. Edward Winslow visits him...

pages 144 145


"Winslow began to examine the interior of the sachem's mouth. it was "exceedingly furred," and his tongue was so swollen that it was little wonder he had been unable to eat anything. After scraping the "Corruption" from his mouth and tongue, Winslow fed him more of the preserves.

"Massasoit may have been suffering from typhus, probably brought to the village by the recently departed Dutch traders. Spread by infected lice, typhus was known as "pestilential fever" in the seventeenth century and was most common in winder and spring. Typhus thrived In the crowded, unsanitary conditions typical of an Indian or, for that matter, English village of the time, and there were also several other Pokanokets (the tribe of Massosoit) suffering from the same disease. According to a modern description of typhus, symptoms include "fever and chills, vomiting, constipation or diarrhea, muscle ache and delirium or stupor. The tongue is first coated with a white fur, which then turns brown. The body develops small red eruptions which may belled." In severe cases, the morality rate can reach 70
percent."

Winslow fed him fruit preserves and this lead to Massasoit's recovery!

01 May 2010

ANCESTORS SPEAK ONCE AGAIN - ESPECIALLY THE WOMEN

One of the reasons I LOVE GENEALOGY is that it feels to me like the ancestors get to speak again, telling the story of their lives one more time. AND I THINK FOR MANY OF THEM IT IS THE FIRST TIME ANYONE IS REALLY LISTENING!

Yes, I SAID THAT!

Truly, in this life how often is it that someone who you never met before is all that interested in hearing about your "life history"? In fact we make snide remarks at times when someone goes on "too long" ; "thank you for sharing!" (I hate that!)

For our FEMALE ancestors, until fairly recently in Western culture, there were social and cultural reasons why they did not discuss their thoughts, feelings, or tell about their lives while they were living it.

For many women of the past, speaking up or out was considered not to be feminine. They were to keep to their position and place in life, vote the way their husband voted (if they could vote at all), get along in a group but not stand out. A woman was supposed to be shy and soft spoken and some of them did an awfully good job of being self effacing!

As some of you know, tracing FEMALE ANCESTORS is MORE DIFFICULT than tracing MALE. There are so many reasons for this, from baptismal records that don't list the mother's name at all or don't list her maiden name, to not being able to find school or military records for those who never went to school or into the military.