TERESA WEILER'S TESTIMONIAL ON BEING A CHILD OF INCEST, MEETING HER BIRTH PARENTS, and WHY SHE CHOSE NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN

DAILY MAIL : I COULDN'T HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE  from December 2022, Teresa Weiler wrote this testimonial published by Daily Mail. It is her story of discovering she was born due to brother-sister incest and how this knowledge strongly influenced her choices to not also have children.

As I read this I felt for her, very much so, but I also wish she had been better informed in youth.  I'm not sure that if she had children they would be "monsters."  And I think she might have benefited from counseling. 

Last year I met a woman who is good friends with a woman who has a few children that are the result of her father having sex with her as a teenager.  I was told these children were prospering and that their mother was fine. It was told to me by someone who is anti-abortion, perhaps as an example of how well things can turn out.  But when this same woman told me that children of incest never suffer I had to question that.  I said I knew of a family in which there had been first cousin marriages through the generations and they had all sorts of mental illness, learning disabilities, and developmental delays...  They said it was to keep the land in their family in Europe. Though for two generations the immigrants children had married outside that close family, these medical issues were not resolved.  (And I was there when the immigrant grandparents were trying to "match-make" their grand-daughter with a cousin as if they had lived in America for years!)

I also thought of the ancient royal Egyptians who did have genetic negatives from close interbreeding.

Today, however, should you be concerned about passing down genetic issues to your offspring, there is genetic testing and counseling. 

And, I won't say "there's always adoption," as I realize from friends that it has gotten expensive and difficult.  However, if you do love children, there are other ways that a person can get involved with children in education, in fostering, and in volunteer work.

MIXED RACE SLAVE OWNERS IN BARBADOS and THE REPARATIONS CONTROVERSY : BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH FAMILY HERITAGE

I feel, based on what I learned over the years through genealogy that the question of Reparations for the bad deeds of ancestors is at best complicated and unworkable.  To be fair I believe that DNA tests as well as genealogies of all would be necessary and math would have to be applied. That's because you cannot know by looking at a person if they are Black or have Black ancestry, and even when this seems quite apparent, you cannot know other details such as how long the family line has lived in, say, the United States, or had citizensip.

I currently have a friend who was born in Britain, whose mother took the family to New York but who still has a grandmother in England, who comes from this Island - sugar plantation - heritage of slavery. However, she now has American citizenship as do her children. So I ask you, how would we figure out just how much money, if any, she is owed?  Would she, because she is visibly Black, also get California money? The fact is it would probably cost as much to do this type of program fairly as the payout, and to me that is unworkable.

In this article, by Sue Reid for Daily Mail, discusses the slave owning heritage and mixed race ancestors of the family of actor Benedict Cumberbatch, not only is there a reveal about race but also that historically there have been payouts that benefited the family.

DAILY MAIL : REPARATIONS DEBATE by Sue Reid

I first encountered the historical reality that went against assumptions - and even classroom learning - when in a genealogy search for a client I found that his ancestors were both those who were marched during the Trail of Tears as well as those who forced the marching. His early ancestors had mixed race families with Native Americans and on census some children in some families were listed as B - Black - but they were actually part Cherokee. Also, a few of his cousins a few times removed married Cherokee and moved from the settlers to the tribe so very likely today those relatives are members of the tribe. There were also Native American slave holders in the area. Though most people who owned slaves had one or two and those slaves lived in with the family (yes, believe it or not) this particular Native American had a couple dozen slaves farming for him. 

There are no absolutes when it comes to history and as a genealogist I'm concerned that the documents lead to history, not a reworking of it.

Like the author of this article, I too believe that at least in some of the mixed race unions, in which marriage was not legally possible, there was love or at least the possibility of love. That said, the role of women in general was so not equal to that of the men, and genealogy has reinforced my feminism. (As an example as President, Thomas Jefferson had to obey the law, and the law forbid him to marry Sally Hemings.)

This article, especially considering that it was published by Daily Mail, which is a a tabloid rather than a hard news venue, does an excellent job of showing why there is controversy.

***

All that said, being against Reparations does not mean that I'm against giving a hand up to those who need it. This is best done in a quiet and personal way.  One should not assume, however, that a person needs help simply because they are a certain race, or that they do not need it because they are a certain race.

C 2023  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

WHAT DID THEY SNACK ON IN POMPAEII ? ARCHEOLOGY MAY INSPIRE YOUR NEW YEARS FEAST...

 that is if you like goat and snails.

This article explores what archeology is telling us.  The people who lived there before Vesuvius erupted did SNACK but they sure didn't have chips.

DAILY MAIL = 2000 YEARS AGO POMPEII SNACKED article by Ian Randall.  Great images of painted frescos.

A thermopolium was a snack bar.

"Painstaking excavations revealed a multi-sided serving counter with wide holes in its top surface that held deep vessels for hot foods much like might be seen in present day buffet and salad bars.

1921 GREAT BRITAIN CENSUS - 38 MILLION PEOPLE IN ENGLAND AND WALES and SCOTLAND COUNTED

 This census is officially open and out of the privacy acts that effect release.  However, like other census the information will not be instantly digitalized and ready for viewing.  This site will keep you updated as you need to be.  It will be available on January 6. 2022 on FINDMYPAST.

1921 CENSUS ORG

Excerpt: This site concentrated on the 1921 Census for England, Wales, and Scotland, whcih was taken on the night of Sunday 19th June 1921.

However, there is information on other censuses which were taken the same year sinc an attempt was made to take a census as far as possible THROUGHOUT THE EMPIRE, for example in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa.

This site concentrates on the 1921 Census for England, Wales and Scotland which was taken on the night of Sunday 19th June 1921.

However there is information on other censuses which were taken the same year since an attempt was made to take a census as far as possible throughout the Empire, for example in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa.

There is also more on the census that should have been taken but wasn't, the 1921 Census of Ireland.

If you are interested in other United Kingdom censuses from 1881 through to 1931 as well as the information gathered in 1939 for the National Identity Card, there are more details on our sister site 1911census.org.uk.

THE WOMEN WHO WERE WIDOWED WHEN THE TITANIC SANK

DAILY MAIL - ONE WRITER (JULIE COOK) TRACES HER OWN GRANDMOTHERS EXPERIENCE AS WINDOW OF TITANIC VICTIM

Excerpt :  All Emily could do was waite4 her turn to reach the front.  Emily Bessant, then 38, was my great grandmother.

In the grainy black and white photographs I've seen of her, she appears stern-faced: a cold, unemotional woman.

I don't know if she wept that day.  I;m an eternal optimist and, if that runs in my family, I imagine her more likely hoping against hope that William would, indeed, come home.

Sadly, he never did.  OF the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic, more than 1,500 died.

The not knowing must have been agonizing.  And a couple of weeks after the tragedy, Emily received a letter stating that William, 40, had been 'lost at sea.'

WOMAN WHO WAS ABANDONED IN A DUMPSTER AS A BABY SEEKS HER RESCUERS

This one really tugged at my heartstrings.  Over 30 years ago in January 1983  Amanda Jo Jones was found in a dumpster.  Grateful for her life, she would like to know who her rescuers were and thank them personally.  She also forgives her birth parents.

DAILY MAIL :AMANDA JO JONES SEEKS HER RESCUERS - FOUND IN DUMPSTER AS A BABY

EXCERPT:  After paying $35 for non-identifying information from the Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry, she learned that she was fostered by a family until she was three months old, and they allegedly named her Crystal Alicia Fairchild.

DNA OF CHRISTIAN CRUSADERS NOT EVIDENT IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES

TECHTIMES : ANCIENT DNA REVEALS CRUSADERS...  by Allan Adamson 

EXCERPT:  Chris Tyler-Smith, a genetics researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues extracted DNA from the 13th century remains of nine medieval crusaders.  The remains were found in a mass burial pit near a crusader castle in Sidon, Lebanon... "We show that all of the Crusaders' pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population,: the researchers wrote in their study.

And this DAILY MAIL - CRUSADERS MARRIED LOCAL WOMEN - SONS FELL IN BATTLE

EXCERPT: These mixed families were short-lived however, with brutal battles wiping out the offspring and modern-day inhabitants showing no relationship to the Crusaders.... Analysis of DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century shows the family members often died together in battle from horrific wounds.

****
I'm lucky - and not - to "know" that one of my ancestors was alive in the 1400's. 

Trying to prove this, however, is a nightmare. I'm at about 1820 and only back to a GG Grandparent on this old, almost extinct surname.  When I imagine my long ago ancestors, I research the history of their time and place - their niche.  As this was a wealthy noble, I recently looked at a web site that gave some examples of the kind of clothing he would have worn and tried to imagine if he or any of his family were Crusaders. He was probably an Italian who moved to Central Europe. I'm not a snob about nobility.  One of the reasons it's exciting for a researcher to attach to nobility is that there is a greater chance of records and documents having been made and so being able to go back further.

VIKING SURNAMES IN GREAT BRITAIN? ARE YOU a SHORT or a MAC MC - SON or SEN

HAVE A SON OR SEN at the end of your surname?  How about having an MC before?  We've heard President Donald Trump may be related to Eric the Red.  What about Mr. Rogers?

DAILY MAIL UK - EXPERTS REVEAL VIKING SURNAMES by Daisy Dunn


EXCERPT:

Dr Alexandra Sanmark, from the University of the Highlands and Islands, said: 'Vikings in Britain can be traced through archaeological evidence, such as burials, place-names, DNA studies, Scandinavian influence on the English language.

TOP SURNAMES in the UNITED STATES BY STATE! LOPEZ and JENSEN ! WHOLE STATES and a whole lot of MEYERS in MISSISSIPPI!

DAILY MAIL - TOP SURNAMES FOR EACH STATE OF THE UNITED STATES


Click on this link and get to the map to see if YOUR SURNAME is the most popular in ANY STATE!    It's no wonder pretzels made in Pennsylvania are made by SNYDERS... and New York State has an outsized population of COHENS!

DNA MEMORIES RECORDING YOUR ENTIRE LIFE?

DAILY MAIL SCIENCE - MEMORIES IN YOUR DNA  by Ryan O'Hare


EXCERPT:

Your cells could soon keep an accurate record of their entire biological history, including attacks from microbial invaders or exposure to harmful chemicals.

By tweaking DNA, US researchers have been able to store markers of biological events inside the cells themselves and read them at a later date, essentially turning cells into analogue recorders.

They believe that capturing the ‘memories’ of these biological events could help to shed light on disease and even unlock the secrets of how cells develop from an embryo to the billions of adult cells which make up the human body.

ELLIS ISLAND CLERK AUGUSTUS SHERMAN's PHOTOS - THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN MELTING POT

DAILY MAIL - AUGUSTUS SHERMAN's ELLIS ISLAND PHOTOS


Dutch children in clogs, a Romanian piper with sheep skin cape, a Slovak woman and a Ruthenian woman in their best  embroidered dresses...


If you haven't seen these photos yet, you've missed out.

"Yet Sherman's notes offer only the most tantalizing of glimpses into the life of the immigrants risking it all to reach the Land of the Free.

One man, covered in tattoos, is simply referred to as a German stowaway by the amateur photographer. 

Sherman, born in 1865 in Lynn, Pennsylvania, never received any training as a photographer in an age where the art was still in its infancy.

But his incredible pictures serve as a historic tapestry of America's diverse beginnings.

In 1907, they were published in National Geographic magazine and framed versions hung on the walls of headquarters of the federal Immigration Service in Manhattan.

Today, they are now housed by the New York Public Library."

12,000 BLUE EYED "ARYAN" CHILDREN TAKEN BY THE NAZI'S ' WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?

DAILY MAIL UK ; 12,000 BLUE EYED CHILDREN TAKEN TO CREATE ARYAN SUPER RACE  Andrew Malone for the Daily Mail

EXCERPT: 

Folker, then just four, did not know it, but he had been chosen to be part of the new 'breed' of supposedly genetically-superior German beings, who would replace millions of the 'impure'  -  Jews, gipsies, homosexuals, blacks  -  after they had been exterminated in Hitler's death camps.
 
Having being ripped from the arms of his parents when German tanks rolled into the Crimea in 1942, Folker was first taken by SS officers to a German medical institute, where doctors measured every part of his body, checking for any 'Jewish aspects'  -  for example, dark hair, pointed noses, circumcision  -  before he was declared suitable.

He had been selected to be a member of the 'Lebensborn'  -  The Fount of Life  -  Himmler's breeding programme to safeguard the future of the Thousand-Year Reich by providing 'pure' future generations to replace those lost by war.

Devised in 1935, the Lebensborn scheme operated on different levels to provide 'Aryan' children for Hitler's mad schemes of eugenics.

As well as the stealing of blond children from families in occupied areas, another part of the scheme involved special 'breeding clinics' where pure German SS officers were told to mate with suitable German women.


*****

I have a story to tell about this...

I once was introduced to an old Blue Eyed woman and was later told by her house-mate that she had absolutely no idea about her heritage and had no family.  My associate speculated that she was one of the children born in Hitler's breeding program.  She did look "German," to me and was about the right age.  The woman lived alone in a house in Los Angeles, had never married or had children, and was quite isolated. How she afforded anything was a mystery. 

When I read this article I thought about her, and others who have an unknown or unspoken heritage, for which they personally have no responsibility at all.

Sometimes people will challenge me, stating that I could not possible do their genealogy.  Often they are wrong, simply they are unaware of how much public information is out there.  However, in a case like this I would be stymied. 

FOLKER HEINECKE DISCOVERS HIS ROOTS AFTER HITLER'S LEBENSBORN PROGRAMME - MULTINATIONAL ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS FOUND

DAILY MAIL - THE TRAGIC TALE OF 12,000 BLUE EYED BLOND CHILDREN STOLEN BY THE NAZI's  by Andrew Malone   long article and very important story

EXCERPT:

Folker, then just four, did not know it, but he had been chosen to be part of the new 'breed' of supposedly genetically-superior German beings, who would replace millions of the 'impure'  -  Jews, gipsies, homosexuals, blacks  -  after they had been exterminated in Hitler's death camps.

Having being ripped from the arms of his parents when German tanks rolled into the Crimea in 1942, Folker was first taken by SS officers to a German medical institute, where doctors measured every part of his body, checking for any 'Jewish aspects'  -  for example, dark hair, pointed noses, circumcision  -  before he was declared suitable.

He had been selected to be a member of the 'Lebensborn'  -  The Fount of Life  -  Himmler's breeding programme to safeguard the future of the Thousand-Year Reich by providing 'pure' future generations to replace those lost by war.

...Folker Heinecke:

'So I was an orphan. I could live with that. It was only some years later, as I tried to get more and more information, that it looked increasingly likely that I was part of the Lebensborn programme.'
Folker collected 20 boxes of documents from the American authorities, the German Red Cross, the Polish Red Cross, the International Tracing Service, the British Army of Occupation and at least 30 other agencies and church offices  -  all pieces in the gigantic jigsaw of his past.

Then, last year, he made a crucial breakthrough. With the opening up of the biggest Holocaust archive in the world at the Red Cross Tracing Centre in Bad Arolsen, Germany, Folker finally discovered the truth.

He found a document dated November 12, 1948, which stated: 'The childless couple Heinecke applied to the Hamburg youth office for adoption of a child.
They were given permission to have a child and went to a Lebensborn home to choose one. The child was fetched on 20.5.1943.'  Other documents were found on which the name, birthdate and place of the boy adopted by the family Heinecke are given as: 'Aleksander Litau, born 17.10.40 in Alnowa, Crimea, USSR.'

ABE LINCOLN WITH THE BLUE OF HIS EYE : COLORISTS OF CIVIL WAR PHOTOS BRING HISTORY CLOSER

DAILY MAIL : CIVIL WAR PHOTOGRAPHS COLORIZED  by Alex Greig

British colorist Jordan Lloyd, 27, met fellow colorist Mads Madsen, 19, from Denmark when he started posting on Madsen's subreddit 'Colorized History'...

If you haven't seen this series of American Civil War Photos that have been colorized, you've got to check this link.  Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Mark Twain, General Custer... so many others. 

I notice that when I see black and white photos I tend to think of the times they were taken in as very long ago. There is a distance there. When I saw film and photographs that had been taken in color of the World War II era, I realized that wasn't so long ago.  The feeling is the same here.

PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER HAS TWO GRANDSONS STILL ALIVE!

DAILYMAIL : US PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER'S GRANDSONS ARE STILL ALIVE  link to full article and pictures and genealogy chart!


EXCERPT: ", the tenth president of the United States, was born in 1790. He grew up on a Virginia plantation, became a lawyer, and went on to the White House after the death of his predecessor, William Henry Harrison in 1841.

In the years leading up to his presidency, horse-drawn carriages were the mode du jour, Arkansas, Michigan, Maine, and Missouri became states, and across the sea, Napoleon Bonaparte was conquering Europe.

But it has been revealed that two of the president’s grandsons are still alive – and were born nearly 140 years after their grandfather was..."

I've been reading The Daily Mail quite a bit in the last couple months.  I swear they have some really good articles of American interest considering they are a publication originating in the United Kingdom!