Saturday Serendipity (December 6, 2014)

The following are a few recommendations for inclusion on your reading list this weekend. 

1.  If you are looking for a very clever and meaningful genealogy-related holiday gift idea, look no further than Diane Boumenot's post, A Quick Gift for Mom and Dad.  Diane uses photos of her parents' homes over the years, but there are probably numerous ideas you can envision using family photographs you have collected.      

2.  Saturday Serendipity previously mentioned articles about the discovery of the remains of King Richard III under a parking lot in England. Now hundreds of years later the modern miracle of DNA research and analysis brings us the news that Richard's DNA matches that of living maternal relatives, BUT it does not match the genetic data passed down on the male side. What does this mean? It means that there was quite probably female infidelity or "cuckholding" in Richard's genealogy. Shocking!  ;-) You can read more here. And then go read Judy Russell's recent post on this bit of news at The Legal Genealogist.    

3.  I was told by a cousin a few years ago that a family member in the first half of the last century walked from his home in RI across the CT border to see his daughter and his new grandson.  He was said to have remarked, "Now I can die happy because I have a grandson and there is a Democrat in the White House."  It is rare that we can know the political affiliation or leanings of long departed ancestors and relatives, right? Well, maybe not as a piece by Christopher Carter Lee at Vita Brevis informs us.       

4.  Vita Brevis also brought us an interesting and very useful piece on historic occupations and their more recognizable modern names or equivalents. Have a look at the piece by Zachary Garceau here and learn about cordwainers, housewrights, vulcans, hog reeves, and laggers . . . oh my!

5.  If you have Scottish background in your genealogy and have come across words in Gaelic in your research that have left you scratching your head, there is a new on-line tool that could offer you some assistance. The Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic (DASG) is now available after eight years of research at the University of Glasgow. At present there are almost 10 million Gaelic words in the collection, but it could grow to as many as 30 million before the project is completed.  You can learn more here.  [Unless you read Gaelic, be sure to click the English link in the upper right corner!] 

6.  Have you signed the "Declaration of the Rights of Genealogists?"  Read the Declaration and more here. 4,000 signatures have been obtained so far and the goal is to get to 10,000 by January 2015 when the next round of state and federal legislative sessions will begin.  Have you signed yet?? You can do so HERE. I just did.

7.  If you have New England connections in your genealogy, then Heather Rojo at Nutfield Genealogy has some holiday gift ideas for you or for you to give to the genealogists in your family -- a great list of books for New England genealogists.  See Heather's helpful post here.  

8.  And finally, since this week has a couple of posts about holiday gift ideas, I want to mention a site that I look at regularly in the hope I am going to find an item that connects to an ancestor or relative.  No luck so far, but I keep looking and suggest you might want to stop by too and see if you can find an ancestor's autograph in an autograph book, or a photo in a lost photo album, etc.  Imagine the  gift such a find could make. I am talking about Pam Beveridge's blog, Heirlooms Reunited.  Have a look -- and good hunting!
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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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