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GeneaNet : Community : Genealogy Blog Saturday Nov 21, 2009

Genealogy Blog 


14 November 2009

LDS Genealogy Program Marks 115 Years

115 years ago today in Mormon church history. Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff oversaw the establishment of the Genealogical Society of Utah. Today, the LDS Church plays an integral part in world-wide genealogical research, hosting the largest genealogy organization in the world.

How did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints become front and center in the world of genealogy?

In the early 1840s, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith introduced "baptisms for the dead" allowing Mormons to be baptized by proxy for their deceased relatives. After this he introduced Eternal Marriage where wives were sealed to their husband, and the Endowment, an ritual enacting the steps toward salvation.

Source & Full Story

11 November 2009

Tracing Your Family's Military Past

The horrors of previous wars are even more personal to those whose own families took part, in conflicts such as the nightmarish trench warfare of World War I.

And according to Anthony Richards, archivist at the Imperial War Museum of England, interest in researching family military history is now more popular than ever. A major aspect of genealogy is often the involvement of family members in one or other of the two world wars.

"Considering the global scale of both conflicts, it is quite rare to find a family that did not have at least one relative involved," says Mr Richards. "Whether it was as a member of the armed forces, medical services, civil defence or perhaps even as a schoolchild evacuated to the countryside."

Source & Full Story

10 November 2009

Distant Relatives of U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama Eager to Meet Her

Two distant white relatives of U.S. first lady Michelle Obama say they are proud to be a part of her heritage and hope someday to meet her.

Debbie Shields, who has blonde hair and blue eyes, looks nothing like the first lady but they share a common lineage -- Shield's great, great grandfather is Obama's great, great, great grandfather, the television program "Inside Edition" reported Monday.

Obama's great, great, great grandmother was a slave named Melvinia, who was 6 years old when she was sent to live on a 200-acre farm in Rex, Ga. At age 15, Melvinia became pregnant by a white man presumed to be Charles Marion Shields.

Source & Full Story

4 November 2009

The Story Of The Abandoned 'Rainbow Baby'

When just a few days old, David Stevenson was abandoned outside a flat in London. Forty-nine years later, he's trying to piece together what happened on that fateful day in 1960.

Taking a deep breath, David Stevenson felt like he was opening his life story and about to read the first page.

Inside the red-brick mansion building in front of him, in the winter sunshine, lay the clues to his true identity.

He imagined being carried through those front doors in his mother's arms, 38 years before, then her leaving empty-handed, never to see her son again.

This was his first visit, in 1998, to the flats in north London where he was abandoned as a newborn baby.

Source & Full Story

26 October 2009

Spain: Longoria, The Village, Ready For Eva Longoria

More than 400 years after her ancestors left for the Americas, "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria Parker can expect a joyous welcome when she visits the remote northern Spain village that bears her name.

The village of Longoria, home to around 60 people whose average age is 70, lies in the green hills of the Asturias region.

Eva Longoria Parker plans to visit next month to retrace her roots back to the place which her ancestors are believed to have left in 1603 to try their luck in the Americas.

Source & Full Story

7th-Grader: Obama, Most US Presidents Related

A seventh-grader and her 80-year-old grandfather are allegedly the first people to discover that President Barack Obama is related to all other U.S. presidents except one.

BridgeAnne d'Avignon, who attends Monte Vista Christian School in Watsonville, traced that Obama, and all other U.S. presidents except Martin Van Buren, are related to John "Lackland" Plantagenet, a king of England and signer of the Magna Carta.

The student and her grandfather, who is a genealogist, spent this past summer designing the first known family tree chart in history that shows the presidents' direct relationship. BridgeAnne's grandfather has researched president genealogy for 60 years.

BridgeAnne has written to Obama, who she has concluded is her own 11th cousin, in hopes that she will get a chance to present the president with the chart.

Source & Full Story

Genealogies Of The Victims Of The 1692 Salem Witch Hunt

Here's a quick genealogy of the victims of the 1692 Salem Witch Hunt.

Bishop, Bridget (Playfer) (Wasselbee) (Oliver) (-1692). Daughter of __ Playfer. Married 1660 Samuel Wasselbee (d. 1665); m2. 1666 Thomas Oliver; m3. before 1680 Edward Bishop (d. 1705). Salem, MA. Hanged 10 June 1692.

Burroughs, Rev. George (c1650-1692). Son of Nathaniel and Rebecca (Stiles) Burroughs. Harvard College, class of 1670. Minister at Salem Village 1680-1683; minister in Wells, Maine, in 1692. Married, first, Hannah Fisher (1653-1681); m2. Sarah Ruck (d. 1689/90); m3. Mary (--). Wells, Maine. Hanged 19 August 1692.

Carrier, Martha (Allen) (-1692). Daughter of Andrew & Faith (Ingalls) Allen. Married 1674 Thomas Carrier alias Morgan (d. 1735). Andover/Billerica, MA. Hanged 19 August 1692.

Source & More Victims

21 October 2009

Guy Ritchie, The Mockney With A King In The Family

Guy Ritchie has desperately cultivated a tough guy image complete with mockney accent and obsession with the underworld.

But the true extent of Guy Ritchie's privileged background has been revealed - showing he is actually descended from royalty.

The 41-year-old, whose family fortune is worth more than £20million, is a distant descendent of Edward I according to documents found by ancestry website findmypast.com.

The site claims information on the 1911 census, which has been published online for the first time, also shows he is the great, great grandson of renowned Major General Edward McLaughlin who lived in stately home Byron Hall in Worthing.

Source & Full Story

Jude Law 'descended from a family of bakers'

The details of the Alfie star's family history are revealed in the 1911 Census, which is being published online for the first time.

The 36-year-old, who stars as Dr Watson in the forthcoming Sherlock Holmes film, is the great-grandson of William Law, who is recorded in 1911 as a master baker. He lived with his wife, five children and two servants in a nine-bedroom house in Brixton, south London.

Meanwhile, the true extent of Guy Ritchie's background is revealed on the website findmypast.com. The 41-year-old ex of Madonna is the great-great grandson of retired Major-General Edward McLaughlin and his wife Annie.

Source & Full Story

15 October 2009

Oscar-Winning Actress Tilda Swinton's Family History Goes On Display

The family history of Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton is to go on show in the Capital as part of the Famous Scots exhibitions in the ScotlandsPeople Centre.

On Saturday, 24 October, there will be a special opportunity to find out about her Edinburgh connections as part of the open day at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.

Research revealed the actress is a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce on both sides of her family, and among her ancestors on her mother's side are some famous figures from Edinburgh's past.

These include her maternal great-great-grandfather, John Hutton Balfour (1808-1884), a professor of botany and keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, as well as geologist James Hutton (1726-1797), whose influential theories on the origins of the Earth laid the foundations for modern geology.

Source & Full Story

13 October 2009

Bruce Springsteen, Born In The USA But With Irish Roots

A new book has confirmed what his legion of Irish fans have always suspected – Bruce Springsteen is one of our own.

Despite his surname which is of Dutch extraction, Springsteen has Irish ancestry through his paternal grandmother Martha O’Hagan. She married Springsteen’s grandfather Antony Springsteen in 1899.

Her grandmother in turn was Ann Garrity who came from outside Mullingar. She crossed the Atlantic for the Promised Land of the US in 1852.

Further back Springsteen has Farrell, McNicholas, Sullivan, O’Hagan and McCann ancestry.

Source & Full Story

9 October 2009

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon: Keepin’ it in the family!

We know that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are BFFs, but as it turns out, they’re actually related!

The New England Historic Genealogical Society yesterday revealed that the Cambridge homeys are actually 10th cousins once removed. They share a common 10th great-grandfather, William Knowlton of Ipswich, a bricklayer who died in 1655.

“We suspected they might be related since both of them had ancestry going back to colonial New England,” said geneologist Chris Child, who did the research with colleague Rhonda McClure.

Source & Full Story

8 October 2009

Sylvester Stallone Has Breton Blood

Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone has Breton blood coursing through those bulging veins.

His mother, Jackie Stallone, has been in Brest researching the family history of the Rambo and Rocky actor. The 86-year-old was trying to get details of her mother – who she thought was born in Brest - and grandfather, who was said to have been the mayor.

However, when municipal employees checked their records they discovered Louis-Victor Clérec had not been the mayor of Brest but only a clerk in the mairie. They did manage to confirm that both he and Stallone’s grandmother, Jeanne Clérec, were born in Brest.

Stallone joins a list of famous Bretons – and even Finistériens – alongside Madonna, whose family were from Ploujean, and Céline Dion, who has Ploudiry family connections.

Source & Full Story

Video: An Exploration of Michelle Obama's Roots

An exploration of Michelle Obama's roots by genealogist Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. Learn about her Native and Irish heritage, free and enslaved ancestors, 10 states that claim a piece of Michelle's past, and which relative invented a marble shooter!

The Family Tree of Michelle Obama, the First Lady

Revelations have emerged recently from the research of Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and from reporting by Rachel L. Swarns and Jodi Kantor of The New York Times.

View the family tree - You can help to complete the family tree!

Source & Full Story

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

Source & Full Story

3 October 2009

Obama Researcher Reveals How She Found President's Irish Roots

Chief Family Historian for Ancestry Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak got the assignment of a lifetime when it was discovered in 2007 that future President of the U.S. Barack Obama had Irish roots. Smolenyak's job? To find out where in Ireland Obama's family came from.

They had established that Obama was part Irish, and that his third great-grandfather on his mother's side, Fulmoth Kearney, is his most recent connection to the Emerald Isle.

Naturally, the Irish wanted to know more. Not since John F. Kennedy had the Irish been so excited to learn about a U.S. president's Irish heritage.

Smolenyak's first task in tracing Obama's precise link to Ireland was finding Fulmoth Kearney on the U.S. census and back-tracking his journey to the States. Luckily for the historian, Obama's relative's name was fairly unique, compared to say, a "Patrick Kelly."

Source & Full Story

Read also:
Barack Obama's Irish Ancestors Reformed 19th Century Health Care
'Lost Tomb of Obama' Found In Ireland
Researchers Say Obama Has German Roots
Barack Obama's Ancestor Left 12 Pence in Will

26 September 2009

Barack Obama's Irish Ancestors Reformed 19th Century Health Care

President Barack Obama's Irish American ancestors were pioneers in 19th century health care reform.

One of Obama's Irish American cousins Jackson Brown Baxley (1814-1896) founded the Maryland College of Pharmacy and succesfully lobbied for the registration of pharmacists.

He was the first commissioner appointed and the first president of the Maryland Board of Pharmacy.

The link was uncovered through Obama's 8th generation grand-uncle Thomas Kearney from Shinrone in County Offaly who married Sarah Baxley (1773 -1845) in St. Paul Church in 1890.

Sarah Baxley is the link to Jackson Brown Baxley and his brother Henry Willis Baxley (1803-1876) who graduated in medicine in 1824 and became the government inspector of hospitals in 1865.

Source & Full Story

25 September 2009

Confucian Family Tree 'Triples'

Two million people are now recognised as being descendants of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, more than tripling the number in the last count.

The announcement was made as the fifth update to Confucius' family tree was unveiled on the 2,560th anniversary of his birth, say Chinese state media.

Last updated in 1937, the book lists all 83 generations of descendents.

For the first time women, ethnic minorities and descendants living overseas have been included.

Source & Full Story

19 September 2009

Co-Workers At Waldoboro Store (Maine, USA) Discover They Are Brothers

For weeks, Randy Joubert and Gary Nisbet laughed off customers’ comments that the two furniture deliverymen looked similar enough to be brothers.

It wouldn’t be long before fate would prove the old adage, the customer is always right.

Joubert said something in him clicked after yet another customer asked the same question during a routine delivery in late August.

Prefacing his line of questioning with the statement, “Don’t think I’m weird,” Joubert asked his co-worker a few pointed questions based on names and dates gleaned from his own adoption records.

Seconds later, Joubert realized that the man who had been on the other end of countless couches, mattresses and recliners since July wasn’t just a co-worker. Nisbet was the long-lost brother for whom he had been searching.

Source & Full Story

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