It’s been a good week

Instead of writing a blog this week on a particular topic, I thought that for a change of pace I’d put together the potpourri that this week has been. As always, I’ve learned some new things. But the challenge sometimes is not forgetting some of the old things so that you’re total knowledge keeps increasing. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are three of the highlights of the past several days.

Progress on my weight goal

I’ve been trying for the past several years to slowly reduce my weight. Rather than go on any crash diet – where many people tend to yo-yo, I figure that since the weight went on slowly, the best thing is to slowly take it off by life style changes. I don’t get on the scales regularly, just try to make better choices and when I get my weight taken as part of my periodic visits to my primary care physician see where I stand and then log it in a small spreadsheet. This week was one of those periodic visits and my weight is down a little bit (again!), so I’m continuing to make progress.

The funny part of this is that when I stood on the electronic scales in the doctor’s office it registered 228.2, but when the nurse entered it into the computer she had a little dyslexia and put in 282.2. When I checked the summary sheet after I came home I noticed it and sent a quick message off to the office. I got a return reply a short time later which acknowledged the correction and ended with “Sorry about the sudden weight gain, but, you’ll be happy to know you just lost 54 lbs!” That was a little chuckle to lighten up my day.

A distant famous relative

I was watching a few old episodes of Antiques Roadshow on YouTube for a little light entertainment one evening and they had a piece of art by Charles M[arion] Russell, the artist probably best known for his western work. That got me wondering if he and I were related. So I decided to see if his family tree and mine intersected. Since I know my Russell family tree back to its origin 1000 years ago, all I had to do was see how far I could trace his and see if there was a common ancestor.

It took a while, since I was not able to locate any complete family tree for him, so I had to piece together some of the research that others had done with some original checking. But after about a half-hour I was successful. Our common ancestor was John Russell who was born in 1340 in England. That was a lot farther back than I envisioned, but the connection was pretty solid. Since John Russell is my great*17 grandfather and also Charles’ great*15 grandfather, that make Charles my 16^th cousin, twice removed!

Uncovering a census error

Twice a month I get together with two other Christian men for breakfast and a religious book study. We also share about our families, pray requests, etc. One of the men, Bob, whom I have known for 40 years, mentioned that he knew very little about his ancestry, particularly about his paternal grandfather – where he came from, what his occupation was, etc. Since I enjoy doing genealogical research, I asked Bob for the names of his parents, including his mother’s maiden name, to see what I could find out.

In tracing his father back through census records, I easily found him in the 1920 and 1930 census where his father was then living with his parents (Bob’s grandparents). That gave me the name of his grandfather. The notation in both census records indicated that his grandfather was born in Maine, but that his grandfather’s parents were born in Wales. But even though that gave me an indication that his grandfather would have been born in 1878, I was not able to find him in the census records for 1910, 1900, or 1880. So where was he?

I then found him in immigration records for 1911 – and a real treasure trove of information that goes along with that. It showed that this was the first time that he had come to the US, that his destination was Portland Maine, and that the person he left behind in Wales was his mother. So it appears that when the census taker knocked on the door in 1920 and 1930, it was probably Bob’s grandmother who answered the door and she gave incorrect information about her husband – knowing that he came from Maine, she gave Maine as his place of birth, when he was actually born in Wales in 1878 and only lived in Maine from 1911 until he moved to PA where he married. His occupation on the immigration records was also listed as “blacksmith”, solving the other mystery that Bob had.