Speaking my Geek - genealogy
Sep. 12th, 2011 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowanfIt took me awhile to decide what to say for Speak Out with Your Geek Out.
I mean, WoW is certainly easy but I am not really a major WoW geek... I just play WoW. And, erm, read a lot of WoW blogs. And take lots of screenshots. And, erm, I did wear a Hawaiian shirt to work today that bears the Horde symbol. But still.
And whilst in the past I have been very involved in Science Fiction fandom... I just haven't been the last few years. Ditto Second Life. Ditto Geocaching. Ditto Where's George. Ditto just about everything. Where has my geek gone!
Well, being sick for the last year has definitely put a dint in my levels of enthusiasm for anything/everything. So I am going to reach back and talk about genealogy. Which I have pursued most of my life and which has led to quite a bit of geekery over the years.
My mother was the family historian for her family most of my life (I've taken it over now) and I remember as a child being taken to the National Archives and into various local history places looking for muster rolls, census information and all the minutae of the family history geekdom. I remember the excitement when researchers like Vera Apperson who compiled "The Apperson Family in America" came by our house to chat with Mum.
Whenever I visit a new city I look to see if there are particular archives or centers there that might be useful. When the Special Libraries Association had an annual meeting Indianapolis I spent a couple days before the conference in the State Library pouring over Quaker Meeting records. Once when EasterCon (the British SF convention) was on the Isle of Jersey I talked my Mum into coming with me so we could go to the Archives there and research our Poindexter ancestors. (And may I say that was a MOST AMAZING experience as they brought out actual medieval documents for us to look at with no more than gloves to keep the oils off. And there is a stately home of our ancestors cousins set up as a living history centre that we visited and knew our ancestors had trod there before us.)
Whenever I meet someone with an interesting name I just can't resist starting a conversation about origins. If someone mentions doing genealogy the world just lights up. Even if you are looking totally different countries for totally unrelated surnames, there is a bond amongst those who care about history and family in this particular way.
And then along came the internet! People began to share information and find distant cousins with the click of a button. Naturally I set up my own family site and became the moderator of my family surname lists on Rootsweb (back in the days when it was geeks and hadn't been bought by Ancestry.com). I did a county study, creating a database of all the people (of European descent) in Cooper County, MO using a pair of biographies that had been done in 1883 and 1919. I corresponded with people all over the world. I still do.
And now there is genetic genealogy! I got my brother tested so that I would have both Y-line and mt-DNA info. Our Y-Line Haplogroup is I2b1 which is mostly found in Scotland and Switzerland last time I looked. Like 70% of Western Europeans, our mitochondrial line is Haplogroup H (with three HVR1 differences from CRS).
And so, that is my enthusiasm, my geekery that I would like to share on this first day of the Speak Out.
I mean, WoW is certainly easy but I am not really a major WoW geek... I just play WoW. And, erm, read a lot of WoW blogs. And take lots of screenshots. And, erm, I did wear a Hawaiian shirt to work today that bears the Horde symbol. But still.
And whilst in the past I have been very involved in Science Fiction fandom... I just haven't been the last few years. Ditto Second Life. Ditto Geocaching. Ditto Where's George. Ditto just about everything. Where has my geek gone!
Well, being sick for the last year has definitely put a dint in my levels of enthusiasm for anything/everything. So I am going to reach back and talk about genealogy. Which I have pursued most of my life and which has led to quite a bit of geekery over the years.
My mother was the family historian for her family most of my life (I've taken it over now) and I remember as a child being taken to the National Archives and into various local history places looking for muster rolls, census information and all the minutae of the family history geekdom. I remember the excitement when researchers like Vera Apperson who compiled "The Apperson Family in America" came by our house to chat with Mum.
Whenever I visit a new city I look to see if there are particular archives or centers there that might be useful. When the Special Libraries Association had an annual meeting Indianapolis I spent a couple days before the conference in the State Library pouring over Quaker Meeting records. Once when EasterCon (the British SF convention) was on the Isle of Jersey I talked my Mum into coming with me so we could go to the Archives there and research our Poindexter ancestors. (And may I say that was a MOST AMAZING experience as they brought out actual medieval documents for us to look at with no more than gloves to keep the oils off. And there is a stately home of our ancestors cousins set up as a living history centre that we visited and knew our ancestors had trod there before us.)
Whenever I meet someone with an interesting name I just can't resist starting a conversation about origins. If someone mentions doing genealogy the world just lights up. Even if you are looking totally different countries for totally unrelated surnames, there is a bond amongst those who care about history and family in this particular way.
And then along came the internet! People began to share information and find distant cousins with the click of a button. Naturally I set up my own family site and became the moderator of my family surname lists on Rootsweb (back in the days when it was geeks and hadn't been bought by Ancestry.com). I did a county study, creating a database of all the people (of European descent) in Cooper County, MO using a pair of biographies that had been done in 1883 and 1919. I corresponded with people all over the world. I still do.
And now there is genetic genealogy! I got my brother tested so that I would have both Y-line and mt-DNA info. Our Y-Line Haplogroup is I2b1 which is mostly found in Scotland and Switzerland last time I looked. Like 70% of Western Europeans, our mitochondrial line is Haplogroup H (with three HVR1 differences from CRS).
And so, that is my enthusiasm, my geekery that I would like to share on this first day of the Speak Out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 03:07 pm (UTC)That's probably going to be overwhelming, with over 24000 entries. Though most of that is stuff I've gleaned by searching online sources. Only about 1000 of them are things that I've really added to the sum of (online) genealogical knowledge. Of those, I got most from my mother, my paternal grandmother, and a guy I know in Ireland.
The icon is just a little gif image that comes with a software package of the same name.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 03:35 pm (UTC)I use Reunion for my software since I'm on a Mac. Wow, 24K is a lot of entries! I'm a piker, just over 10K. *grin* At least in my personal database. But for some reason I separated things when I originally did worldconnect.
Me
Early ancestors http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=rowanf
Comer http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=comer
Amick http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=rosmairta
Jones http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=jabezjones
Ferguson http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=josiah
Farnsworth http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=farns
Eubank http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=eubank
Apperson http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=fairgrove
And my county study - Cooper Co, MO
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=cooperco
no subject
Date: 2011-09-18 02:54 pm (UTC)As you noted, all my North American ancestors are either Yankees or Canadians. (With frequent blends of both.) But Paula's ancestors are almost entirely southern folk who came over to Virginia and the Carolinas and then migrated out along the Great Western Road to Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and eventually to Texas. If you want to poke around in the database, look for Rorie and Moody families. Or just go by this handy tree.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 12:27 am (UTC)Glad to read this, Rowan. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:58 pm (UTC)My will is written to send family picture albums to them. If I can find my dad's genealogy work -- I looked for it when my mom died and couldn't find it -- I'll specify it goes there also. Don't know much about my cousins. In short... yeah. :( Now I just feel guilty.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 06:11 pm (UTC)And like, I don't really care for Dutch Masters, but I LOVE the collection of Dutch triptychs in the Museum of Amsterdam where there is a religious painting in the center but on each side are, respectively, all the males of the family and all the females (and for that matter little ghosts of the dead children). Seeing the actual PEOPLE who commissioned that religious painting (it was an early way to do religiously acceptable family portraits) always gives me a thrill. [wow how was that for a geeky digression lol]
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 04:04 pm (UTC)I'm also a conventional mutt: English, Scottish, French, Spanish, northern Italy, Dutch, German. Am DAR and Mayflower, and descendent of an Earl, I completely don't care. Though my dad did the genealogy thing, he was extremely firm about perspective: "In the end, it doesn't matter who your ancestors were. It matters who your children become."
I don't have kids, so I have to say "It matters what I make of myself."
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 04:09 pm (UTC)Trust me, Rowan, I am NOT making light of your geekery or your passions here. This is about MY feelings and should not be taken to cast aspersions on you in any way. I am tickled, in my own way, about the Earl thing, and when I visted the castle in Spain where my predecessors lived, it was like I had gone home through time -- a genuinely powerful, humbling, awe-inspiring place. (No longer lived in by relatives, I might add.)
Then again, I don't do high school reunions. My social circles don't go back before the tribe of geeks and gamers I met in college. My past is getting raised a bit, because of SOWYGO, and it's reminding me why it's all been left in the dustbin of yesteryear.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 08:08 pm (UTC)