Below are a few suggested reads for this weekend.
1. This week The Weekly Genealogist had two stories of note and of interest. The first is about what might be the first banned book in America back in the early days of Puritan Massachusetts. Read the story of the "Lord of Misrule" here.
2. Probably every genealogist who has investigated ancestors and relatives from the 19th century Victorian era has noticed that people often died young from a variety of causes and diseases that today are unusual. The second story of interest noted by The Weekly Genealogist this week is "7 Very Victorian Ways to Die" by Claire Cock-Starkey. Jot down what you might have been seven common causes of death during the 19th century and then read the list here.
3. This week the nation celebrated Veterans Day and many bloggers (including this blogger) participated in the Honor Roll Project of Heather Rojo, author of Nutfield Genealogy blog. And Janice Brown of Cow Hampshire blog posted about a WWI monument that especially caught my attention. It is about a very small stone with a metal plaque that simply states, "IN HONOR OF THOSE WHO SERVED IN CO. M N.H. STATE GUARD DURING THE WORLD WAR." The memorial sits inconspicuously in White Park in Concord, NH. You can see the simple little monument here. [I lived in NH for several years in the late 1950s through the middle of the 1960s and for two of those years lived on Essex Ext., a residential street, within 200 ft. of White Park (and now where Franklin Pierce Law School is located). My siblings and I spent many hours in White Park ice skating on the pond shown in Janice Brown's blog. We also swam in the community pool and skied and sledded on the hills in the park. Most interesting to me is that we also played baseball on a makeshift diamond just to the left of the memorial shown in the photo with the skating pond in the background.]
4. James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog posted Part Two of his series on photography and genealogy. "How to take better photos for genelogy" can be read here.
5. The Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell, posted about great news for adoptees born in New York. Starting on January 15, 2020 New York will join other jurisdictions in making copies of original, unredacted, unmodified birth certificates available to those who were born in NY and then adopted. Read more about this change in NY law here.
Copyright 2019, John D. Tew
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Thanks for mentioning The Honor Roll Project on your list this week! And I was just up by White Park in October!
ReplyDeleteThe Honor Roll is a great project and I am happy to participate and help in some small way to get the message out about the project.
ReplyDeleteI have very fond memories of White Park back in the early 1960s! The pond was a popular ice skating location that had lights and music pumped over speakers from the lower level of the pool/skate house where one could rent skates (although almost everyone owned their own skates), get hot chocolate from a vending machine, and warm up on especially cold days. The pond froze over and was tested for safety by driving a jeep across it. Back then the pond stayed frozen for weeks at a time and there was a policeman on skates assigned to the pond. At night after the pond was closed they periodically shaved the surface and filled cracks with water to freeze over night. Living essentially right across the street from the park and the pond we spent countless hours there during the winter.