Finding Caleb Russell’s Family

Caleb Ebenezer Russell is my great*4 grandfather. He was born in 1775 and died in 1830. But there are few records available for this illiterate farmer who was born and died in Dutchess County, NY. For his grandfather, Robert, and his father, John, we are fortunate to have their wills available in order to get the names of their children.

Robert in his 1811 will named his children as Abijah, Jane [Utter], Margaret, James, Elizabeth [Barrett], and John (Jane and Elizabeth were already married).

John in his 1833 will named his children as David, Levi, Lee, Abijah, Robert W, Isaac, William, John, Phebe [Wixson], Abigail, Sophiah [Robinson], and Naomi [Ganong]. Caleb Ebenezer is not named as he had already died in 1830, predeceasing his father. However, because he lived next door to John in the 1800 census we can be pretty sure that John was his father.

By 1810, Caleb and his family had moved from Fishkill to Dover where he can be found in the 1810 and 1820 census. He died in 1830.

In looking at the 1800, 1810, and 1820 census records we can see that he had several children. In 1800 he had one daughter age <10. In the 1810 census Caleb has 5 children, two boys <10, two girls <10 and one girl 10-15. In the 1820 census he has one boy <10, two girls <10, one girl 10-15, and one 16-25. So, how do we fill in the missing names?

One of the boys is my ancestor Silas. I also have a confirmed DNA connection for Sarah/Sally through whom I have a DNA match to Robin Mason farther down her tree. Through other research, I believe that the first girl was Eliza who died in 1810, and the other boy may be Edward who was born in 1810. But that still leaves several unknowns. But where do we look?

The key turns out to be following Caleb’s wife, Parmea, as she lived a long life – and longer past the 1850 census where the names of everyone in the house were listed. She evidently spent most of her later years living with her children, still in Dutchess County. We can find her in the 1850, 1860, and 1870 census.

In 1850 she is living with Jane Harrington, who appears to be widowed and has her 7yo son Henry living with her.

In 1860 she is still living with Jane and Henry, but Jane's last name is now Miller. The three of them are with an apparent blended family which includes Nathan Sprague and his wife Dimmie F (translation software in ancestry has it as "Dennis", but this person is a female). Nathan and Dimmie have 3 children - Jane, Mary, and Susan. There are other family trees which confirm this. The oldest, Jane, has apparently recently married George Townsend who is also living with them (she is 18 and he is 24). The youngest two have been incorrectly been given the last name of Townsend but it is actually still Sprague. Dimmie (short for Dimeous) is, according to other sources, also a daughter of Parmea (and Caleb).

In 1870 she is living with Martin and Sally Etts in CT. As noted above, Sarah/Sally is one of her known children through whom I have a DNA match.

Parmea died in 1872 and "wife of Caleb Russell" is listed on her gravestone.

That leaves only one daughter to be accounted for. I was recently contacted by someone whose great*3 grandmother was Thankful Russell, born in Fishkill, NY in 1804. Does she also fit?

If she was born in 1804, she would have been one of the two females <10 in 1810 and the female 16-25 in 1820.  We don't know exactly when Caleb moved from Fishkill to Dover, only that it's between 1800 and 1810, so he certainly could have still been in Fishkill in 1804.

Having parsed through all of this, we end up with the family of Caleb and Parmea as follows:

- Eliza, b. 1793, d. 1810 (we have a death record for her in late 1810 with father’s name as Caleb)

- Sarah, b. 1800

- Silas, b. 1803

- Thankful, b. 1804

- Edward, b. 1810

- Jane, b. 1814

- Dimeous, b. 1817

This matches all the census records as follows:

- 1800 - F<10 (Eliza)

- 1810 - M<10 (Silas, Edward), F<10 (Sarah, Thankful), F10-15 (Eliza - who dies later that year)

- 1820 - M<10 (Edward), F<10 (Jane, Dimeous), F10-15 (Thankful), F16-25(Sarah)

[Silas is no longer at home in 1820, probably boarding with someone for whom he is working as is typically the case back then, Edward is <10 in both 1810 and 1820 as he is a newborn in 1810, but is not yet 10 when 1820 census taken - dates that the census was taken are not listed on the form, but I've seen this kind of thing before]

It took a few hours to pull this all together, including tracing the next few generations of each of the new children to look for any inconsistencies.

My Pennsylvania Cousins

I was reading an article in the New England Ancestor magazine from 2007 titled “New England Moves WEST – Connecticut’s Pennsylvania ‘Colony’”. I had written about this in an earlier blog titled “Genealogical Tapestry – History of Connecticut 1636-1800” (*1), where I had included a brief synopsis of the time that settlers from Connecticut moved to the Wyoming Valley area of Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre and Scranton) in the late 1700s.

This article gives an extensive overview of the process of how the settlers from Connecticut tried to establish towns in the area which would actually be considered part of Connecticut (which was ultimately unsuccessful). The article also gave a detailed description of how to find your own relatives in this area by referencing a 3-volume reference book Connecticut’s Pennsylvania “Colony” 1754-1810: Susquehanna Company Proprietors, Settlers, and Claimants. I would love to do this research, but a search for copies of these books revealed that they are only available is print form and the cost was in excess of $100 for the set – far beyond my limited budget for my genealogy habit for this type of material.

In searching for possible other material, I ran across an online copy of a book, Genealogical and Family History of the Wyoming Lackawanna Valleys, Pennsylvania. This resource had not only the benefit of being free and immediately available, but because of being delivered as a e-book, it was searchable! So, I spent several hours searching through it, looking for the names of people who were related to my Connecticut ancestors who might have participated in this movement from Connecticut to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. (For those who are interested, I looked for references to the names of towns in Connecticut where my relatives lived (like “New Haven”, “Wallingford”, etc.) then looked if the family names identified with those towns were ones that I recognized from my family tree.) Here are a few I have found:

James Sutton was the pioneer head of what became in later years one of the most prominent families in the Wyoming Valley. His wife is my 3^rd cousin, 6 times removed as she is a descendant of Samuel Hooker, my great*8 grandfather, and the father-in-law of Rev. James Pierpont of New Haven.

George Gatlin (*2) was born in Wilkes-Barre in 1872. He is a famous painter of American Indians. He is my 6^th cousin, 3 times removed, being the great-grandson of James Sutton.

Henry M. Hoyt (*3) was born in Wilkes-Barre in 1830 and was the 18^th governor of Pennsylvania. His wife was a descendant of Rev. Thomas Buckingham, the step-father of my great*8 grandfather, Samuel Hooker, and one of the co-founders of Yale University with Rev. James Pierpont.

Gustav Hahn was a lawyer and professor of modern languages at Wyoming Seminary. His wife, Mehitabel Munson is my 6th cousin, 3 times removed, being a descendant of my great*9 grandfather, Samuel Munson of Wallingford, CT.

I’m sure there are many more, but I am excited to know that there are many who live in this part of Pennsylvania and are distant cousins.

Notes:

*1 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/04/genealogical-tapestry-history-of.html

*2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Catlin

*3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Hoyt

Mayflower Ancestors in a Jewish Family

Since my ancestral lines on my mother’s side, with only a few isolated exceptions, all can be traced back to individuals who came to New England during the period of the Great Migration in 1620-1650, it is surprising to me that NONE of them were among the individuals who were on the Mayflower when it landed in Plymouth, MA, in 1620. All of my Mayflower ancestors are on my father’s side of the family, despite many of them coming to America at different times and/or places. Perhaps most surprising is that many of my Mayflower ancestors were ancestors of my grandmother whose maiden name was Vera Levy and who grew up in a Jewish household in Brooklyn, NY. This blog is about those ancestors.

Thomas Rogers (1572-1621) is my great*10 grandfather. He and his son Joseph (1602-1696), my great*9 grandfather and a then young lad of just 18, were among the passengers of the Mayflower in 1620 (*1). Thomas died during that first harsh winter of 1620-1621.

Joseph remained in the Plymouth/Duxbury area where he married a few years later. He and his wife Hannah had several children, including Thomas (1638-1678) and John (1642-1713). The number of families living in the area were relatively small and those of marriable age even fewer, so there were a number of intermarriages between these families in the next few generations. This resulted in a number of the Mayflower families becoming part of my overall family tree.

One of my family lines came through John who passed down the Rogers family name. Another was through Thomas who married Elizabeth Snow, the daughter of Mayflower passenger Constance Hopkins (1606-1677). A final line came through one of Thomas’ daughters, Hannah Rogers (1669-1733), who married Amaziah Harding, a descendant of Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke (1583-1663), and whose daughter Phebe Harding married back into the Rogers family when she married Benjamin Rogers (1704-1747).

Thus, through much endogamy and close consanguinity (*2), by the time my great*5 grandfather, Benjamin Rogers (1738-1824), was born, he had bloodlines from three different Mayflower families.

After the Rogers family had been in eastern Massachusetts for over 130 years, and following his marriage in 1763, Benjamin moved to Ashfield in western Massachusetts where his children were born and where he lived out the remaining 50+ years of his life. His son, Joseph (1772-1837) moved even further west to the Berkshires in Lenox, MA. It was there that my great*4 grandfather, Benjamin Judd Rogers (1814-1875) was born.

I’ve recounted the story of Benjamin Judd earlier (*3), so I’ll not repeat it here, but to summarize, when Benjamin’s wife, Lois, died he gave up his children. His youngest daughter, Lois Irene Rogers, was adopted and her name changed to Mary Lois Drake. Lois Irene/Mary Lois was my great*3 grandmother. She married Lawrence Northrop and their daughter, Caroline Northrop married Maurice Levy who had a daughter, Vera Levy, my grandmother.

It was this last marriage into the Levy family that resulted in a Jewish family passing along to me the bloodlines of three different families who had come to this country on the Mayflower.

Family history can get complicated. But that’s part of what makes genealogy research so interesting!

Notes:

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Rogers_(Mayflower_passenger)

*2 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/04/endogamy-consanguinity-and-nepotism-in.html

*3 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-story-benjamin-judd-rogers.html

Humble Pi

Recently I happened upon a YouTube video by Matt Parker called What Happens When Maths Goes Wrong? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JwEYamjXpA). I’ve listened to a number of his videos over the years on channels like standupmaths and Numberphile, so I knew I was in for an entertaining hour. Matt is a mathematician from the UK. This particular video was based on a book he recently wrote called Humble Pi (available on amazon.com), and is subtitled A Comedy of Maths Errors. (Note that “Maths” is the appropriate word in British English for what we would call “Math” here in the US.)

I knew even before finishing watching the video that I needed to buy the book. It came this week and I’ve absolutely enjoyed reading it. Since I have a degree in computer science from the college of engineering and I also have a minor in math, I have all the background necessary to understand many of the nuances in his entertaining examples, but even if you do not, you would still enjoy it.

I’m not going to be a spoiler, but I’d like to give a few examples from my own experience that illustrate some of the points in the book. So, without delay, here goes.

Y2K

When describing the coming problems with Y2K38, Matt makes a passing reference to the Y2K problem when he says, “Through a massive effort almost everything was updated… It’s risky to be complacent because Y2K was handled so well.” But as one of those who spent a couple of years of my professional life being part of that “massive effort”. I’d like to recount a few real examples of the kinds of math errors that we had to correct.

Error Checking – In an effort to try and detect errors in incoming data, one program I encountered checked to see if any dates were for years before 1940 as that was the year the company started business. But with only 2-digit years that was coded IF YEAR < 40. When the year rolled over from 99 to 00 that would have rejected all the good data as well. It was a well-intended reasonability check, but with unintended consequences after Y2K.

Negative Charges – One system measured flow rate between two times and used the product of the two to calculate how much product to be charged for. But that presumed that the difference between the starting time and ending time would be a positive number. When the clocks we “backward” from year 99 to year 00 the time difference was negative and thus the system calculated a negative amount in the multiplication and gave a product credit instead of a charge.

Early/Late Errors – It’s easy to assume that all the Y2K errors happened during the actual rollover of the year at midnight on 31 December 1999. But sometime we actually perform mathematical calculations on dates make it happen earlier or later. One such example is that invoices from many companies give a discount for quick payment or a late charge for late payments. Such a system might give a 2% surcharge for any payments after 30 days. So if an invoice was dated on say 15 December [19]99, they would add 30 days to get the late payment date, coming up with 14 January [20]00. But with a 2-digit year, the result would be that a payment on say, 25 December, would look like it was 99 years too late. There are similar errors in any look-back calculations.

Pre-test v. Post-test

Higher-level computer languages have one or more constructs that enable the repetitive execution of a block of code. This block of code is repeated until some condition is met. There are two ways of checking this condition – before the block is executed the first time (called a pre-test) of after the block has been executed at least once (called a post-test). For a good explanation see the “While loop” in Wikipedia (*1) and the “Do while loop” (*2). Each of these constructs is valuable, however, some computer languages only have one of them, or if they have both the syntax may be so similar as to be confusing. Consider the examples in Wikipedia:

            While (A = TRUE) Do B End While

                                    v.

            Do B While (A) End While

Errors can be introduced into a program in at least a couple of ways. First, if a programmer is used to one language and its syntax, he/she may inadvertently choose the wrong type of pre/post-test if moving to another language. Secondly, the test may be coded in a way that an Off-By-One-Error (an OBOE as Matt calls it) may occur. As an example, consider the following:

            I=1; While (I < 5) Do B; End While;

                                    v.

            I=1; Do B While (I < 5); End While;

            B: Print “Hello World”; I=I+1;

The first construct prints “Hello World” 4 times, while the second construct prints it 5 times.

Conclusion

The above few examples are just a few from the world of programming, but the book contains many, many examples from architecture, engineering, finance, and other fields. All the examples have a common thread in that the introduction of a “maths error” caused either abject failure or at least an unintended consequence. Some of these failures resulted in death, so they are not just abstract textbook examples. I heartily recommend this book.

Notes:

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_loop

*2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_while_loop

Endogamy, Consanguinity, and Nepotism in My Family Tree

Wow, you might say – such big words! What is this all about? Before I get to the examples of the above in my family tree, let’s first define these three words.

Definitions

Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, caste, or ethnic group, rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships (*1).

Consanguinity, which is derived from Latin terms “con” (with) and “sanguine” (blood) is related to the practice of marrying close relatives (*2). In particular, issues with consanguinity arise with incest laws where marriage or sexual intercourse between individuals who are closely related, such as first cousins, are prohibited.

Nepotism is not related to intermarriage, but to the practice of giving favor to relatives in such things as business, politics, etc. (*3)

Example 1 – confusing DNA results

I submitted a DNA sample to ancestry.com a few years ago. Besides showing you which people groups your DNA came from, they also link you to other relatives with whom you share some of your DNA. The number of DNA “matches” that they have identified is in excess of 60,000! But how can I possibly have so many cousins?

The key to understanding these results is that one of my great-grandfathers, Maurice Levy, was Jewish and in particular, his parents were Ashkenazi Jews. While they immigrated to the US in 1850 from England, they had been part of the Jewish community in east London and their ancestors had come from eastern Europe before that. That Jewish community is particularly endogenous, both because they tended to be rejected by those outside of the community and because they wished to preserve their Jewish customs.

Because of this, there tends to be a lot of intermarriage between the members of that community and the parts of their DNA also gets intermixed over and over again. Thus, nearly every member of that community shares a lot of DNA segments with every other member of the community. Even those such as myself, where only 1/8^th of my DNA is from my great-grandfather, that entire 1/8^th has a lot in common with every other person from that community. This DNA commonality causes ancestry.com to mis-read my results and to tag the nearly anyone who has DNA from that community as being a close relative – when in fact they are only very distantly related to me.

When I submitted my DNA results to myheritage.com, I got similar results. Even though the number of individuals in the DNA database is smaller, I still show results from over 13,000 “cousins”!

Example 2 – Small communities

Some times it is not such specific religious aspects such as the above example, but simply having a small community where the number of available individuals of marriable age is limited. In these communities there tend to be a lot of different connections between a small number of families. The town where I grew up, Wolcott, CT, was a fairly small community for many years – from the first settlers in the 1730s until the growth that finally happened beginning two hundred years later in the late 1930s. Thus, it was not unusual for two families to intermarry a number of times. This sometimes led to close family members marrying.

One of the more recent examples that I documented happened between the Frisbie, Merrill, and Hoadley families (*4).

Elijah Frisbie and his wife Abigail, had married in Branford in 1743. Their son Reuben was born in Branford in 1743, but their daughter Sarah was born in 1756 after the couple had moved to the newly forming town of Wolcott (then still called Farmingbury). Sarah married Icabod Merrill in the nearby east end of Waterbury and passed her maiden name along to her son Elijah Frisbie Merrill and later her grandson Nathan Frisbie Merrill.

Meanwhile, Reuben married Hannah Wakelee from another local family and eventually their granddaughter, Alma, married into the Hoadley family. The stage was now set for Nathan Frisbie Merrill to marry Eunice Almira Hoadley in 1847. But because they shared common ancestors, Eunice was actually Nathan’s 2^nd cousin, once removed – and all because the families involved lived in close proximity to one another. This was not an uncommon experience in those days of limited transportation and small communities.

Example 3 – Shared Mayflower Ancestors

A task that I recently finished was tracing all my ancestral lines back to the point where there was an immigrant to the US (or more properly to America) (*5). Since both sides of my family have roots in early New England, this meant finding many of my “roots” in the “Great Migration” from England to New England in the period 1620-1650. The first date in that range is the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 which brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, MA. I have documented nine direct ancestors who arrived on the vessel.

I have not done quite so exhaustive study of my wife’s ancestral lines. While her maiden name has its origins in the settlement of New Netherlands in the 1630s by the Dutch, there are also several branches of her family tree which go back to New England. In particular, I have thus far identified eight individuals in her ancestral lines who arrived on the Mayflower. And, interestingly, all eight of her (thus far identified) Mayflower ancestors are shared with me! Through those connections, she is both a 10^th cousin, a 9^th cousin, and an 8^th cousin! I’m sure that there are more such connections in the over 1000 ancestors of mine who participated in the Great Migration.

Example 4 – Vouching for each other

Recently I was looking at some new evidence of things about my close ancestors and I noticed that the State of Connecticut had taken a Military Census in early 1917. WWI had begun in Europe in 1914 and the US did not officially enter into that conflict until April of 1917. But in preparation for what some saw as inevitable, the State of Connecticut took a “Military Census” to determine who would be available for a draft, should one be needed.

I was looking at the military census record for one of my great-grandfathers, Clarence Elmer Blackman. Clarence had been born in 1870 and so was age 46 and living in Prospect, CT, when this census record was filled out on March 3^rd, 1917. The information on it was interesting to read – giving his height (5’5”), weight (135 lbs), and the fact that he could ride a horse, handle a team, but did not know how to drive an automobile.

But of interest to me was that the signature at the bottom of the page of the “Military Census Agent” who was certifying Clarence’s answers was “A. S. Talmadge.” That was Albert Steven Talmadge, another of my relatives, and Clarence’s brother-in-law (Clarence was married to Alice Talmadge). I wondered if it was supposed to be allowed that someone could attest to the accuracy of a document that was about a relative? Further checking seemed in order.

I then went searching through the database looking for confirmation that Albert was the “Military Census Agent” for the small town of Prospect (where he lived) and that would have just been part of his job. It appears that there were 163 men in Prospect in early 1917 and that Albert was the agent who signed many of these census documents – all of which were completed within a two-week period between the end of February, 1917, and first part of March, 1917.

In look through this list of census documents, I also noted that my great-great-grandfather, Stephen Talmadge, then age 73, had also been interviewed. And the interviewer was none other than Albert – interviewing his father on February 26^th. But since Albert also lived in Prospect, who interviewed him? In bringing up that record, the interviewer was (drum roll please) none other than Stephen! But the handwriting on the form, with the exception of the signature, is Albert’s. He had filled out his own census form (also on the 26^th) and just gotten his father to sign it for him, even though it’s highly unlikely that his father was actually a “Military Census Agent” as this is the only document from that town that bears his signature.

In reviewing all these documents, I also noted that there was another agent in town, Lavergne Clark, who had done many of the interviews and certified them. (Lavergne is the great-uncle of my aunt, Gertrude [Clark] Pierpont, and part of the extended Clark family who has lived in Prospect for many generations.) So, who had certified Lavergne’s census form? Can you guess?

No, it wasn’t Albert – he lived on the other side of town. Nor did Lavergne fill out his own form the way that Albert had and gotten someone else to sign it for him. No, Lavergne, not only filled out his own form (as a simple handwriting comparison to other forms that he had completed shows), but he had certified his own form!

I’m not sure that such practices would be allowed today – interviewing your own relatives for an official government document, filling out your own form and having your father (who is not a registered agent) just put his signature on it, or certifying yourself! But in 1917, all these men (who are all related to me), did it anyway!

Notes:

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogamy

*2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consanguinity

*3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism

*4 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/01/genealogy-story-merrill-family.html

*5 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/04/great-migration-ancestors.html

Great Migration Ancestors

Introduction

The term “Great Migration” is used to refer to the early Puritans who came to New England from England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1628, although few people came until around 1630. Between 1630 and 1640 about 20,000 people came to New England, initially all landing in Massachusetts, but later in Rhode Island and Connecticut as well. In 1640, with the start of the English Civil War, immigration was reduced to a mere trickle, but a few years later it began again. Most people use the years 1620-1640 as the time period of the Great Migration by including the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth in 1620 plus a few ships who came there over the intervening years until the Massachusetts Bay Colony began.

I had at one time made an estimate that of the 20,000 people included in the Great Migration that perhaps 1000 of them were my direct ancestors. This was based on the fact that those of my ancestors who arrived during that time period were around my great*9 grandparents. Since the number of ancestors increases by a factor of 2 for each generation and my great*9 grandparents are 11 generations removed from me, the total number of possible ancestors would be 2¹¹ or around 2000. But I know that while most of my direct ancestors were English and came during this time period, there are some who did not – such as my paternal grandmother’s father whose parents were Jewish and came to the US from England in the 1850s and my Russell family line which started in the US when my great*6 grandfather, Robert Russell, came to New York from Scotland around 1750 and for several generations married other families from New York. In addition, I knew that there were several instances where two different family lines merged. My estimate therefore was that those facts would reduce the possible total by a factor of 2. But how to confirm my estimate?

The Process

Recently ancestry.com released a few new features, one of which was the ability to “tag” people in your family tree with user-defined tags and then being able to filter the individuals in your tree based on those tags. One of the pre-given tags was “Immigrant,” but I needed to add some new tags to help me in this quest. Here is how I went about doing so:

1 – I defined 3 new tags, “GM Researching” (the “GM” being short for “Great Migration”), “GM Immigrant”, and “GM Confirmed”. The first would be used to tag all those I was researching, the second for those who appeared to come here during the time period in question, and the last for those for whom I had confirmation of the year of their immigration.

2 – I decided to use the period 1620-1650 instead of 1628-1640. Since people are willing to extend the timeframe earlier to account for the Pilgrims, I decided to extend it a bit later to include the individuals who were delayed in migrating due to the English Civil War but who came immediately after it was over.

3 – My goal is to categorize ALL my immigrant ancestors into one of three categories.

·       Those who came during 1620-1650 and for whom I have documentation of their arrival date (using one of several sources I have available) I will tag as “GM Confirmed”.

·       Those who came during that same period but for whom I have no documentation will be tagged as “GM Immigrant”. This would include individuals such as someone who was born in England in 1624, but who married in Massachusetts in 1648, so I know that they must have come here, but I do not have proof of what year.

·       Those who came to America outside of the 1620-1650 timeframe, or who immigrated to other places such as New York, I would tag as simply “Immigrant”.

4 – The “pedigree” view of your family tree in ancestry.com shows the home person plus four generations of ancestors. You can then click on an arrow next to the right-most person and expand the tree by four more generations. By successively using each of my four grandparents as the home person and expanding each branch (one at a time), I was able to easily view all of my great*8 grandparents. I checked each of these individuals one at a time.

·       If they were an individual who was born in New England, then I tagged them as “GM Researching”.

·       If they were not born in New England, then I would find where in the levels below them that branch came to the US and tag that individual as “Immigrant”.

·       If I had not traced a particular branch all the way to my great*8 grandparents, then I would use the same two above rules on the right-most person in that branch.

It took me several hours to go through this step. In the end I had approximately 400 individuals tagged as “GM Researching” and another several dozen tagged as “Immigrant”.

5 – The next step is where most of the work is taking place. Using the Filter option of the Tree Search feature, I filtered on “GM Researching”. I am taking one individual at a time, expanding their pedigree tree, and doing the detailed investigation on those individuals.

·       In many cases I have already done the ancestral research and it is a matter of finding the individuals who immigrated and tagging them either as “GM Confirmed”, “GM Immigrant”, or “Immigrant” as appropriate. I have Robert Anderson’s excellent book “The Great Migration Dictionary” sitting by my side as one reference (and being well thumbed through), the other references are online.

·       Usually only the father of the family unit is listed in these various resources. But if “John Smith” is listed as a Great Migration participant, he was married before the year of immigration, and his wife was later documented in America, then his wife “Mary Smith” can also be tagged as “GM Confirmed”. In the same way, if his son “David Smith” was born in England and later shows up in New England before 1650, then the son can also be tagged this way.

·       If I have not yet done the research, then I have to take the time to do so, finding and confirming parents, dates, etc. But since I usually only have to go a few generations, then it is not as daunting a task as it might be. However, if I have to research a branch where I had never done the research back to my great*8 grandparent level, then it can take a while. I’m saving these more challenging branches for the end and taking the low hanging fruit first. As I add new ancestors, I also have to take the time to ensure that I am not creating duplicates. In a way that may seem like extra work, but if I find that “John Brown’s” parents are already in my tree as the parents of “Mary Brown” (John’s sister) that means that I don’t have to trace John’s family back any farther and I actually save work.

·       If I discover places where I cannot get back to the immigrant ancestor, then I tag the spot where I get stymied as “Brick wall” (another tag that is provided for you to use). I expect that I will find several more of these as the reason that I had previously abandoned researching a particular line.

·       Once I have tagged all the individuals in that subtree appropriately, then and only then do I remove the “GM Researching” tag to so that I can say “One more done!”

The Results (so far!)

I am posting this blog before I have completed this latest research. As noted above, I have saved for last the branches where I have several generations of research to do before I can feel done with this project. Here are my results after about two weeks of intensive research and tagging:

·       GM Confirmed – 599 individuals

·       GM Immigrant – 133 individuals – a future project for these will be to do further research using additional sources to see if I can find confirmation of their year of arrival and then move them to the prior category

·       Immigrant – 54 individuals – probably not going to do any further research on these individuals since they came outside of the 1620-1650 immigration date and/or they did not emigrate to New England

·       Brick Wall – 19 individuals – more work to be done here, too

·       GM Researching – 50 individuals – most of the ones remaining in this category are several generations removed from their immigrant ancestors (many being individuals who were born in the 1700s or even 1800s), I expect that each one will yield several Great Migration immigrants (and probably some additional Brick Walls as well).

One caveat on the above – I know that my research over the years has not always been as thorough as it could be and there are connections that need to be investigated and strengthened with appropriate documentation. I’ve tried not to take shortcuts, but the temptation is always there. A genealogist’s work is never done!

Final Thoughts

In the process of trying to verify my estimate, I will have taken a large portion of my ancestral tree back to their immigrant beginnings. Because so many of my ancestors have lived in Connecticut or Massachusetts for nearly 400 years, and because family genealogical records in New England are generally more complete than those from other parts of the US, my results may also be more complete than for other researchers. But that certainly does not mean that this research is easy. This is in some ways the culmination of several years of pretty intense genealogical work on my family tree, albeit in fits and starts. And I am reliving some of that hard work as I slog my way through the remaining incomplete branches of the tree.

That’s also why I’m choosing to post this before I reduce the “GM Researching” list down to zero. I’ve now tagged over 700 of my direct ancestors as having taken part in the Great Migration. If my original estimate holds, that means that I am over 70% complete in filling out my family tree back to its immigrant beginnings. The remaining branches are just the starting points for the remaining work that I have to do to finish this task. According to my profile, I’ve been building my family tree in ancestry.com for over 10 years. At that rate, it will take me many more hours before this task is done! But it has given me a lot of pleasure during my retirement years and will continue to do so.

Engineering Problems

There have been several news articles recently about the problems with the Boeing 737 MAX, including two planes that crashed – one in Indonesia, one in Ethiopia. It appears that the root cause of the problem is the fact that because the plane has been stretched (the reason for the MAX part of the plane’s name) the nose of the plane has a tendency to tip down and it requires sophisticated software to keep the plane’s attitude nose up. When one of the external sensors is not working properly, the software is not handling the situation properly and the plane keeps going nose down until it is unrecoverable and the plane crashes.

I have a background in engineering and many years of experience in writing computer software, but the intricacies of this are difficult for even me to totally understand. So, I thought I’d write about some less complicated transportation problems that might illustrate the kinds of issues that engineers deal with and how simple things can lead to complicated problems. These two examples are real ones that people I knew had to deal with about 40-50 years ago.

The Oil Filter

A car manufacturer (I seem to recall it was Ford, but that’s not important to the story) came out with a new model of a popular car that had a more powerful engine than the prior year. A friend of mine bought one of these new cars and loved it. After a month or so it was time for the first oil change. The dealer he bought it from included with the car a free first oil change (this is a good marketing strategy as if you can get in the habit of going to them for this kind of service you are more likely to keep coming back – and making money for the dealership). So, he scheduled his new car for an oil change. Figuring that it would not take too long, he stayed in the waiting room where he had a view of the service bays.

He could see his car on the lift and watched the mechanic unscrew the oil drain plug in the bottom of the engine and drain out the used oil. But then the mechanic seemed to be under the car for an extended period of time and he began calling others over until nearly everyone in the garage was gathered underneath his car. Wondering what was going on, my friend went to the service desk and inquired if there was a problem with his new car. The response that he got was that they were unable to remove the oil filter!

Because this was a new model with a newer engine, the engineers who design it have to take into account all the various parts of the engine and its attachments to ensure that everything will both fit properly in the engine compartment and also be able to be taken out. They had done so properly. But the space in the engine compartment is pretty tight (as anyone who has looked under the hood of most modern cars can see). Thus, the amount of space between some components is quite small. The oil filter is generally near the bottom of the engine and in this case was right up against the engine frame with a fraction of an inch clearance.

But the engineers had forgotten a small point – that when you need to change the oil filter it must be unscrewed and that means that there must be enough clearance between the filter and whatever it is next to (the frame in this case) to allow that extra fraction of an inch for an unscrewed filter. But they had not done so, so there was not enough room to remove the filter.

If the item that interfered had been some other component, they could have loosened the other component – that would have been bad enough. But in this case the other component was the car’s frame. Thus, the only way to change the oil filter was to loosen the motor mounts, use a jack to push up the entire engine that fraction of an inch, unscrew and change the filter, then lower the engine and retighten the motor mounts.

The consequence of that minor mis-calculation meant that most people would not be able to do their own oil change, that they could not take it to a Jiffylube or some other such establishment, and that the labor and time involved were not just a simple 15 minutes, but a couple of hours of work! Fortunately for my friend, the first oil change was free, but the long-term prospects were not great.

The dealer notified the manufacturer who very quickly got their engineers involved. The solution – make a new oil filter that was a fraction of an inch shorter so it could be unscrewed in that tight space. They also had to change the specifications in the owner’s manual, get a large quantity of the filters manufactured so they could be available on the assembly line for all cars not yet built, then contact all the car owners to schedule a recall – each of these cars needing to be put on a lift, the motor mounts loosened so the filter could be replaced, etc. It was a massive effort for the next several months – and all because the engineers forgot that unscrewing a $4 oil filter means you need a little bit of clearance!

The Computer Reset

I began teaching computer courses to adults in an evening program in 1980. My students were working adults who took classes three nights a week for ten weeks. In the first week of one of these classes a few of the students were talking together before class started and one of them shared that he had had a car problem on the way to class that night.

His route to school meant that he had to take one of the limited access roads in the Lehigh Valley (22, 309, or I-78). Some of the access ramps on the former two are quite short, in fact a few of them have stop signs at the end of the ramp so you have to stop, wait for a clear spot in the traffic, then accelerate rapidly to match the flow of traffic as there are no merge lanes. Also, these roads are all concrete and not always in the best shape (PA roads are notorious for potholes). It was at one of these short ramps that he had the problem.

As he was accelerating rapidly so that the traffic behind him did not run him over, his engine suddenly slowed to an idle speed and the RPMs dropped. He initially thought that the engine had died and began quickly looking for a place to pull over – but there are usually no spots for doing this either, so he was beginning to panic. Then, just as quickly as it began, the crisis ended and the engine once again began working properly and he was able to get back to the required speed. It was this moment of panic that he was relating to the others in the room.

Things went well for several classes, then one night it happened again – the engine RPMs quickly dropped and the car’s speed decreased accordingly, then after a few seconds everything began working again. Now he knew it was not a fluke and that there was a real problem. He took it to a car dealer but their tests showed nothing wrong. He took it to a local mechanic who could also find nothing wrong. The car was working properly all the rest of the time except under these times of acceleration on the short ramps – when the problem reoccurred a few more times over the coming weeks. What was going on?

Finally, he had another mechanic look at it – and this new mechanic found the problem. As on most cars, there are a number of wires in the engine compartment that are connected a number of “computers” that govern the operation of the engine. One of these sensor wires had come loose from the bundle that it was part of and was somewhat floppy. It would bounce around a little – especially on the bumpy sections of the PA roads when the car was at higher speeds and it had developed a small section where the insulation around the wire had worn through. Now when it made contact during one of those bounces it was shorting out. This was giving a phony signal to the computer to which it was connected.

At high RPMs, the phony signal generated from the bouncing on the roads gave conflicting information to the computer and the computer didn’t know how to handle the conflict. So, the solution, programmed by the engineers, was to “reset” the computer, then process the various sensor signals one at a time until it took the appropriate course of action. But this reset meant that the engine speed was also reset (to idle) until the computer could process the conflicting signals. And of course, by then, the loose wire was no longer in contact and shorting out, so the computer properly interpreted everything, including the fact that the driver was pushing on the accelerator pedal, and the car began working properly.

While the best solution would be for the engineers to do something other than a reset and drop the vehicle speed instead of just maintaining the current speed. But in this case, the mechanic just did the next best thing – wrapping some electrical tape around the bare spot in the wire and securing it so that it wouldn’t flop around anymore.

Crossing the Cultural Divide

There have been many stories in the press the last several days about Joe Biden and his treatment of women. I find it rather interesting how we are so willing to apply the current cultural standards in the US to everyone else - regardless of the culture that they come from or the time period in question. Let me give a few examples of the former.

1 - I volunteered for many years for AFS and we sent students abroad for a year/summer program. I usually ran the sending orientation for these students and their families. One of the topics that we discussed was "personal space". I would ask one student to come to the front of the group with me so that we could have a discussion. I would not give them any further instructions. Invariably, they would stand at a distance from me that is one that is defined by the personal space distance in US culture. This is so that the other person is just beyond fingertip length away. I would face them to have our pretend conversation, then reach out with my arms and EVERYTIME they would be standing just far enough away that I could not touch them. I would then turn to the rest of the group as I discussed this. I would then say that there are many other cultures where the definition of personal space is much different and as I said this I would step in so that there were only a few inches between us as an illustration. The other person would almost always react visibly and lean away from me as I said that they needed to overcome their resistance to being culturally correct in the new country that they were going to. I would also talk directly to them, looking them straight in the eyes and admonishing them if they would not return my gaze, telling them that unlike the US where the general rule is that the listener looks directly at the speaker so that they can see the person's facial expression and body language (which are equally important in communication), but that the speaker does NOT look at their listener, but tends to look off to the side or somewhere else. But in many other cultures it is considered impolite to not look directly at the person you are speaking to.

2 - I have also had several opportunities to visit countries/cultures where the expected form of greeting is a "kiss on the cheek" (usually just touching cheeks and "kissing the air"). Some cultures use a single kiss, some two (first to one side, then to the other), and some even three. I remember one occasion on my first visit to a company subsidiary in Brazil. It was just before Christmas and I was invited to the office Christmas party at a nearby restaurant. I was standing near the bar in the front talking to the executive secretary of the company (who spoke excellent English), while all around me everyone else was speaking Portuguese. A lady from the office, whom I did not know, entered and was making her way down the line of individuals standing there and got to me. I followed the local practice and kissed her on the cheek, then she continued making her way into the restaurant. I turned back to the executive secretary who with a big smile said to me, "you know our customs!" She was suddenly much more friendly to me in our conversation because I had shown that I was willing to "cross the cultural divide" and accept their way of doing things instead of the "American" way of shaking hands.

While I am not defending Biden's touchy/feely interactions (I am not aware of any culture where placing your hands on someone else's wife and nuzzling her hair is appropriate), we need to be careful not to confuse what may be improper with what may simply be trying to impose today's (post-MeToo) culture on events in the past. 

Even Jesus can be seen in this cultural difference in Luke 7:45 where he chides Simon by saying, "You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet." He was expecting a kiss of greeting. Paul also says in Romans 16:16, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." 

Are you willing to adapt to the different culture of someone else? Or do you insist that the current "American way" is the only way and judge everyone by that standard?