"One of His Nuts Was Big as a Goose Egg"

I've been very scattered lately in my genealogical research. I'm attributing much of that lack of focus to the fact that I'm at somewhat of a dead end with Great Great Great Grandpa Julius.  I say "somewhat" only because the "end" is dead online and I'm reluctant for some reason to aggressively pursue the offline resources.

Anyway, in trying to get some focus back, I'm scouring my 3GRGR's Civil War Pension file for info.  Its extensive - spanning about 180 pages of documents, including a LOT of declarations/affidavits (what they like to call "depositions" sometimes, but are nothing like what I think of as a deposition in my current line of work), from friends and relatives.  There were two pension claims (three, really, if you sub-divide the invalid pension claims).  He had two invalid pension claims -- one for rheumatism and one for the sword stabbing in his ass, that occurred "in battle" (while his company was retreating from the position at First Bull Run).  The other was his widow's pension claim (his fifth wife), after he died.

So I'm scouring this, which is somewhat difficult because its all handwritten in poor penmanship.  But I'm reading a doctor's examination of 3GRGR and come across the following gem that caused a double or triple take:

Mind you, his "nuts" have absolutely nothing to do with his claim.  Three lines down, there is a sentence that reads

"The bayonet wound doesn't hurt him. One of his nuts was big as a goose egg, but the swelling has gone down . . .."

My first reaction in reading this was: "they used 'nuts' as slang for testicles in the 19th Century?"  My second reaction was "DOCTORS used 'nuts' as medical terminology for testicles in the 19th Century?"

Go figure.  For what its worth, his nuts didn't kill him.  The rheumatism did.

Some Thoughts on Copyright, Sharing, Attribution . . .

A bit of a "free form" post this a.m.  Generally, when I have an unfinished idea for a post, I "draft" one with notes for later refinement.  This morning, I'm going to jot down some random thoughts that have been tumbling around for a bit and develop some or all of them later.

I consider myself fairly new to this.  I'm still mostly in the "who are my ancestors" phase of research, where the question of "who are my" is limited to identification (i.e., putting a name in an "add father" or "add child" field).  In that phase, there has be a LOT of "borrowing" of the research of others.  I've written about some of the pros and cons of this from the practical perspective of achieving the goals of (a) identifying ancestors; and (b) doing it accurately, in a prior post. But what I've been thinking about lately are two related ideas.

One is the idea of sharing research and sharing information about relatives.  Is there a culture that is generally pro sharing, or is research somewhat or very jealously guarded?  Does it depend on the circumstances?  Do those circumstances include what the research is?  For example, is a photo of a well know relative that is already widely and publicly available more likely to be shared among relatives, distant relatives or unrelated researchers than a Civil  War Pension file?  Does it depend on whether you paid for the Civil War Pension file?  Does it matter if the person asking to share is a relative, distant relative or unrelated researcher?  I've mostly being stuck in my own rabbit holes and have been very much "on my own" in doing research (albeit with a healthy dose of borrowing from others online).  But next to none of it is of the "can you share that with me" variety . . . yet (I hope).

Another idea that is somewhat related and is one of both personal and professional interest is whether (and more accurately) to what extent a person's "family tree" is protected by copyright.  There are a lot of interesting questions in the area of copyright, including copyrights in collected works, copyright expiration (e.g., the duration of a copyright -- after all, a lot of this stuff pertains to long dead relatives), "fair use" exceptions to otherwise copyrighted works, and licensing issues as well as abandonment -- i.e., things in which there could otherwise be a recognized copyright (a photograph of a gravestone, for example) that someone puts online with the express statement that anyone can use it for any purpose.

At some point, I'm going to research the legal aspects of this and follow up with some more in-depth, legally based posts either doing my own, original, legal research, or collecting it for others to use.  For now, I'll leave this post with a question (one that I know the answer to):  is there a copyright on this photograph?  If so, who owns it?  Its a picture of my 2nd Great Grandfather, Henry Edward Rock and his wife Hattie Dashnaw (and a third, unidentified person):

Step Away . . . When You Are Too Close to be Objective

I LOVE puzzling through all of the mysteries in finding relatives in a mass of records and photos and matching up photos to identities, etc.  But in doing so, there is obviously a bias towards finding a match, because that's what you want.

I found myself doing that recently.  Specifically, there is this wedding photo. We've not yet identified the bride or the groom.  That sucks!  So, I'm running through a million different theories of who it could be.

I don't recognize them.  There is no date on the photo.  My dad had a theory around the time he was gathering up these photos a while back based on a superficial resemblance to another identified photo.  Others who knew that woman said it wasn't a match. And, indeed upon closer examination, it wasn't.

Recently, I DID match some "unknowns" from photographs to my tree -- which is REALLY satisfying. In doing so, I got to thinking whether there was any connection between these newly identified people and this woman above.  I think my bias has gotten the better of me because I was entertaining the theory that this wedding description would provide corroboration for the identity:

I was pretty excited because the description of the dress was close to what you see in the photo -- namely, ". . . white satin fitted bodice, square neckline edged in lace and long sleeves."  Not bad, eh?  Until you consider how that description matches up with a TON of wedding dresses.  To give myself some kind of a break, I do notice that a lot more women took the "wearing white at the wedding" thing "seriously" back then and there were no shortage of women married in far less formal attire, but still.  I think I need to take the weekend off.

Northern New York Research

I find that the various cemetery resources online are pretty weak. (If you've had different experiences, I'd love to hear about them.) But if you have relatives who lived (or, more precisely who died ) in Northern New York, there is a pretty good and free web site that you should be aware of.  Its the "Northern New York Tombstone Transcription Project."  I has a pretty straightforward interface for searching individual cemeteries or searching county-wide.

I've noted some possible omissions, so I wouldn't rely on it as the absolute gospel as to whether a relative is buried upstate, but its a great source of a ton of information.  And, did I mention it was free?

Large Quantity of Wood and Flour, and a Barrell of Pork . . .

Well, finally something about my actual third Great Grandpa!  I'm stuck on Julius La Porte with little movement over the past year or so in my research.  I've got a lead on some church records in Philly that might help, but I'm not in Philly and the records cannot come here. (Volunteers??)

So, as is often the case, I tend to re-plow old ground.  Most of it is not fruitful, but sometimes I turn up a nugget of info that I missed on the first go around.

This is an example of TWO cases of that happening. First, this is from the second part of my 3GRGR's Civil-War Pension file.  The first part I ordered upon urging of my Uncle Pat, who blogs about his life and about my mom's side of the family. The second part, I didn't order until almost a year later because I had overlooked the National Archives note telling me that they only sent half of the file.  Put aside for a moment why they would ever do that . . . I'll blame myself for not reading carefully.

In any case, there it is.  I went back to this record recently, trying to find a clue as to his ancestry (virtually no new leads here) but I did find this nugget below (after some background).  My 3GRGR went to war twice.  Not as a young kid, but as a late 30s early 40s guy.  He didn't go because he had no family.  In fact, he had a wife (FN: more on this later), and at least six kids (more on that later also), one of them (my 2GRGR) who was only about 7 years old at the time and his younger sister only about five.  And, he didn't go as some lifelong American Patriot.  As near as we can tell, he only came to the United States (from Quebec) about 20 years earlier and until his death doesn't seem to have been able to speak much English (having been described as a "decrepit old Frenchman" by the pension examiner).  So, there's my 3GRGR, abandoning a wife and several kids to go fight in a war that he should have been pretty uninterested in, politically speaking.

Suffice to say that I don't have a great impression of the guy.  Well, in the WDYTYA theme of things, I found this nugget that, if I were on the show, would sway me to say things like "it really took guts to do what he did . . .. "  Not really, but I just think its funny in a aren't-people-who-lived-in-olden-days-kinda-funny? sort of way. This is an excerpt from the "deposition"/interview of his ex-brother in law, describing how he provided for his second wife as he left for war:

The money quote is:  ". . . when [Julius] went away into the army, he left her [his second wife] in his place here, furnished her large quantity [sic] of wood and flour and a barrel of pork, and besides left considerable money with James Fitch, a merchant here to furnish said Emily provisions whenever she wanted them." (emphasis mine).

Good, god, can you imagine the diet in 1861 -- no fridge, etc.  A steady diet of bread and salt pork!  Maybe some carrots, potatoes and beets.  Yikes!  Before judging, though, perhaps I'll brand this the "Julius Diet" and make a fortune, as he seemed to have stayed pretty thin and lived to his mid-80s!

Oldest Photo of A Direct Relative

As far as I know, the oldest photo of any of my direct relatives is this one, of Lydia Richardson (l/k/a Lydia Cox after her marriage to William Cox).

She was my 3rd Great Grandmother -- her lineage is the first part of the line from this post. She was born in 1832 and looks to be maybe mid twenties here.  There is no date on this photo so I'd just have to guess its somewhere between 1850 to 1870.  This is as far back as I've gotten to any direct relative of mine.


[UPDATE - this post had listed a photo of one of my wife's ancestors, Rebecca Mendes Machado Philips.  After further research, I am not able to verify that the photo listed was, in fact, a photo of her.  I've removed that portion of the post.]

When a Blog Post Could Have Multiple Titles

I was toying with the title of this entry and had things like "The Apple Fell Right NEXT TO The Tree" and "The More Things Change, the More They Stay The Same" and "Photo Archiving and Genealogy" and all sorts of other stuff.

But to the post:  As part of the genealogical research that I'm doing, I'm also taking on the more general role in my family of "historian," which in my book includes taking custody of family photos and digitizing them so everyone has access.  I bought a cool photo negative / slide scanner a few weeks back and have been tinkering with it using some of my old negatives.  I hadn't done a slide until this morning because I didn't have one . . . until yesterday.  I stumbled on a slide that I took from my folks several years back when I was a poor student and my Christmas presents were blowing up photos into 8 x 10s and framing them in cheap frames.

This is one that DIDN'T make the cut.

Based on my appearance in the photo and recognizing the living room as our old house at 36522 Baghdad Drive in Sterling Heights, Michigan, I'm going to say its circa 1973, making it about 39 years old.  I should note that the eye wear fashion in 39 years either hasn't changed (as I'm wearing almost EXACTLY those glasses my dad has on right now) or, neither of us has any fashion sense . . ..