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Ancestry Daily News
9/30/2003 - Archive
Ancestry Daily News, 30 September 2003
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In This Issue:
September 30, 2003 |
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Records for Ancestry.com Subscribers: |
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History
of Arizona (Images online—Update adding
Volume 2)
Newton,
Massachusetts City Directory, 1901 (Images online)
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Historical
Newspapers Collection Update:
Adams
Centinel (Gettysburg, Pa.), 1800-1805,
1813-20, and 1822-28
Gettysburg
Compiler (Gettysburg, Pa.), Various years
1819-1953
Star
and Banner (Gettysburg, Pa.), 1847-51,
1853-57
Star
and Republican Banner (Gettysburg, Pa.),
1832-33, 1835-42, 1884-90
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UK
& Ireland Records Collection Update:
Visitation
of London, 1633-1635 (Images online—Update
adding Volume 2)
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Today's
Map: Spain, 1212-1492 |
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"Soldiers
Young and Old: Ready for Battle Despite Their Age,"
by Karen Frisch |
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Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree |
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Fast Fact: Slave Schedules at Ancestry.com |
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Clipping of the Day |
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Don't
judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds
you plant.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
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"Soldiers
Young and Old: Ready for Battle Despite Their Age"
by Karen Frisch
Despite
enlistment criteria, Americans throughout history have always
found ways to circumvent the age requirement when it came
to joining the military. Some who were under the age limit
managed to enlist, while others whose age prohibited active
duty found alternative ways to offer their services.
During
the Revolutionary War, one American was committed to the
idea of freedom but was too elderly for combat. Calling
upon other resources allowed him to participate in the war
effort.
Daniel
Miller was 63 when America declared its independence from
England. A gentleman farmer in Massachusetts with land inherited
from his father’s estate, Miller volunteered to hide
weapons and ammunition from the British on his property.
A soldier in Colonel Israel Angell’s regiment, Miller
died in 1798.
For
George Henry Cheek, the appeal of serving his country in
the Civil War was too great to resist. Born in London, he
had come to America as a youth but was under the legal age
when fellow Rhode Islander Major Sullivan Ballou died at
the first Bull Run and General Ambrose Burnside led his
troops at Antietam.
The
desire to fight still beckoned in October 1864 when the
call for volunteers came again. Defying his father’s
orders, he left his job as a blacksmith at 17 to become
the drummer boy for Captain Stephen Thurber’s Company
D, joining 79 other men.
As
a private with the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry,
Cheek was sent to camp at Winchester, Virginia. His first
battle was at Hatcher’s Run, where a shell penetrated
the rifle pit and ripped into Company D but miraculously
did not explode.
The
unit saw action at Fort Fisher and then Fort Steadman. The
events at Petersburg, Sailor’s Creek, and Appomattox
made a profound impression on Cheek. In 1902 he recorded
his thoughts in a collection of reminiscences of Civil War
veterans.
He wrote, “I deem the most important event of my service
our march from Burksville Station to Danville to cut off
Johnson’s retreat. We marched 112 miles in five days.”
It was at Burksville that his unit learned of Lincoln’s
assassination. When the regiment marched through the streets
of Danville, Virginia, on April 27, 1865, they were greeted
by hostile faces, except for those of the slaves. Cheek’s
drum beat loudly as the slaves cheered.
Leo
Dennen of Massachusetts lied about his age to join the Navy
during World War II, hoping to join on the buddy system
with a friend. Unfortunately, he didn’t forge his
birth certificate as well as his buddy did. While his friend
was allowed to enlist, Dennen’s forgery was brought
to the attention of his parents.
“So
you want to join the Navy,” was his father’s
reaction. On the second attempt he managed to enlist with
the aid of a blank birth certificate. Dennen saw duty in
both the Atlantic and the Pacific. He was a gunner on 20-millimeter
and 40-millimeter anti-aircraft guns, and when he was discharged
in 1946 he was a fireman first class after serving on a
fireboat in the Pacific.
So
when you’re considering whether or not an ancestor
was of the right age to be serving in a conflict, don’t
overlook the possibility that he may have been an exception
to the rules.
Karen
Frisch has spent years getting lost in cemeteries. With
a background in Victorian studies, teaching, and writing,
she has traced her lineage back thirty generations. Her
interest in genealogy began as a child when her grandmother
gave her a collection of old photographs from Scotland.
Copyright 2003, MyFamily.com.
ACCESS
A PRINTER–FRIENDLY VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE, e–mail
it to a friend, or submit your feedback on it.
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Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree
It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree!
Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please
keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going.
You can send your tips to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com
Quick
Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in
other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your
tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry
Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please
state so clearly in your message.
Have
a great day!
Juliana
Free Blank Maps
I recently read a tip regarding using government
mapping sites and books to find blank maps to plot your
own ancestor's migration paths. One suggestion was to
make your own by tracing a map out of a book. But once
in a while you have to think outside the genealogy box
and consider what may be available from sources outside
of those, which are commonly used by genealogists. Doing
a web search for “blank maps,” I came upon
a wealth of sites offering free blank maps. One such site
has blank maps in printable versions of continents, countries,
and U.S. counties. This site is aimed towards helping
school children but is perfect for genealogists too. It
is called geography.about.com.
If
you want a wall-size map, you can take it to Kinko’s
or some other copying service and have it blown up.
Diana
Thornton
Beaumont, Tex.
Family Letter of Remembrance
On the first anniversary of my 89-year-old mother's death,
my brother and I exchanged e-mails about her and the house
she lived in for 56 years. The two actually went hand-in-hand
with our memories.
I put a photo of the house on a Microsoft Word document
along with our emails and sent it to her fourteen grandchildren.
I asked them if they'd like to contribute to this. Thus
began a beautiful walk down memory lane with little tidbits
of seemingly insignificant events of long ago.
More
photos were added to the avalanche of nostalgia. Together
we created a wonderful document.
Chris Snyder
Marlborough, Mass.
Print
Preview Function Saves Paper
Whenever I need to print one of the articles from the
“Ancestry Daily News,” I use the printer-friendly
version, but first I use the print preview feature of
my browser (most of the popular ones have this). That
way I know how many pages will be printed. If I find that
the last page to be printed would only have the copyright
information, I exit the preview and select edit on the
tool bar and select all from the drop down menu. Then
I copy the information, in its entirety to MSWord. It
usually scales the article down a page, saving paper.
This also gives you the advantage of being able to adjust
the size of the text, if you need to.
Lisa
Troy, Mich.
Lightning
out of the Blue
Although I am no longer living in Florida, which is the
lightning capital of the USA, I still unplug my computer
and everything that concerns the computer when I hear
an approaching thunderstorm.
I
am often reminded of an experience I had in the days before
computers while I was in Miami, Florida, about an hour
before an expected afternoon rain. One sunny afternoon,
I was sitting on the couch watching TV and I heard thunder,
although the sky was blue with a few white fluffy clouds.
Before I could get up, lightning struck the transformer
behind our home. As a result, everything was fried in
the TV. (I wasn’t too upset because I wanted a color
TV.) I was always glad that I was a little slow getting
off of the couch (by a few seconds) or I probably wouldn't
be here to share my story about safeguarding computers.
So, be extra careful while unplugging appliances during
an approaching thunderstorm. Guess this is the kind of
experience from which the old saying about “Lightning
out of the Blue” originated.
Jackie
(Sheafer) Cramer
El Paso, Tex.
ACCESS
A PRINTER–FRIENDLY VERSION OF THIS QUICK TIP, e–mail
it to a friend, or submit your feedback on it.
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Fast Fact:
Slave Schedules at Ancestry.com
From
Finding Your African American Ancestors, by David
T. Thackery:
“African
Americans were enumerated as all other U.S. residents
from 1870 (the first census year following the Civil War
and emancipation) onward. Prior to 1870, however, the
situation was far different. Although free African Americans
were enumerated by name in 1850 and 1860, slaves were
consigned to special, far less informative schedules in
which they were listed anonymously under the names of
their owners. The only personal information provided was
usually that of age, gender and racial identity (either
black or mulatto). As in the free schedules, there was
a column in which certain physical or mental infirmities
could be noted. In some instances the census takers noted
an occupation, usually carpenter or blacksmith, in this
column. Slaves aged 100 years or more were given special
treatment; their names were noted, and sometimes a short
biographical sketch was included. In at least one instance,
that of 1860 Hampshire County, Virginia, the names of
all the slaves were included on the schedules, but this
happy exception may be the only instance when the instructions
were not followed.”
Ancestry.com
has images of slave schedules from the 1850 and 1860 censuses
available to subscribers to the U.S. Census Records Collection.
Browse them by county at:
1850
U.S. Federal Census
1860
U.S. Federal Census
(Browse down to the county level to access the slave schedules.)
Finding
Your African American Ancestors
is on sale today in The Shops@ Ancestry.com for $6.
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Clipping of the Day
From the
Ohio Repository, 30 September 1831,
page 2:
As we feared, the late freshet at the South begins to produce
sickness. A letter from Augusta, dated 7th instant, states
that, since the rise in the Savannah river, “the sickness
is truly alarming; 400 cases on one side of the river; eight
deaths last night; every person who can is leaving the place.”
We hope we may not hear even worse news from South Carolina,
Georgia, and Louisiana before many days.
---Phoenix Gazette.
Subscribers with access to the Historical Newspapers Collection
can view
this clipping.
Subscribe
to the Historical Newspapers Collection
at Ancestry.com.
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Ancestry Product Specials
Finding
Your African American Ancestors,
by David T. Thackery
Normally,
Finding Your African American Ancestors retails
for $12.95, but today you can buy it in The Shops@ Ancestry.com
for $6.
Netting
Your Ancestors: Genealogical Research on the Internet,
by Cyndi Howells
Normally Netting Your Ancestors retails for $19.95,
but today you can get it in The Shops@ Ancestry.com for
$15.95.
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