Family Names

I’ve written a few times before about the origin of family names. This time, I’d like to first explore some of the various “rules” and timing of family names in general. Then I’ll look at the four family names coming from my parents and my wife’s parents. Finally, I have some new information about my wife’s maiden name (i.e., her father’s family name - VanDeCar).

 

Surnames

There is a great article in Wikipedia about surnames (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname). It gets into a lot of detail which I’ll not attempt to replicate here. But there are a few types of surnames that are involved in the family history below that I’d like to refer to.

Patronymic surnames – These are some of the oldest and most common type of surnames where the surname is based on the name of one’s father. There are examples in many different countries/cultures, such as the Scandinavian (Peterson = son of Peter), Scottish (MacDonald = son of Donald). There is another whole article in Wikipedia just devoted to this topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronymic).

Occupational surnames – These developed in different countries at different times, but they are very common in the English-speaking world where they developed around the Middle Ages. Some good examples that come to mind are Smith, Baker, Miller, Shoemaker, Cook, etc.

Toponymic surnames – These are derived from locations or things in nature. Examples include such things as Washington (town/homestead of Wassa family). Some of these names are habitation (place) names, others may be topographic (geographic features).

 

Examples from my family and my wife’s family

My father’s surname was Russell, my mother’s maiden name was Pierpont, my wife’s mother’s maiden name was Wright, and my wife’s father’s surname was VanDeCar. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

 

Russell – I’ve addressed this name on a couple of occasions before (see https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/04/genealogy-story-my-norman-ancestors.html and https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-russell-family-name.html). The origin of this toponymic surname is during the time of the Norman occupation of northern France, where a man with the name Hugh became the baron of a small town called Rozel or Roussel – thus becoming Hugh de Rozel or Hugh de Roussel (literally Hugh of/from Rozel/Roussel). This is a good example of the toponymic surname convention used by “royalty” at the time since Hugh was a baron. The family went to England during the Norman invasion of 1066, where the “de” part was dropped and the spelling modified to Russell and there was later a Russell clan in Scotland. The Russells in the US are from various immigrants from both the English and Scottish lines.

Pierpont – I’ve also addressed this name before (see https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/04/genealogy-story-my-norman-ancestors.html). Another man, also Hugh and also a baron, had a castle in Normandy (just 15 miles from the town of Rozel). But he took this toponymic family name not from a town, but from the well-known stone bridge which was in front of the castle. In French this would have been “Pierre” (stone) “Pont” (bridge), so he was Hugh de Pierrepont. This name with that spelling is still found today with some of my distant French cousins. When Hugh’s grandson went to England as part of the Norman invasion, they dropped the “de” part and the name became Pierrepont and that name may still be found there today. As the family spread throughout England, there were variant spelling including Pierpont, Pierpoynt, Pierpoint, and others. These variations can also be found throughout the US as there were several individuals who immigrated here at different times. My mother’s family is descended from John Pierpont who came to New England around 1640, but there is also a branch of Pierpoints who are the descendants of Henry Pierpoint who came to Maryland around the same time.

Wright – this is an example of an occupational surname that originated in England several centuries after the toponymic names above. There are more specific occupations that had separate names – such as Cartwright or Wainwright, but this is the more “generic” occupation from that time period.

VanDeCar – this surname originated in the Hudson River Valley in the mid-1600s (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/genealogy-story-vandecar-family.html). At the time this was part of New Netherlands and was occupied by the Dutch. The Dutch prior to this time used a patronymic naming system where surnames had a suffix of “sz” (short for son of) or “je” (short for daughter of) leading to such names as “Feytje Claesz Van Schaack” (my wife’s great*7 grandmother). The oldest ancestor in the male VanDeCar line that anyone has been able to trace was Dirk Van Der Karre/Karr/Kerr (1637-1727) (there were several alternate spellings), Since Van Der Karre (and its many more recent derivatives such as VanDecar, VanDeCar, Vandecar, etc.) is only found in the US, it was presumed that the adaptation of this name which means “from/of the Kerre” was from that time period. But no one had been able to find anything back in the Netherlands named “Kerre” (or Karre or Karr) from which it might have been derived as a toponymic surname.

 

Some new information

I recently became aware of a posting that someone had made on a message board which stated “An early American ancestor of mine, Dirk van der Kerr, was always presumed Dutch. But recent DNA tests show matches with the Scottish Carr (Kerr) family. Looks like some of the Carrs left Scotland for Holland.”

In contacting this individual (whose mother’s maiden name was spelled VanDecar), I learned that the family had done some y-DNA testing (which traces the male line only as the DNA is from the Y chromosome). This y-DNA testing can go back farther than the typical DNA testing which is looking for common segments of DNA on multiple chromosomes. And this testing revealed that there were a number of individuals in Scotland in the Kerr family who were in the same haplo-group, i.e., who shared that portion of the Y chromosome. This is an exciting discovery!

If correct, this means that when Dirk gave his surname as “Van Der Kerre” he meant Dirk “from the Kerre (clan)”. So, the derivation history of the name was “de Ker” (Norman meaning “from Ker”) to “Kerr” (Scottish surname of the Kerr clan), to “van der Kerre” (Dutch meaning “of the Kerr clan”) to today’s “VanDeCar” (or VanDecar or Vandecar) with the sound equivalence of “Car” and “Kerre”.

There is an excellent Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Kerr) which has the whole history of this clan/surname and which includes the following information:

·        Name has several variant spellings including Kerr, Kear, Carr, Carre, and Cares

·        “Name stems from the Old Norse jkarr which means marsh dweller, and came to Scotland from Normandy”

·        “During the reign of David I (1082-1153), Hugh de Morville, Lord High Constable of Scotland [note that Morville was another town quite close to Rozel and the Pierrepont castle in Normandy], granted lands to the Norman family of William de Ker (William from Ker).” Believed to be the Normandy town of Criel, renamed Criel-sur-Mer in 1902.

This means that the name is not a patronymic surname, but rather is a toponymic surname after the town of Ker in Normandy (just like the Russell surname) – albeit with a rather complicated path from Normandy to Scotland to The Netherlands, and finally to the Americas.

Isn’t history fun?!

[maps of Rozel, etc. in Normandy]

Rozel

Saint Saveur-de-Pierrepont

Criel-sur-Mer

Christmas 2021

My Christmas letter is a little later than usual this year. The past several weeks have had a number of unusual things going on, so I’m more behind than I’d like to be. Last month the well went dry (that we’d only put in 4 years ago), so we had to get a new one drilled. We had this one “witched” by a friend and got the best flow we’ve ever had (10 gal/min) at 310’ instead of the 700’ for the last one. Then we tried to get the oil stove in the basement going and it wouldn’t so we needed to have it serviced. Turned out that our daughter had let it burn out at the end of last winter and some of the sludge from the bottom of the tank got into the supply line and it needed to be blown out. Ah, the life of being a homeowner!

Now on to my usual topics…

Family

Family is obviously the most important aspect of our lives. The arrangement this year was that we would take Ethan down to FL for three weeks at the beginning of the summer, then Chris and family would bring him up when they joined us for our family vacation at Pinebrook. At the end of that week, they would take Isaiah back with them and we’d pick him up several weeks later. So, I got to take two short trips to FL as neither of the boys are old enough for the airline to let them fly on their own.

We only had a few inklings that our time at Pinebrook would be a little different this year. As always, that week in mid-July is the time for several family milestones – our anniversary on the 17^th, Asher’s birthday on the 18^th, Donna’s birthday on the 19^th, then Asher’s spiritual birthday on the 23^rd. With our week there starting on Sunday, the 18^th, we missed our anniversary by a day, but that meant that our children could surprise us when we arrived that afternoon since it was 50 years since we “tied the knot!”

Kim had stolen our address book as well as managed to find the box with all our pictures from our wedding. Three of my siblings – from CT, NY, and CA – were there and we had a zoom call from Thailand from the youngest sibling. In addition, Donna’s brother and his new significant other from MI (whom we had not met in person before) were there. But perhaps most unexpected were Doug and Kay Robinson from MI – the best man and maid of honor from our wedding – who had met at our wedding and gotten married just 5 months later. We also had many from our church who had made the trip to Pinebrook (about an hour from our home) to join us for the celebration. It was a great afternoon! There is a picture from our wedding as well as one of me with my siblings below. I’ve also included a picture of all of us at Pinebrook so you can see how the grandchildren are growing! (They are now 17, 15, 11, 11, 9, 8, 7.)

We continue to have a video call with Chris and family almost every week so we can talk to him and see the rest of the family on a regular basis. We really appreciate having this sort of involvement. And, of course, we see Kim and family every day.

Homeschooling and more Family Stuff

When I wrote last year, we were just a few months into homeschooling our four PA grandsons. We are now into our second year and the boys are in grades 6, 4, 4, and 2. So our days are pretty busy keeping them all on track, reviewing their submissions to ensure that they understand the material, and helping with the technology when an assignment requires a picture/video of their work. They finished last year with all A’s and are doing even better this year. Yes, it’s a burden on our time and means that it’s hard to take time off for the two of us, but this is an investment of our time that will have huge benefits.

At the recommendation of both our children, we have made the decision to start the process of downsizing and then selling the house that we’ve lived in since 1977 and move across the street to live with Kim and family. The primary motivation is that this house is two stories and requires much up/down stairs which is getting more difficult as time goes by (more on that below). We spend several hours each day across the street already, including having supper together every evening.

In preparation, we converted the finished basement there into a boy’s room by moving the bunkbeds down. So, Donna and I will have what used to be the two bedrooms on the main level (one for a bedroom and one for a small sitting room with a futon, easy chair [a lift chair] for me, and our TV). But downsizing after so many years is not easy, especially for Donna who tends to be a collector. Once we’ve emptied this house, then we’ll sell it and use the proceeds to put an addition on the other house to add a much-needed extra bathroom and a “multi-purpose” room so that Donna and I can have a get-away space where we can entertain, etc. Meanwhile, we’re trying to get the two former boys’ bedrooms ready (repainting, etc.) as Chris and family are coming up next month to help us move our bedroom set, etc. over. Changes, changes, and more changes!

Health Updates

I’ll summarize my health in just four words – head, heart, pancreas, foot. My Alzheimer’s is still stable with periodic testing. I did have a brain MRI this year to check on things. My heart is also still ticking quite nicely and is of no concern. I’ve finally reached the point where my diabetes needed more attention, so I’m now taking a daily injection of insulin. Amazing how one learns to stick a needle in oneself like that. I also had the wound on my foot re-open (I have an arthritic growth at the base of my big toe which puts a lot of pressure on that area). I now have special shoes and am working through the very slow process of getting things to heal up.

But probably the biggest concern is that Donna’s hip is giving her a lot of pain – especially going up/down stairs. She’s been to see a surgeon and is looking at a hip replacement in the spring (after we’ve gone through the holidays, the first round of downsizing, and the move to across the street). She has severe osteoporosis and the potential for a fall is part of what’s prompting the move to a single-level home.

Miscellaneous

I’ve been keeping busy otherwise with genealogy and blogging. One of my Facebook friends from high school challenged me this year to see how many of my high school classmates were related to me. So that took many hours of research – answer, about 1/3 of them! But these two activities keep my mind active.

I’d like to close with something a little different. The Wednesday night ladies Bible study at church was doing something a little unusual the past few weeks and having different ladies present the Christmas story from the perspective of the first Christmas participants. Donna was asked to take one of the weeks and present from the perspective of an angel. As part of that she wrote a poem for the occasion. She’s not as prolific a writer as I am, but her creativity and insight are much better than mine. So, here is a copy of what she wrote:

When I think of Christmas (a poem)

 

When I think of Christmas

         Just what will it be

Of tinsel, of wrapping, of bright Christmas tree?

 

When I think of Christmas

         Down deep in my heart

Of friends and of family- I long for a part

 

When I think of Christmas

         Eternity’s view

My wish is for Jesus, for each one of you

 

How great is the gift of a Savior

         The angels proclaimed Christmas day

How great is the gift of a Savior

         For our sins He has taken away

 

When I think of angels

and what they proclaimed

A Savior for us and the glory of His name

 

When I think of Christmas

         This is how it should be

His joy in our hearts for all glorious is He.

 

 

May you also think of Christmas with HIS joy in your hearts!

We love you all!

Alan & Donna

[Wedding and 50^th Anniversary]

 

 

 [Our Family]

 

Front row in age order: Aryon, Tiernan, Ilyanna, Ethan, Isaiah, Caleb, Asher

Back row: Pam, Chris, Alan, Donna, Kim

Book or Blog – which to write?

Someone recently asked me for assistance in writing a book. Like many people in my age category, books are what comes to mind when we think about writing something. But because some of his writings are about current events (Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, etc.) I suggested that a blog may be a better medium for those topics. So, he asked how to make the decision about which medium to use. Below is my answer.

This long answer is probably much more than you thought you would get when you asked what belongs in the book and what belongs in a blog. I’d like to go into a fair amount of depth in my response. In order to answer this question, one needs to examine several aspects of writing, in particular addressing the following topics: (1) who are the ones who would buy a book or read a blog; (2) who am I trying to reach with my writing; (3) how timely is what I am writing about; and (4) how will the choice of medium influence what I am writing. Let me examine each of these in turn.

 

Who would buy a book or read a blog?

Books are somewhat permanent things. They are relatively long, i.e., they are not designed to be read in one sitting. They sit on a shelf for a relatively long period, i.e., several years. And they are relatively costly, even if they only cost $5.00.

Unless one is already somewhat famous, the number of copies that one can sell of a book is pretty small. If the author is someone like Hillary Clinton, Senator X, LeBron James, or a popular movie star, then they can sell thousands of copies. But you and I are not in that category. The people who would want a book about us is limited to our family and friends. That doesn’t mean that what we have to say is not valuable. I wish that some of my ancestors had written a book about themselves so that I could better understand the times they lived in and why they made the choices they did. In fact, that’s why I wrote my own auto-biography – because there were so many questions that I wish I had asked my father about his life and I didn’t want my descendants to have the same unanswered questions about me. Our grandchildren and even our unborn great-grandchildren will enjoy being about to read about one of their ancestors. Only one of the books that I’ve published has sold more than a few dozen copies and that is because the author spent the last several years of his life speaking to groups about his WWII experiences and then sold a copy of his book to those who had come to hear him.

In summary, the people who can be expected to buy your book are probably people who already know you. And unless you are famous, that group of people is relatively small.

On the other hand, blogs are shorter – they are usually read on one’s smartphone or perhaps a PC and for maximum impact need to be fairly compact so they can be read and grasped quickly. Most people expect them to be either free or at least free to anyone who has a subscription to something. And they are often transient.

Because they are shorter and cheaper (probably free for most of us), the thoughts expressed in a blog entry can be widely disbursed. Who knows, perhaps one of them may “go viral” and be read by thousands. They are not “historical”, but nearly always on a topic of current interest.

Again, in summary, the people who can be expected to read your blog may know you, but one would hope that you can reach people who don’t know you well – so you need to make the barrier to gaining a reader much smaller than the investment of $5 or of the time to read a book.

 

Who am I trying to reach?

This question grows quite naturally out of the last one. A book like an autobiography has a target audience of those who want to know you – you personally. The purpose in writing such a book is so that your experiences and perspectives are not lost. The self-publishing market is full of these types of books, and they serve a good purpose – so that we do not forget about the past. I love it when my grandchildren ask, “tell us a grandpa story!” That shows that they have an interest in the past that can help guide them in the future.

But while we can also use the medium of a blog to tell stories, we can also use them to educate or to advocate. And this is a great use of this medium. A blog can be very timely – commenting on current events, pointing out the truth or fallacy of a current newsworthy story, helping to give perspective. And thus, the audience that we are trying to reach is much broader than simply those who already know us.

 

How timely is what I am writing about?

Because books are made to sit on a shelf for some indefinite period of time, they need to cover material that is somewhat timeless as well. Autobiographies are great in that we want our grandchildren or great-grandchildren or even generations beyond them to be able to still read what we have written. We want them to understand the environment in which we grew up, the challenges we faced, and why we made the choices that we did.

Blogs, on the other hand, are often about very current topics. While we can still give perspective on why we view these topics the way that we do, one should not expect that people are going to read these types of postings in the future – or at least that they will not read them for the same purpose. But to get people’s attention, a blog post needs to not only be timely, but short enough that people can read it quickly – people have many things competing for their time, so they can’t spend much time reading what we’ve written. The more timely the subject, the shorter our posting needs to be. However, there is also a place for longer “opinion pieces” that we can then refer people to if they have more time.

To judge currency, ask the questions: would I have written about this 2-3 years ago; would I still write about this 2 years from now? If it’s older than that or is apt to change in the near future, then a blog is a better place than a book. For example, writing about a current bill making its way through Congress doesn’t belong in a book – a few months from now it may have been defeated and be a moot point. But advocacy for passing/defeating it is appropriate for a blog.

 

How does the choice of medium influence me?

The quick answer is – quite a lot, and in several ways.

First, a chapter in a book can easily be 5-10 pages or more. There needs to be sufficient depth and development of the topic of that chapter so that the book is not too “choppy”. On the other hand, a blog entry should be short enough to be read on a smartphone, perhaps the equivalent of only 1-3 pages at most.

Second, the context of a chapter in a book is the rest of the book – the chapters that came before it, and the continued development of a topic in later chapters. But one cannot expect that someone is going to read a blog post in the context of other posts that you have written. But since these posts are written for reading in that interactive environment, one can include context by the appropriate use of hyperlinks where one can click on a link to see that context, to delve further into a particular issue, or to see where the facts being quoted come from.

Finally, since one expects that the reader of a blog post is likely to be someone who does not know you, it needs to be kept more impersonal. The reader is not reading it to get to know you, but rather to just quickly get your perspective on a current topic. There are times that a hyperlink to some of your personal background/experiences is ok, but keep it out of the mainline of the posting itself.

My Wolcott High School Classmates – Continued

After publishing the first version of this last month, although I was able to trace the ancestry of 100 of my classmates, I was not satisfied. I felt the task was not finished. So, I’ve been putting a lot of extra hours into tracing the rest of my classmates. Here are my final results.

 

How Many Classmates?

As I noted the last time, there were 170 people in our 8^th grade composite picture. And there were 144 in the 1965 yearbook when we were juniors. What other totals are there? I’ve located my 1966 yearbook from when we were seniors. There are 157 pictures and names there. But the supplement that was put out after graduation noted that there were 151 in the graduation ceremony. And in looking in the 1963 yearbook, when we were freshman, there were 163 people (all without names, but in alphabetical groupings of 30 or so).

Finally, I also have a copy of the booklet produced for our 50^th reunion which has individual pictures of all who were there. But obviously there were many who were not able to attend.

Part of the problem is that the count is a snapshot in time of a moving target. Not only are sometimes people not there on “picture day”, but people move into town and others leave. In addition, some may take more than 4 years to graduate and have to repeat a grade – thus starting out in our class of 1966 but not graduating until 1967. There are a couple of individuals who had their senior picture in the 1965 yearbook, but they did not get enough credits to graduate and so they appear again as seniors in the 1966 yearbook. There are a few others who had fallen behind and who were a year behind (being sophomores when the rest of us were juniors). But most of these managed to get caught up, and they graduated on time.

Interestingly, in the process of doing this, I discovered that the yearbook staff for the 1965-66 year “cheated”! In assembling the book and putting in pictures for the freshman/sophomore/junior class, they merely took the pictures from the 1964-65 yearbook of the 8^th grade/freshman/sophomore class and replicated them for the 1965-66 yearbook. So, for those individuals who fell behind but later caught up, you can’t tell when it happened. I wonder if anyone else has ever noted this “cheat”?

In assembling my composite list from all the above resources, I have made sure to include everyone from the 1965 yearbook (even though it may have had errors) and 1966 yearbook as well as everyone who attended the 50^th reunion. I also went through the group pictures from the 1963 yearbook and identified as many individuals as I could. Finally, I have also added any names of individuals who I could remember from our freshman and sophomore years who may have moved on and not appeared in these primary sources.

My final list of names contained 173 individuals (172 plus myself) and I was able to account for all of the 157 individuals in the 1966 yearbook as well as all the 144 individuals in the 1965 yearbook. This added up to 169 individuals. The other four were two people who attended the reunion for whom I did not have any other records, as well as two people whom I recalled from earlier years but who had left town prior to our junior year. I was also able to recognize the faces of nearly 100 of my classmates from the series of group picture from our freshman year. (I know that I have somewhere in my archives a copy of this group picture together with a list of all the names. If/when I locate it, perhaps I’ll do a follow-up posting.)

 

Challenges

Building out a workable list of classmates presented a few challenges. Among them were:

·       The 1965 yearbook only had a first initial and last name, so I needed to supply the full first name from memory. This was complicated by the fact that the “DeWitt” last name was recorded as simply “Witt” with a “first initial” of “D”. Also, the “St Germain” last name was recorded as just “Germain”. But I was able to overcome this challenge.

·       There were a few misspellings of last names in the yearbook, so I had to correct them as I did my investigation, e.g., Luchinsky instead of Lushinsky, Messina instead of Messino.

·       As much as I knew my classmates pretty well, I knew very few of their parents. Since that was going to be crucial in my building out their family tree, I had to look for obituaries by last name and assumed the town where they were interred and where the obituary list the names of the children. Alternatively, if it was a relatively uncommon name, I could just look for gravesites with the right name and age of the parents in surrounding towns.

 

A Few Comments on Demographics

When I did a similar project looking for common ancestors between myself and individuals in our church here in PA, I found that nearly two-thirds of the people were distant cousins of myself. But the population of our church is very much descended from the initial German ancestors in the area who settled here in the early 1700s. And with nearly 300 years of intermarriage with those in the area, there were many instances of families who had roots in ome of the immediate surrounding areas (Luzerne County, New Jersey, Maryland) where there were many of English extraction from those early years of the country. This meant that many people had a family line that could be traced back to the colonial English.

One might have expected that because I was looking at a population of individuals in Connecticut, which was settled initially by those who came from England during the Great Migration (1630-1640), that I would find a great percentage of those were related to me. But while the population of the area may have been somewhat homogeneous initially, there has been a lot of more recent immigration that impacted my results.

In particular, the population of Wolcott, was settled primarily by individuals from the cities to the south of it (Waterbury) and the north of it (Bristol). Thus, while the population of Wolcott was increasing dramatically during the period immediately following WWII, it tended to mirror the recent immigration into those two cities.

The countries involved in immigration into Waterbury at the time were Italy, and to a slightly lesser extent, Ireland. In contrast, the immigration via Bristol was highly French Canadian (most commonly through Quebec, and to a lesser extent through the maritime provinces that border Maine. This phenomenon of demographic “clumping” can still be seen today in places like Minneapolis which has a high percentage of individuals from Somalia, or Miami which has many from Cuba.

 

Results

I have finished building rudimentary family trees for all of my 172 classmates. Here are some of the final statistics:

·       59 of 172 (34%) are cousins of mine (see list below)

·       25 of my classmates (15%) have passed away. The breakdown is 7 of my cousins (12%), but 18 of my non-cousins (16%)

·       52 (30%) have some degree of French-Canadian ancestry (16 are cousins); 48 (28%) have some degree of Italian ancestry (only 5 are cousins); 33 (19%) have some degree of Irish ancestry (11 are cousins). Note some of these overlap.

·       The most complicated family tree for one individual has ancestors from Italy, French-Canada, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and the Netherlands

·       Those with only a single country of origin are from Italy (30), England (14), Ireland (8) and single individuals from French-speaking Canada, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Scotland, and Syria. Thus, 114 of the 172 (66%) are part of the “melting pot” that is America.

·       The closest cousin to me is a 6^th cousin and the furthest is a 12^th cousin

Here is a list of all my cousins from the WHS class of 1966 (note that not all graduated in 1966 as some(*) moved from Wolcott before our senior year and some(+) took more than 4 years to graduate):

Wally Anderson, Susan Blais, Gary Booker* (deceased), Sandra Burke, Linda Clark, Louise B Clement, Louise M Clement, Marie Clement, Cathy Cotner, Anita Crandall, James DeWitt*, Mary Ann DeWitt*, Richard Dihlman, Ken Duren*, Christine Eason, Judy Essex, Janet Evans, Robert Fehrs, Antoinette Garbus, Larry Guilmette, Elaine Haddad, Cynthia Harrington, Paul Harrison, Neil Hart, Marilyn Heidorn, Tom Hellman, Bruce Hill (deceased), Chuck Hoadley, Joan Jager, Colleen Malloy, Mike Mazen, Jacqueline Mulholland, Ed Nearing, Karen Nevin, Barry Northway, Bruce Ostrander+, Alan Ouelette+, Ken Overton (deceased), Phil Pagnoni, Darlene Petosa, Linda Phillips, Ray Provancher, Linda Pulford (deceased), Chuck Regan, Jean Rosevear, Bob Schrager (deceased), Nancy Smith, Susan Snow, Shirley Stewart, Bob Stone, Linda Walcott, Kathy Washburne, Dorothy Watson, Doug Way+, John Wells (deceased), Jeannie Wilson, Dave Woodward, Karen Wooster, Gary Zimnaruk (deceased)

Here is a list of all those that I am aware of who have passed away:

Ron Bertothy (2019), Gary Booker (2017), Rosemary Darigis (2017), Peter DeLeon (2019), Patty Grant (1998), Karen Hickey (2017), Bruce Hill (1992), Joe Lango (2013), Maria Elena Lanosa (2017), Joe Laone (2019), Ernie Legassy (2019), Janice Luchinsky (2009), Andrea MacBroom (1983), Bob McKeeman (1995), Bill McKinnon (2001), Tom Murphy (2013), Ken Overton (2004), Lois Pannone (1990), John Pikiell (2019), Linda Pulford (2018?), Bob Schrager (2008), Zigmunt Szabat (2017), Linda Velardo (2018), John Wells (2016), Gary Zimnaruk (2006)

Finally, for those who are interested, here is my picture from 1960, 1962, 1965, 1966, and the 2016 reunion.

 

  

 

 

Alzheimer Studies

As I have blogged about before, I’m participating in a few studies about Alzheimer’s. This past two weeks have been somewhat intense because all of them had their periodic testing cycle at the same time. I’d like to give a little more information about them while they are so fresh in my mind.

All this cognitive testing within such a brief timespan has been pretty intense. So, keeping up with my regular routine (homeschooling our grandsons every day, church activities on Sunday and other days of the week, projects around the house, various medical appointments, chairing the annual meeting of a mission’s board I serve, etc.) has left me with little time to just sit with a clear mind. But I suppose that getting it all out of the way all at once is probably okay, even if mentally exhausting.

 

Background

I started getting involved in these studies a few years ago. My father had dementia for the last few years of his life and went downhill pretty quickly in the six months before he passed away. Because he was a Christian Scientist, he did not visit any doctors, so he was never officially diagnosed, but it was pretty obvious to all around him. His mother, my grandmother, had early onset dementia and passed away at age 68, having spent several years in various nursing homes. Alzheimer’s was not an official disease back then, but she died at the Connecticut State General Hospital for the Mentally Insane (not a label you could put on a medical facility these days). My family doctor retired at age 70 from his practice and very quickly started on his downhill trend. He was a member of our church and it was sad to see such a bright individual first being led around by his wife, then not being able to get out of the house much at all, before he passed away at 75.

It's because of these associations that I decided to get involved in some Alzheimer’s studies to help advance the medical field in diagnosis and eventual treatment of this disease. I have not only a family history, but a genetic disposition to getting it myself, although I’m cognitively not yet impacted – as best I can tell, or the testing reveals.

 

ABC Study

ABC stands for Aging Brain Cohort. I’ve been part of this study for a few years now. This study is looking at a large number of people over a long period of time to see how early the symptoms can be detected and the correlation between early detection and actual medical results (MRI/PET scans, blood work, etc.). I had an MRI earlier this year, but my annual cognitive testing just took place.

Two years ago, all the testing phases I’ll describe below took place in person at the University of Pennsylvania Penn Memory Center in one long half-day session. Because of the impact of COVID, they have rethought how to best get all this done. Last year everything was done virtually, but some of the testing was necessarily left out or shortened due to the limitations of not being able to meet in person. So, this year it was a combination event with the in-person testing kept to the minimum required.

Last week I participated in the first phase of the testing. This was a phone interview. The first half-hour they talked to my wife – who is my designated “study partner” for this study. She was in another room where I could not hear their questions or her responses. They were asking her about her evaluation of how I was doing (since someone who has Alzheimer’s may either be unaware of how they are doing or even in denial). They also asked her about some recent events in my life so that they could then see if I could remember them as well.

For the next half-hour they talked to me (and without my wife being there to prompt me). After some of the same evaluator questions, I was asked, “earlier this month, you participated in a significant event – it was on a Thursday – do you recall what it was?” That event was our monthly Senior Fellowship meeting, so I indicated as such. I was then asked things like, “what time did the event start?”, “what did you eat?”, “how many people were there?”, etc. I was also asked about another event that had just happened a few days before with a similar line of questions. Not looking for right/wrong answers, but testing my recall of recent events.

The second, and longest, phase was the in-person testing in Philadelphia on Monday. There were several parts to this. The first was a physical and physiological exam. So, besides a review of my medications, taking my blood pressure and pulse, the doctor has me do things like hold my head still, then look up at the ceiling, down at the floor, all the way to the right, all the way to the left. Then reach out and touch the tip of my finger to hers, then touch my nose, repeat with the other hand. Cross your arms and stand up from the chair without touching anything. Walk to the end of the hall (about 15 feet), then turn around and walk back. Simple tests that can reveal any issues with losing balance, having problems on one side that would affect my gait, etc.

The second part was the cognitive testing. The various tests in this are pretty standardized brain tests. Some are paper-and-pencil – like being given a sheet of paper with circled letters and numbers and having to draw a line (without lifting your pencil) in the order 1-A-2-B..all the way to 5-E (in the easier one) up to 12-J-13 (in the harder one). Some are mathematical such as count from 100 backwards by 7’s (100-93-86-79-72…). Some are mental such as give as many words that start with a particular letter in one minute. Some are memory – repeat a name and address they give you, then give it back again several minutes later (after you’ve taken several other tests in between).

The most challenging one is when they orally give you a number and ask you to repeat it back. They start with three-digit numbers (two of those), then two four-digit numbers, then two five-digit numbers. The test ends when you miss two in a row. Doing well is when you manage up through seven-digit numbers, but they go until ten-digit ones (I usually start missing around 8-9 digits). But then they ask you to repeat the digits in reverse order, e.g., if they say 5-2-7-8, you repeat back 8-7-2-5. For this one they start with two-digit numbers and a “good” score is if you can make it through 5-6 digit ones.

Finally, the third phase is a blood draw which they later test for the bio markers. The test is scheduled to take two hours, but since my responses were pretty quick on all the various tests, I was done in only a little over an hour.

 

APT Webstudy

The Alzheimer Prevention Trials (APT) Webstudy is designed to identify people who may have an increased risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, using the latest technology to monitor their cognitive performance through regular online memory testing. I’ve been involved in this study for approaching two years. There are two parts to the APT.

The first part is a self-evaluation, called a Cognitive Function Index (CFI), which requires you to answer a bunch of questions in an online survey. It asks things like, how are you doing at remembering names compared to a year ago, as well as such things as what is your level of anxiety on a scale. Not a big deal. As you can see from my results below, I have consistently scored at level zero until getting a 0.5 last week. This was because I am detecting that I am more often having difficulty remembering names. Not a big deal at this point, but I am trying to be very self-aware.

[CFI results]

 

The second part, called a Cogstate Assessment, consists of four tests which involve showing you playing cards on the screen and asking you to respond to them as quickly as you can. The first part is “detection” and simply has a deck consisting of all red jokers and asks you to click “yes” as soon as the card flips. If you click too soon there is an audible “blat” indicating your mistake. The second, called “identification,” has both red and black jokers and asks you to click “yes” for a red one and “no” for a black one. Here, the “blat” means that you clicked the wrong key. The third part, called “one-card learning,” has all cards ace-king of all four suits and asks you to click “yes” if you’ve seen that card before and “no” if you haven’t. As they keep adding more cards, it gets increasingly difficult (“that’s a 10 of hearts, did I see it, or did I only see the 10 of diamonds?” Finally, the last part is called “one back” and asks you to click “yes” if the card is the same as the last one and “no” if it’s different.

As you can see from the results, my scores are pretty consistent over time and well within the range of “no significant change”.

[Cogstate results]

 

 

MTL Study

MTL stands for Medial-Temporal Lobe. The purpose of the MTL study is to better understand age-related changes in brain structure and function and to compare this with the earliest changes of Alzheimer’s disease. The MTL is part of the brain thought to be related to memory processes and is vulnerable to aging and Alzheimer’s. This is a three-year study and this year was my first session. In order to minimize my trips to Philadelphia, I had scheduled it back-to-back with the in-person phase of the ABC study.

The tests in this study are quite different that the ones from the other two studies as they are looking at the impact in other parts of the brain. There were several different tests. For example, one was that the coordinator would name a category, such as types of insects, or types of vegetables, or types of alcohol, and you would have to name five things that fit into that category while he kept track of how long it took to give your responses. The upper limit is one minute per category, and I responded generally within 6-7 seconds. Another test was where the coordinator would name two objects and ask you which had the more positive association. So, if the two objects were “banana” and “hurricane”, most people would answer “banana”. But there is no real right/wrong so things like “whiskey” have a negative association with me since I don’t drink, but for others it might be a positive association.

Some tests required you to use a laptop, for example they would show you a small thumbnail picture for three seconds and you would have to hit one key if you felt it was something associated with “outdoors” and another key if you felt it was something associated with “indoors.” So, roller blades would be outdoors, but a book would be indoors. I lost track of how many pictures there were – somewhere between 50 and 100. What they didn’t tell you was that you needed to be able to remember them. The next test was another group of 50-100 pictures and you had three seconds to indicate whether you had seen that picture before, whether you had not, or whether it was “similar” to what you had seen before. For “similar” there were things like the initial group of pictures had a black-and-white patterned dress, the in the second group there was another black-and-white dress but with a different pattern.

The MTL study was allocated 1.5 hours, but because of my speed on many of the tests, we were done in a little over an hour. But it was a pretty intense hour!

 

Conclusion

Between all the above, spread out over only a seven-day period, I was mentally pretty exhausted when they were all completed. It’s not that any one test was taxing, but that there were so many of them, and that they tested so many different aspects of one’s mental processing.

As I’ve noted, there are other non-mental aspects to these various studies – things like a brain MRI, PET scans, a Spinal Lumbar Puncture. But everything over the past week was mental, with the exception of the blood draw.

I’m glad to be past them. And I have nothing else scheduled until my next 3-month cycle of the APT Webstudy.

I hope that the above is illuminating to you. I don’t wish Alzheimer’s on anyone, and I hope that I do not fall victim to it either – although that’s a distinct possibility with all the risk factors that I have. But in the meantime, I hope that my participation in these studies will eventually help to either eliminate this disease by finding a cure for it, or at a minimum slow the progression of it.

 

My Wolcott High School Classmates

Many of us have fond memories of our time in high school. So do I. Recently someone posted a copy of the first time that our class had been together. Through our elementary years we were in schools in various part of town (Alcott in the north, Frisbie in the south). But the town had built a new high school in the middle of the town in 1958 and had started having classes there (adding a grade a year) instead of busing high school-aged kids to Waterbury. The first senior class was for the 1961-62 year. They had also added another large elementary school (Wakelee) in 1960. But with the elementary schools bursting at the seams, they put the eighth-grade class at WHS for the 1961-62 year. The below picture is the full 8^th grade class in the WHS gym in the spring of 1962.

[8^th grade in 1962]

 

Our class numbered about 160 students (+/- 10 from year to year). The above picture from 8^th grade has 170 people. Our junior yearbook (1965) has only 144 names, but that’s because there were people missing on “picture day” and since the yearbook staff was primarily focused on the seniors, missing several juniors was not a concern to them. There were about 160 in our senior yearbook, but there were moves during the year that made the final count a few off. In my below analysis, I started with those 144 students, then added on thirteen students who were part of the class (from memory). My memory is surprisingly good, but if I missed a few that will not matter in the analysis as you will see.

 

Challenges

Building out a workable list of classmates presented a few challenges. Among them were:

·       The 1965 yearbook only had a first initial and last name, so I needed to supply the full first name from memory – only had two I could not recall.

·       There were a few misspellings of last names in the yearbook, so I had to correct them as I did my investigation, e.g., Luchinsky instead of Lushinsky, Messina instead of Messino.

·       As much as I knew my classmates pretty well, I knew very few of their parents. Since that was going to be crucial in my building out their family tree, I had to look for obituaries by last name and assumed town where they were interred and where the obituary list the names of the children. Alternatively, if it was a relatively uncommon name, I could just look for gravesites with the right name and age of the parents in surrounding towns.

 

Helpful Assumptions

While the above challenges made this a harder task, it was also helped by a few things:

·       The students in my class were nearly all born in 1948. The cutoff for grade assignment back then was the end of December. So those born in late 1947 would typically have been eligible for the prior grade. However, then as now, some students would be held back from time-to-time – either by repeating a grade, of possibly (but unlikely) by skipping one. So, entering a birth year of 1948 would be nearly always right.

·       Nearly all our parents would have been born in 1920(+/- 10), making them 18-38 in age at the time we entered the world. So, when looking at gravestones I could restrict it to people with a birth year of 1910-1930.

·       Both moving around the country and divorce and subsequent re-marriage were not nearly as prevalent in our parents’ generation as they are today. Thus, if you know the student’s surname, you will quite often find the parents staying in the same part of the country and eventually dying there with the same surname.

 

Methodology

As I note above, by taking the list of names in the junior class of 1965 and adding individuals I could remember who were not listed, I had 157 names. I also supplied the missing first names from memory. I then started using Google to try and find and obituary for someone with the right surname where the first name of the student was included, confining myself to the towns around Wolcott. I also used findagrave.com to try and locate individuals with that surname who were born in 1920 +/1 10.

I quickly found that I was coming up totally empty on many of my classmates using the above. But given the rate at which I was successful, I decided to see if I could find 100 of my classmates and their parents. This would make it relatively easy to see if I could go farther. I decided to aim for finding a total of 100 of my classmates to get a representative number. I built a tree of many subtrees (one for each family) to store the results and I kept a spreadsheet of the categorization, etc. As I built back each tree, I used both ancestry’s hint system as well as looking at actual census records, marriage records, etc.

In the end it took me the better part of a week to get the results for 100 of my classmates.

 

A Few Comments on Demographics

When I did a similar project looking for common ancestors between myself and individuals in our church here in PA, I found that nearly two-thirds of the people were distant cousins of myself. But the population of our church is very much descended from the initial German ancestors in the area who settled here in the early 1700s. And with nearly 300 years of intermarriage with those in the area, there were many instances of families who had roots in some of the immediate surrounding areas (Luzerne County, New Jersey, Maryland) where there were many of English extraction from those early years of the country. This meant that many people had a family line that could be traced back to the colonial English.

One might have expected that because I was looking at a population of individuals in Connecticut, which was settled initially by those who came from England during the Great Migration (1630-1640), that I would find a great percentage of those were related to me. But while the population of the area may have been somewhat homogeneous initially, there has been a lot of more recent immigration that impacted my results.

In particular, the population of Wolcott, being settled primarily by individuals from the cities to the south of it (Waterbury) and the north of it (Bristol). Thus, while the population of Wolcott was increasing dramatically during the period immediately following WWII, it tended to mirror the recent immigration into those two cities.

The countries involved in immigration into Waterbury at the time were Italy, and to a slightly lesser extent, Ireland. In contrast, the immigration via Bristol was highly French Canadian (most commonly through Quebec, and to a lesser extent through the maritime provinces that border Maine. This phenomenon of demographic “clumping” can still be seen today in places like Minneapolis which has a high percentage of individuals from Somalia, or Miami which has many from Cuba.

 

Results

Here are some results of my tracing the ancestry of those 100 classmates:

·       51 Female, 49 Male (a pretty good split)

·       37 are cousins of mine, 63 are not

·       4 of the 37 cousins have passed away (11%), but 12 of the 63 non-cousins have passed away (19%). [Does this mean that being a cousin of mine gives you a longer life?]

·       Of the non-cousin, 21 have Italian heritage, 17 have French-Canadian heritage, 12 have Irish heritage (note that several have a mixed heritage). Other origins of note include Poland, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Lithuania, and Syria.

·       The individual with the most complicated family tree has ancestors from French-Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland, and England!

·       Of the cousins, the degree of cousin-ness is 6^th (1), 7^th (4), 8^th (4), 9^th (6), 10^th (13), 11^th (7), and 12^th (2). Up through 10^th cousin is generally a common ancestor in the US (most often the Massachusetts Bay Colony), and a higher degree of cousin-ness generally means a connection back in England pre-1630.

Some other interesting observations

·       Except for a single individual who had a mixed heritage of Italian with some Filipino, there were NO instances of anyone with Asian heritage.

·       There was only a single individual who was African-American. She didn’t actually even live in Wolcott, but her parents, who lived in Waterbury, paid her tuition so she could come to WHS. So, just like Shawn Moore, the only Black in town when we were in 8^th grade (see above picture), she was very much “different” but it never bothered any of our classmates.

·       There was one other individual from Waterbury whose parents paid his tuition to come to WHS.

 

Future Projects

Managing to built skeletal ancestral trees for 100 of my classmates from the WHS class of 1966 has been quite challenging. But, in one sense this is only a partial result. I’d like to do some more work on the remaining 57 in my spreadsheet. Some of these (13) I have contact with through social media, so I’ll probably start with them. And, when I can locate my copy of my senior yearbook, I’d like to identify the remaining few individuals who I could not remember (should be perhaps five of them). So, I have more work to do, but I’m not going to give myself a timeline for completing it – if it’s even possible to do so.