BOOK LOVE

 

"CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR" ? WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THE SELECTIVE SERVICE DRAFT - UNITED STATES - AND ARE NOT ONE TO FIGHT?

I believe one can be patriotic but not agree with whatever the prevailing doings of the President or the House or the Senate or any politician that has influence on the citizens lives. I've done the genealogy for a family that had members on both sides of the Civil War.  I can just imagine the arguments at those dining tables.  So it has been, so it is - not everyone is for a War or on the same side of a question.

Conscientious Objectors are not officially "Conscientious Objectors" unless they state that WHEN THEY ARE ACTUALLY CALLED TO SERVE.  One registers and maybe there will be a draft, maybe there won't be, and maybe that person won't be called upon. Therefore, if you seek an ancestor's draft registration, their CO status will not be on those forms, which are often simple forms. A "CO" must prove they have a deep seated conviction, belonging to a religious organization that is anti-war is the primary way to prove this, such as being a member of the Jehovah Witnesses, and it can mean that the person must still serve, but not in "combat." (Other military records may have the information you seek.)

THE NUMBERS OF MEN/MALES WHO REGISTER ARE DEFINIING THEMSELVES AS "CO." HAS SOARED, some say 1000%. 

WOMEN/FEMALES STILL ARE NOT REQUIRED TO REGISTER.

I'm linking to a recommended website: If you or your loved-one wants to know "what happens next" if the United States continues or furthers its current participations and/or actions using the military, and people are once again actually drafted, this is what you want to read:

 GI RIGHTS HOTLINE MILITARY CONSCIENCIOUS OBJECTORS Wow!  Lots of information here!

(See the next post to find out where to get the military records for CO's

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

FATHERS DAY

 

A 'mid-century' loving family gifting dad a watch...

Remember all those who nurtured you with love...

INDEXING

 

HOW TO DECIDE WHICH OF TWO CANDIDATES FOR MARIA IS HER ANCESTOR? : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Q : I have gone like gang-busters on all my lines but one, my dad's mother's mother. The name is common and I found two candidates. How do I decide which one to go with?  I'll explain.

I found her parents marriage (my great-grandparents) which had the ages of the bride and groom in a Roman Catholic church record in Slovakia. The bride, Maria, is listed as age 20 in 1888.  That would make about 1868 the date of Maria's birth.

Maria #1 is recorded born and baptized in the same church record as her descendants. (Her husband was born elsewhere but in the same general area - just a different church.) However, the only Maria candidate in that church record was not born in 1868 but in 1869.  As her groom is listed as age 24, and his birth/baptism is correct as proven by his birth/baptismal, it doesn't seem to me that she might be a bride who wished to appear younger than her groom or anything like that. The wedding was in mid November and her birthday was in September.

Maria #2 is not in the same church record as her descendants. But again is the same general area, just a different church. Again I found that this Maria is not born in 1868.  In this case she is born and baptized in 1867...  I went back and found her parent's marriage and that was when I realized that her mother was very pregnant with her when she herself married. This Maria was born about a month later. Therefore I can imagine that by claiming to be older than she was, she might have been hiding the fact that her parents "had to get married."

I used FamilySearch database for my research and other candidates are not coming up.

Help!

Lisa

A: I see the dilemma Lisa. It is compelling to think that Maria #2 gave a wrong age at marriage because she wanted to hide her parent's need to get married when pregnant with her. However, it is also compelling to find the birth/baptism of the bride in the same church record, though it's possible the groom met his bride elsewhere. In either case we are speculating when creating a story about what happened. I do it all the time as I'm interested in the story - the culture - the society - which includes religion and expectations upon women. And sometimes that speculation - a hunch - a synchronicity - leads us to the documents we want. 

As a side I once read that an infertile wife was so unwanted that a first pregnancy without marriage was actually desirable by some.

I looked at the records you referred me to and I think that the first Maria is your best candidate. However, in writing my book I would provide the genealogy for both Maria's with an explanation for why you did that. Remember that we write our books in a way that our reader can follow us and so can another person who may go further with that information if and when more documents are available. State it as a fact that you have two candidates and why.

This is also a case where maybe the answer is in DNA as it's always possible that the man who married the pregnant bride was not the father of her child. I always say that we would still want to do the genealogy anyway because if there is a "match" with DNA an the relationship is given, you still want to figure out who is who. (As these are a set of your great-grandparents, it's not as easy as finding out who a birth parent is where a parent, sibling, or half sibling could be revealed.)

Because there are some church books that have not been indexed by FamilySearch, and some handwriting is sloppy enough for a transcriber to make errors however, and the deaths and marriages are not Indexed for Slovakia which was Hungary in 1888, I would, to have peace of mind, also look for a possible Mary in the church where the groom's birth/baptism was located and around at other parishes in the area. Last but not least, do also consider the names of villages and house numbers as well as the godparents when making the decision.

Love your research!

Christine

Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  2025

RECLAIM THE RECORDS - I LOVE IT!

RECLAIM THE RECORDS 

EXCERPT:  We're RECLAIM THE RECORDS, a new not-for-profit activist group of genealogists, historians, researches and open government advocates.  We identify important genealogical record sets that ought to be in the PUBLIC DOMAIN but which are being wrongly restricted by government archive, libraries, and agencies. We file FREEDOM OF INFORATION and OPEN DATA request to get that public data released back to the public. And if the government doesn't comply, we take them to court.

I love this - I'm fine with it - so long as the privacy rights of individuals is respected.

HER DNA SUGGESTS RACE AND ETHNICITY - WAS IT MARRIAGE OR RAPE? : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Question for Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

(Please note that this person showed me her results and asked me to interpret them.)

My genealogy research takes me back to Southern Poland and parts of what is now Slovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine. I know this was the Austrian Empire, but my ancestors always had their "ethnic I'm" as these ethnicities. I'm showing Asian ancestry on one side and Near Eastern ancestry on the other. Percentages would l be about one sixteenth of each - so that would be great great grandparents - right? Is this the end of my standard paper trail research?  Please comment.  Thanks.

G.

Answer from Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

Not necessarily.

First remember that all results are statistically based and dependent on all the people who have chosen to contribute their personal data to that particular company's results and that stats are reworked based on an ever-growing number of considerations. Also, as more understanding of genetics and DNA comes forth, it can get more specific - such as what tribe (be that Native American or Native European - so to speak). Sometimes this information can lead us past a block.

One sixteenth could be a great great grandparents. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and sixteen great-great grandparents. However, it could be some other combination such as four of the thirty two great great great grandparents. Or some small strain in many ancestors that adds up.

Today many people simply feel American or Canadian or British - or whatever - though only one of their lines show that. Other people relate to an ethnicity or way of life - including attitudes and lifestyle - that they may be criticized for adopting because there is no biological evidence for it.  (This is one of the reasons I think sometimes that a past life experience is why.)

As for the paper trail - standard genealogy - it is always worth pursing even if it is at odds with the DNA or genetic results.  However, the notions that genealogy will prove generations of marriages - chosen and happy marriages - or unite a fractured family are myths. People may have lives that were more controlled or regimented or limited than we have come to expect as Americans, but there were still affairs and there was rape. Rape is so common that I doubt there is anyone alive who doesn't have some DNA as a result of rape.

Some areas of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine, experienced invasions and occupations that included murder and rape. I suspect you will not likely find church or temple records going into the 19th or 18th century that reveal that. You might want to read about the Tatars, Mongols, and Ottoman Turks.

In my years as a genealogist, I've rarely found notations in records that expand on the explanation of illegitimacy, for instance. (Once in a while an understanding priest wrote in "father in America" or something about a death before marriage - alluding to a romance or plan to be married when the unfortunate happened.)  It's so sad to me when I find a woman in the records who had one child after another without a father and see how soon those children died. I always wonder if she was a woman repeatedly taken advantage of by men in the village - perhaps an orphan or someone born without average intelligence - someone who might have been forced into prostitution.

A W G

C 2020 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy Blogspot

ACCESS NEWSPAPER DATABASE TIME WASTER!

Access Newspaper Database and Newspaper Archive Academic , which are related, have me quite frustrated.  A researcher at a distance provided me some notes via text of two death/funeral/burial/obituary announcements and since I've used this database in the past to locate copies of originals, I thought I would try.

Since my experience has been that in many small town newspapers that were typeset there re a lot of misspellings of proper names, as if they had run out of one vowel and used another, I decided that the best tactic would be to go the exact newspaper and date and page that the other researcher had provided me.

I would have preferred to have rolled microfilm and read page by page.

I wasted over an hour trying to make the database simply get me to the paper on the date specified, if not the exact page, WITHOUT ALSO PUTTING IN THE NAME, first and last.

Finding the WRONG date, I read the language the paper used.  Maybe it was my terminology?

I tried obituary. I tried funeral.  I tried died.   Certainly something should come up!

Once again I returned the search choices, this time with a librarian at my side to double check my moves.

I think Access should make it easy to get to the newspaper, by date, for those of us who would prefer to read it page for page, rather than only focusing on what comes up in a search.

19 MONTH OLD BABY DROWNED ON TITANIC IDENTIFIED WITH DNA OF SHOE

THE STAR - TINY SHOE ID'S TITANIC BABY  link to full article

"New DNA evidence and a toddler’s shoe kept in a drawer for decades have solved the mystery of the Unknown Child from the Titanic who lies buried in Halifax.
 

Sidney Leslie Goodwin, 19 months old, drowned when the “unsinkable” ocean liner sank off Newfoundland on April 14, 1912. With him were his mother, father and five older brothers and sisters, all third-class passengers bound for a new life in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
 

“It was the shoe that tipped it,” genetics researcher Ryan Parr, vice president of Mitomics Inc. in Thunder Bay, told the Star on Wednesday.
 

Clarence Northover, a Halifax police sergeant in 1912 kept the shoe after helping guard the bodies and clothes of the few recovered Titanic victims. The idea at the time, said Parr, was to burn the clothing to thwart souvenir hunters. But Northover didn't want to burn the tiny shoe, so he put them it in his drawer at the police station...."

ARE YOU HAUNTED BY YOUR PAST? MISSING RELATIVES YOU LEFT BEHIND?

One of my friends confided in me that she recently went on the Internet and searched for information on some family that she left behind.  She said that since then she cannot get these people out of her mind even though more than a decade went by from when they lost contact and she searched for them again.  She even dreamed of meeting some of the children she saw in pictures on the Internet.  She hadn't really wondered about them through those years and she had no reason to think they missed her. 

She found out about a divorce since she found out about a re-marriage, which she finds shocking.  She knows where they live and work now.  She's thinking about the positives and negatives of trying to reunite with them, or at least visit them.  She did all that without any genealogy database research.  However, she feels certain that if she does decide to reignite a relationship she needs to honesty tell them about the things they have said and done as individuals and collectively that hurt her and so her reason for moving on.  She pretended not to hear or know when she was around them.  She played dumb for many years.  She doesn't want to be that way any more.

The reasons for her departure from this branch of her family are considerable.  She said for years she made efforts to keep relationships going and found it to be very one sided.  She also said that though her income was average she got the feeling they were dismissive of her because she was considered to be the poor relation.  Last but not least, when she thought about it, theirs was a very different family culture, and she wasn't sure if this was just about their family or that culture.  She thought of them as materialistic and greedy.  She thought they were always looking at relationships in terms of what they were getting or not getting from people but didn't give as good as they got.  She thought of them as poor examples of their religion.  She thought the females dominated the men and the children were never raised to actually leave home.  They were a rare multigenerational and extended family.

I could sense the pain in my friend.  So I asked her to consider what she would want out of a reconnection after over a decade.  Did she think maybe they changed or would be more participatory or nicer to her?  (There is always the chance that they've changed! but do people ever really change because you want them to?  Well, I've changed!  Have you?) Would a reunion just result in more pain?

I don't have those answers for her but it occured to me that maybe she was inspired by the recogniztion of her own mortality to see them. Maybe she, at least, wanted to leave this earth without any grudges.

Can genealogy or family history projects heal families?  I think the marketing of genealogy promotes that idea.  My experiences is sometimes but it's not something to count on.  When I was teaching genealogy I had students whose families were extremely cooperative and who could easily put together big books of photos, documents, and warm memories without actually doing research.  Others were alone in the project from beginning to end.

I think just about every family has some secret that they collectively do not wish to discuss or recall.  You could say whole families are haunted by something. 

Such as?

Such as domestic violence, molestation, even a murder.  Membership in Organized Crime or someone in prison.  Sexist favoritism of the males in the family that left the females floundering or forced to endure unhappy marriages.  Unwed motherhood was a big one, though far more common and acceptable now.  Mixed marriages or someone leaving the religion of the family is also something that has ripped families apart in the past but is now more common and acceptable.

As a genealogist none of these things shock me.

THE SELFISH GENE by RICHARD DAWKINS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

THE SELFISH GENE by RICHARD DAWKINS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

This book, first published in 1989 and in it's third printing after selling million in 2006, is still relevant when it comes to asking questions about how genetics influences individuals and society and culture. Using examples from the animal kingdom, Dawkins moves to the realities of human life.

What does the author mean when he uses the word SELFISH which sounds like self-involved and mean? Why not use the term self preserving? Dawkins seems to be saying that animals show a self interest in preserving their own genetics in the way they organize their society or culture, in the ways they favor certain offspring, and that for humans using contraception may be the best way to preserve a family.

Does genetics explain why in nature, many fathers put in less effort to preserve offspring than mothers? In humans is this a matter of socialization or enculturation? I would say that in humans modern fathers seem to overall be putting in less effort to preserve offspring than the fathers of my father's era!

Do maternal uncles (your mother's brother really) have more interest in their neices and nephews than the paternal uncles, since they are more certain that there is a genetic link between themselves and the child?

Famine, plague and war have reduced populations, and so has birth control. Uncontrolled birth rates lead to uncontrolled death rates according to the author.

Using animals who are not human, the author says that many animals defend their territory, which includes defending the individuals who carry their genes.

Page 113 "In many cases females refuse to mate with males who do not possess a territory. Indeed it often happens that a female whose mate is defeated and his territory conquered promptly attached herself to the victor... No territory, no breeding. Automatic submission by lower ranking (individuals) is preferable to prolonged fights..."

Animal dominance. Indirect competition over females. Is this why in the old days parents quizzed a young woman's date about his ability to support her and the family before they would consent to allowing them to associate? How many young men would be able to mate at all if females refused to be available for dates until he could buy a house?

Also according to Dawkins, Individuals who have too many children are penalized, not because the whole population goes extinct but because fewer of their children survive.

(Page 117) ... "If a husband and wife have more children than they can feed, the state, which means the rest of the population, simply steps in and keeps the surplus children alive and healthy. But the welfare state is a very unnatural thing."

And so we go into politics without ever mentioning the word, or the coming Presidential election. With 26 million Americans now in need of government help to afford food, I would say that a great many are reproducing without being able to afford to, and that the state will become mom and dad to very many. Another notion of my father's era father was that God Will Provide, that When There's A Will There's a Way, and that There Is No Shame in an Honest Day's Work.

This book had me thinking beyond it!

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE : BRYAN SYKES : DNA USA : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE by BRYAN SYKES 

I recently attended a short but intense lecture on the state of the art in DNA genealogy. One of the books mentioned was Bryan Sykes "The Seven Daughters of Eve."

The lecturer said that all women in Europe (actually about 98%) can be traced to one of seven great mothers who have given them a distinctive DNA identity. I was fascinated, so I read the book ASAP. The book was first published in 2001, and the author has another book coming out called "DNA USA."

First "The Seven Daughters of Eve" is exciting enough and novelesque enough to be a page turner. Without getting heavily into technology Sykes takes you where he went, to getting ancient DNA out of the skeletons of Cheddar Man and other archaeological discoveries and then to the discoveries that he is genetically related to the Russian Tsar's family that was assassinated back in 1918, and that the butler of a friend of his was a direct descendant of Cheddar Man.

Let me explain that Sykes is not saying there were never more than these 7 women. What he is saying is that these 7 women are the ones whose DNA has survived thousands of years to today, as traceable from mother to mother. The other women's DNA does not appear because they had no children, had only one daughter, had only sons, or possibly because over those thousands of years only descendants of women with the best DNA for survival won out. The focus here is on European DNA.

I'm linking to information on Sykes USA DNA.

Here's some of the information within it:

• Of Americans whose ancestors came as slaves, virtually all have some European DNA.

• Racial intermixing appears least common among descendants of early New England colonists.

• There is clear evidence of Jewish genes among descendants of southwestern Spanish Catholics.

• Among white Americans, evidence of African DNA is most common in the South.

• European genes appeared among Native Americans as early as ten thousand years ago.

C 2012-2025  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

DOCUMENTING LONG FRIENDSHIPS : LET'S NOT FORGET THE NEVER MARRIED AND THE CHILDLESS AMONG US!

There is such an emphasis on official family - bloodlines - in genealogy that I would like to talk to you all about documenting other, important, non-official, friendship, as a part of a family history project.

Friendship is also an important part of our lives and special friends, those who have known us for years, should be part of our oral history, written history, and inclusion. When someone has lived with or partnered with another person and has considered this to be a marriage, a marriage which was not or cannot be legal, we cannot pretend this relationship did not or does not exist.

There is so much emphasis on family in genealogy and family during these holidays. Let us not forget those who never married or never had children!

HUGUETTE CLARK'S TWO WILLS START LEGAL SKIRMISHES OVER $400 MILLION

Imagine being worth $400 Million, checking yourself into a hospital at 84 and living another 20 years, not even thinking about a will until the age of 98, and changing it one month before you die! This is the story of Huguette Clark, an heiress to a Copper Mining Fortune out of Colorado, who lived in New York City, married once - no children, divorced in 1930 and never married again. She hadn't stepped foot in her Santa Barbara estate for 50 years and now it may become a museum.

So very many articles about this controversial character reminding me how important it is to look up wills, probate actions, and other legal papers when searching for those who lived before us, not just for genealogical data, but to better understand their lives.

ANCESTRY FAMILY TREE SUBMISSIONS PROVE TO BE UNRELIABLE BUT INTERESTING

Today I spent some time on the Ancestry Genealogy databases at the Family History Center in Los Angeles, which carried this at no charge, so long as you use it on premisis.

I did something I have never done before: I checked to see if anyone had posted a family tree on some of the lines I'm working on that have lead to brick walls.

I found a LOT of information, but almost none of it was proofed. This means that people were posting what they "knew" or without a tie to a source. So people were posting what they were told or had in their memories or based on things they have at home - such as Wedding Invitations or Funeral cards, or maybe information written in the Family Bible.

I did find some interesting information which needs to be proofed. To do that, I will take a marriage date that was listed and look for a document on microfilm or from an city, state, or county, archive to see if for myself.

The best of all the family trees I found was totally based on census. This person included all the terrible mispellings from the census.

I also found several people who had posted on the same trees that were missing a lot of information, but if these people had contacted each other, they might have been able to fill in the blanks, and decide among themselves who was going to proof information and correct all the assumptions.

What was it they used to say about assumptions? They make an as* of you and me!