Every now and then, in the course of a discussion about vaccines or some other aspect of science-based medicine, I’m asked why I even care. Apparently, only parents are allowed to give a flying fuck about public health. Or something. We genealogical dead-ends should just shut up already. Parents are imbued with an innate sense…
Category: genealogy
More on Thomas Hardin
I’ve wasted enough time that I should spend doing money work on Thomas Hardin. For now, at least. I have learned a few things in the meantime. The Elic White/Thomas Hardin was a different dude. There were lots of Hardins in the West Virginia/Kentucky region (there’s even a Hardin County) at the time, and quite…
The Strange Case of Thomas Hardin
One of the intriguing frustrations about genealogical research is that each answer just generates more questions. Most of the questions are pretty mundane and interesting only to other relatives, but once in a while one stumbles into a web of intrigue and mayhem which is a great story regardless of ones ancestry. I’m trying to…
More Yeager-Patterson Family History
A couple of weeks ago, I posted the first part of a long newspaper article called “Yeager-Patterson Family History”. Here’s the second, and final, part. It is perhaps less interesting to people who aren’t related to the Yeagers and/or Pattersons, but it has lots of genealogical info, and some interesting tales about life on the…
[Auto] Biography of Samuel Oliver Bereman
Several months back, I inherited a box full of family stuff: photos, newspaper clippings, report cards, etc. One of the items in that box was a six-page handwritten biography of my mother’s father’s mother’s father, Samuel Oliver Bereman. Perhaps he wrote it for his GAR chapter, as the mentions his GAR post in the last…
Ilinois to Kansas by Covered Wagon, 1874
My brother gave me a photocopy of a newspaper article titled “Yeager-Patterson Family History”. Its source is not noted, but it appears to be from a Sumner County, Kansas newspaper from the late 1960s or early 70s. Here’s the first part, detailling my father’s mother’s family’s journey from Illinois to Kansas: The Yeagers and Pattersons…
genealogy redux
Several years ago, I spent a whole heapa time putting together my family tree. While it took a lot of my time, I didn’t really do anything resembling original research, I just assembled my brother Ric’s stuff, my aunt Beth’s material, notes from various other family members, info from dozens of websites, etc. I put…
my great-great grandfather was an SOB
Samuel Oliver Bereman, my mother’s father’s mother’s father, left a journal of his adventures in the Civil War. I’ve had “plans” for some time to do a video blog project, following his journal through the South, visiting battle sites, interviewing historians, and profoundly ruminating. Eventually, I’d take the vlog footage and condense it into a…