Genealogy Chat

One of my more distant relatives was a US Naval Lieutenant executed by the Nazis as an OSS Spy in the last days of WW2!

According to published documents, he was part of a group of American Service men on the ‘Dawes Mission’ who were captured behind enemy lines in Slovakia in 1944, taken to Austria and shot. The articles stressed that they were all wearing uniform, and were tortured.

Before the war, he had been an archaeologist, his Doctrinal thesis published after his death was based on Neolithic material of Bulgaria. He also spoke 6 languages.

I vaguely remember listening to a radio play about the events.

wow LindaB
thats fantastic. I was a piano teacher and no way would I have a repetoire to fill in that amount of hours/ days :-0

Finding that my husband's gt grandfather was a world record breaking pianist for continuous piano playing...without a sheet of music and no piece played more than once...his last record that I can find was recorded in 1906...45 hours.

I just attended the funeral of my Sister in law.

My brother was in the RAF police and is a member of the British Legion and his wife was very involved with him in the branch.

The funeral was a quasi formal Legion funeral with two standard bearers on either side of the coffin. The members as is to be expected are not in their first flush of youth. bout halfway through service one of the standard bearers started rocking on his heels then .... plop ..... passed out right to the floor.

He was carted out to a small anteroom (service held at crematorium) and an ambulance called. Service continues ... a Legion friend of both gives eulogy and starts walking down from the platform and then he follows his friend to the floor, but he banged his head badly.

I along with a Legion member (who was a nurse) rushed to his side .... both the minister and I thought he was dead but again he had just passed out. Another one to the anteroom for ambulance attention. The minister (the Legion padre, is a hoot was a sausage stuffer and a cabaret dancer before taking to the cloth) wisely decided to cut service short as she didn't want more casualties.

After service as we all trooped out to parking lot there was a crowd of "street pastors" waiting for the next service for a homeless person. Along with the pastors were, what I assume were friends of the deceased with beer cans, and liquor bottles in hand having a pre funeral service celebration.

All in all a funeral not to be forgotten.

Hi Nichola
sorry i missed your posting . Your Burkitt family sound fascinating too.

I was referred to a book called Arctic Hell-Ship by William Barr The voyage of HMS Enterprise 1850-1855.a really good read with some photos too.
My Joseph has as small mention in there as called as a witness to the captain of an altercation between John Atkinson an ice mate and Lieutenant Phayre Only a small mention and no photo of him which is a shame.

Made the man seem all the more real and not just a name.

this shocked my family
great great grand father samuel age 71 went scrumping in a neighboughs orchard got caught so stabbed the owner who died. samuel was then hanged in worcester jail and buried there.
after, my great grand father william travelled a bit and finally settled in birmingham.
they then carried out changes to worcester jail and sams remains were moved to winson green prison........................................................................ just up the road from william and his family spooky or what
zena :-)

In the (mining?) museum at Prestonpans, there is a document:

PRIDE'S PETITION to LORD PRESTONGRANGE - 1746

Signed by James Pride (my 8xgreat-grandfather) and two of his sons, Robert (my 7xgreat-grandfather) and James; signed also by William Innes & Robert Thomson.

The surname changed to Pryde.

Links:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~stenhousscot_tl.htm
http://www.prestoungrange.org/prestonpans/html/press/vicinity/012.htme/coal/

NOT am amazing story but just hit me as funny,,,

My father was a horse breeder trainer....won a few big races in Australia...(my sis and I rode/trained etc)
Then doing our tree we find our first 5grands to Aussie in 1820's were bring in horses and training and breeding etc...

We had no idea it had gone on for over 200years in our family line...

Kellie

My great-great aunt Amelia Edwards' husband Harold Dilke claimed that his father was a member of the aristocracy - either a duke or an earl, my grandparents only met him once and couldn't remember which it was. It turns out that Harold was the illegitimate son of Rosamond Dilke, who was involved in a scandalous Victorian divorce case in which she was accused of being the mistress of Joseph Heneage, the 7th Earl of Aylesford. Rosamond's husband killed himself in 1877 and Harold was born in Paris four years later. Harold and Amelia's wedding certificate gives his middle name as 'Henadge' so there may be some truth in his claim after all! Rosamond was the daughter of a baronet, Sir Alexander Dixie of Market Bosworth.

I have absolutely no idea how Amelia and Harold met or what happened to the adventurous Rosamond, who was briefly married to a Belgian gentleman and gave birth to another son. She was still alive in 1921 and may have settled in Bermuda with her son and daughter-in-law.

nudge

Any more fantastic things you have discovered in your family history?

Hi Shirley,
My ancestor also was connected with the NW passage. Here is an extract from a small book about him. I keep finding lots of interesting things about him, the whole Burkitt family in fact.

Holidays for Alexander were usually spent at his grandmother's, though on occasions he helped out in packing some of the items manufactured in his father's business. He recalled how in 1819 he helped pack Burkitt's "Extract of Malt and Hops" for use by the Parry Polar Expedition. The Burkitt boys had as one of their tasks the marking of the boxes of extract with the name of the ship, Hecla. (Sir William Parry, 1790-1855, sought the North-west Passage in 1819; his ship the Hecla travelled via Lancaster Sound to Melville Island and came close to finding it, but was unsuccessful on this occasion as were all his other voyages.)

He was an amateur archaeologist and interested in antiquities, sketching and writing articles (I found him referenced on Wikepedia). He also illustrated a book about Thomas Gainsborough and later when he went to Australia he met and travelled with the priest Julian Tenison Woods. He illustrated his book Geological Observations in South Australia.

Going back 3 more generations to Edward Burkit,t I found John Bunyan preaching in his kitchen.

It is a great pity that One World Tree has not been deleted entirely. I do object to my parents being the in-laws of a man b in 1723. My grandparents and gt grandparents are also in the tree.

I hate the trees on Ancestry. They are so utterly ridiculous.

Huia. (whose sister allegedly m the man b in 1723).

George Kein Hayward Coussmaker

Is one of mine but he is just about so far removed he would be on another planet, but never-the-less we are cousins ie he is not a husband of a cousin....

I mention him because there is a painting of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I also mention him because it is my OH that has all the nobility in his tree and I am but a peasant.

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001898

and I rather like the comments made:

Reynolds gave close attention to his portrait of George Kein Hayward Coussmaker, a lieutenant and captain in the first regiment of Foot Guards. No fewer than twenty-one appointments—and at least two more for the sitter's horse—are recorded between February 9 and April 16, 1782. The composition is complex and the whole vigorously painted.

Persie

nudge

nudge

I think they abandoned developing One World Tree a few years ago. It is still accessible though.

KenSE - Wow - Lucille Ball!!! lol

jax - you look alot like Laura Ingalls in your picture!!

I used to love both of these TV programmes!! :-D

I have to say that Ancestrys One World Tree doesnt sound up to much going through your two's experience of it! ;-)

According to Ancestrys One World Tree I am related to Calvin Coolidge's wife and Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote Little House on the Prairie...I'm taking it with a pinch of salt :-D although I use to love the program always needed the tissues

Guess you don't know Norfolk, Lainie! Try it on a cold, damp day ...
As for the De Lanoy family, they came from Lanoy, near Lille in what is now Belgium. Refugees from Catholic persecution, they were Calvinist Protestants and first came to England in about 1550. They were allowed to use the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral for services in French and still do. Judith de Lanoy was the first child baptised there in about 1606. But several de Lanoy brothers settled in England, and Philip went to America and became sort of Mayor of New York (New Amsetrdam) in 1685. It is from him that Franklin Delano (variation spelling) Roosevelt is descended. I think there is quite a lot you can Google if you are interested in it.

According to Ancestry's One World Tree, I am related to three American Presidents - Teddy Rosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Richard Nixon, as well as Lucille Ball, Helen Keller and Miles Standish. However on closer examination of the relationships someone managed to father a son who lived 200 years earlier so maybe I'm not related to those people. :-D