Soup to Nuts

DearREADERS,
Last night’s JUST GENEALOGY voice chat in Second Life revolved around the theme “Family Traditions” and it covered everything from soup to nuts.

Many family traditions are stories handed down through the generations, shared particularly at family reunions, wedding receptions and funerals. Other traditions revolve around the celebration of national holidays or days of religious observation.

FOOD TRADITIONS
When asked to share family traditions, initial responses from participants included family recipes for making potato salad (is it dill or sweet pickle relish?) and the advisability of using mustard or ketchup in homemade mac and cheese. (Perhaps some 21st century households are devising a tradition that mac & cheese comes in a blue box with the letters “K-R-A-F-T” on the label? )

FAMILY SAYINGS
Krag Mariner reported on the wearing of olive green undershirts after WWII, and how his grandmother began asking for passwords at the door before letting people in for the planned get together. Krag’s grandmother passed away last year, and so the tradition of using those words at family gathering is now tender and bitter sweet.

TRADITION OF 1812 SERVICE
Austin Shepherd discussed an ancestor’s receipt of a pension and concerns over final papers being filed at the National Archives in a file different from the pension. Advice from Krag Mariner includes reading “Genealogical Records of the War of 1812” by Stuart L. Butler, in the National Archives publication Prologue Magazine, Winter 1991, Vol. 23, No. 4.

TRADITION OF RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE
Clarise Beaumont reported on her maternal grandmother’s intimation of long-standing religious intolerance in her family against Mormons who lived in Missouri in the early 1840s. Initial study of federal census record show Myrt’s paternal LDS ancestors are indeed in the same county as her maternal non-LDS ancestors. Additional land, newspaper and court record research is incomplete but will be to prove or disprove this family tradition.

BRITISH WILLS
After the regular discussion, Aurora Galthie signed on from New Zealand and provided this follow-up link to the website where she found some scanned images of British ancestral wills: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline

HARD NUT TO CRACK
Family traditions that her grandmother died in June 1968 in Brooklyn, New York have stumped a researcher, who has happy to obtain the death certificate, but her grandmother’s parents were not listed. Meeting participants searched the New York Times obituary index, but discovered that pre-2002 entries are available through Ancestry.com. A subsequent search of that site proved fruitless.

Myrt suggests this researcher familiarize herself with NYC record groups by studying Genealogical Resources in the New York Metropolitan Area by Estelle M. Guzik, Jewish Genealogical Society (New York, N.Y.) Published by Compiled and published by the Jewish Genealogical Society, 1989. ISBN 0962186309, 9780962186301. 404 pages.

Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
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This and previous blog entries are fully searchable by going to http://blog.DearMYRTLE.com. Myrt welcomes queries and research challenges, but regrets she is unable to answer each personally.