Entries tagged with ancestry

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Finally finishing scanning all those old family photos. I've been noting people in tags and inscriptions in captions, but I think I'm going to go through and add the stamped or written numbers on the backs in the tags as well, to keep batches together. It might help with identification, as well. I think I'm also going to upload some to Tumblr, because some are adorable and some have great clothes. It'd just be nice to share them. (That will probably be on itmeansapricot, my non-fashion Tumblr.)

Am I just stupid, or are many other people? When it comes to Once Upon A Time, I mean. So many of the theory-writers seem to think the fairy-tale parts of the episodes are happening concurrently with the present storyline, which seems to be completely missing the point.

Article in the NYT on all-white casts on television. I think it's pretty good.

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ancestry

More very boring genealogy stuff

But I'm hoping that writing things out will make them clearer to me, because it seems like other people's trees are crossing oddly. ( It didn't. )

I think what makes this so frustrating is that it's so trivial. It doesn't matter at all, yet my completionist tendencies won't let me just leave it alone and then when I spend an hour working on it and get nowhere it just inflames me even more, so I'm sitting here fruitlessly searching and shouting "BALLS" at the screen in my head.

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ancestry

The sucky thing about Ancestry.com

is that once you get to a certain point - before 1850, I'd say - it's extremely difficult to find useful records. The 1840 census lists the head of house and then numbers of who's there - for instance Hiram Merithew, 1 man 20-29, 1 woman 20-29, 2 women 40-49. Know that he was married by then, I can assume the younger woman is his wife, Lucy, but who the older women are is left completely up to guesswork. So before 1850, you're really at the mercy of everyone who's filled out their own trees. Which you hope they've done through good research, but it's hard to trust them when you find:

- three different fathers for one woman

and

- a strangely noble lineage for an early colonist, and then later on (after you've filled in quite a lot of it) a forum post saying, "dudes, there's no evidence this guy was descended from that guy, they just have the same last name."

It just gets irritating, you look at your tree and wonder how much of it is actually right. :(

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History stuffs

While I was looking through files about wedding dresses yesterday I came across a good number of names and dates - wedding dresses generally have good provenances, sometimes with family trees. And the ones with dates showed people of the same age at marriage, which I find interesting as there's the whole trope of young women marrying older men. Exaggerated into bad/desperate parents trying to get an 18yo girl to marry a 40yo man, but represented normally with a six or seven year difference. And I find the same similar ages (or older women) on my Ancestry tree. (Examples are birth years of couples, shown m/f.)

1928/1930. 1891/1884. 1902/1902. 1904/1903. 1875/1875. 1876/1872. 1873/1877. 1872/1873. 1848/1849. 1850/1844. 1849/1851. 1808/1808. 1797/1794. 1790/1794. 1771/1771. 1771/1773. 1786/1788. 1754/1758. 1746/1745. 1720/1722. 1715/1717. 1709/1710. 1709/1708. 1703/1703. 1696/1700. 1682/1685. 1681/1680. 1673/1673. 1668/1667. 1645/1648. 1632/1636. 1600/1580. 1600/1564.

I mean, my point's not that everything is a lie!!! because there are plenty of examples of five-to-ten year age differences, and even a handful of "whoa, seriously, he was HOW MUCH older than her?" (1845/1863, 1824/1845, 1617/1636.) It probably does average out to the stereotypical 6-7 year age difference. What I'm saying is, it's worth a thought. ETA: I'm also noting how old many of the women were when they died - I'm not noticing many deaths in childbirth. I mean, my grandmother is 82 this year. Her mother lived to be 93. Going back maternally, the ages run: unknown, 84, 80, 64. (The next one has no given death date and I can't find her parents.) The ages do tend to go down as you go further back in time, but there are still plenty living into their 70s and 80s in the 18th and 17th centuries. (Supposedly even a 119yo - Elizabeth Tyrer, 1571-1690 - but who knows if the death record is right.) I'm not sure what to make of it, but I think "if you survived your first child you were likely to survive the others as well" is probably a good rule of thumb.

Completely unrelated, but I've had a strange fascination with early 20th century burlesque for the past few weeks, probably since I caught the 1960s Gypsy at Melissa's. I think I find it interesting because it was so much more like vaudeville than modern strip clubs. Right now I'm watching Lady of Burlesque and it seems like quite a good look at what they were like and what sort of acts were common/popular (though I do wonder how much was cleaned up for the film). Some of the comics' things seem to have influenced cartoons as well.