SNGF - The Super Bowl!

Randy Seaver is at it again with his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  Here is the mission I've accepted - even though I'm a little late to the party:

1) What is your favorite National Football League team? Why are you a fan of this team? How long have you been a fan of your favorite team?

2) What is the genealogy of your favorite team? When did it start playing, what leagues has it played in?

3) Have you worked for the team in any capacity, or attended games? What is your best memory of your favorite team's history?

4) Predict the score of the Ravens-49ers game on Sunday.

Ok - for starters, I'm not really a fan of professional football on any level.  However, I grew up in Atlanta so I guess the Falcons would be my first choice.

But they're boring.

So I picked the St. Louis Rams.  They have quite a history!  They began in 1936 as part of the American Football League in Cleveland, Ohio.  They were called the Rams after Fordham University - as a tribute to the football players that came out of that university.   The following year, the Rams joined the National Football League.  In 1943, the team had to sit out the entire season because of a shortage of players during World War II.  In 1945, the Cleveland Rams won their first NFL Championship over the Washington Redskins.  That was their last year in Ohio.

In 1946, the team was relocated to Los Angeles.  The Rams were the first team to sign an African-American player - Kenny Washington - and ended racial segregation in the NFL.   In 1948, halfback Fred Gehrke painted horns on their helmets, and the professional helmet emblem was born!

The team made their home at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum until 1979, when they made their first appearance in the Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Unfortunately, they didn't win.  The following year, they relocated to Anaheim Stadium, just outside of Los Angeles, where they stayed from 1980 until 1994.

1982 turned out to be an especially bad year for the Rams.  The season was shortened by a strike, causing the Rams to have the worst record in the conference - and the Oakland Raiders moved into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, effectively cutting the Rams' fan base in half.  After another players' strike in 1987, the team hired replacement players (referred to as the Los Angeles Shams).  Even when the regulars returned after the strike, the team simply couldn't get it together.

In 1995, the team relocated to St. Louis.  Unfortunately, their record remained the worst in the conference until 1999, when the team achieved their first Super Bowl victory against the Tennessee Titans, in what some call "the best Super Bowl ever."

The team made another Super Bowl appearance in 2001, but lost to the New England Patriots.  It would be their last Super Bowl appearance to date.  Due to management issues, the death of the Rams' owner, sale of the team, and a couple of injury-laden seasons,  rebuilding the team to its former glory is a task that continues to date.

As part of their "genealogical story," I wanted to show the team's migration pattern:

Ok, so now I'm supposed to predict the score of today's Super Bowl.  My scientific analysis goes like this ... the Baltimore Ravens have better team colors (purple is my favorite), so I'm going to say the final score will be: Ravens - 33, 49ers -19.

Do we share any ancestors? 

Please email me at lostancestors [at] gmail [dot] com

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ancestor Roulette

Well, Randy Seaver has posted another Saturday challenge.

Let me start by saying I couldn't use any of my great-grandmother's birth years because when I divided by 90, I got 21.  It was the same with all of my great-grandfathers.  (Until now, I never realized that all of my great grandparents were born within a 10-year period).  In any case, I've already done a complete blog post on my #21 ancestor, Theresa Burns.  So there's that.

Instead, I decided to divide by 60.  

My great grandmother was born in 1892.  The result was 31 (rounded down).

Number 31 on my ahnentafel is Jeannette (Heerdink) Stiker, my 2nd great grandmother.

Jeannette Heerdink was born in June 1871* in Evansville, Vanderburgh, Indiana.  She is the daughter of Anthony Heerdink (b. Germany) and Mary Diefenbach (b. Indiana).  She married Eugene F. Stiker on 20 June 1894 in Evansville.  They had 7 children: Justin, Frank, Vera, Lucile, Lillian, Eugene L., and Raymond.  She died on 30 March 1953.

Three facts:

1. Her nickname was Jennie (which is quite awesome, I think).

2. She only completed the 7th grade in school (according to the 1940 census).

3. She is buried at St. Anthony Catholic Cemetery in Mt. Vernon, Indiana.

*Her birth date is listed on the 1900 census as June 1871, but on her grave marker it is listed as January 31, 1869.  The truth is out there.  Somewhere.

Do we share any ancestors?

Please email me at lostancestors [at] gmail [dot] com

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: They are the 5%

My ancestors, that is.  Randy Seaver gave us another challenge with his post: What's Your Ancestral Name Number?

I'm going to preface my response with the following disclaimers:
1. My grandfather was adopted and I cannot find his biological parents, which wipes out one entire branch of my tree.
2. I have one documented incident of first cousins marrying (but I've heard rumors of more).  This eliminates one set of 4th great grandparents.
3. In the last year I have been reworking my tree to ensure that every fact has a source, so my tree is still very small and I haven't made it past my 4th great grandparents, or into any other countries, yet.

So, with that being said, here is what I have:

The percentage shown is with a full slate of ancestors.

However, if I remove the 252 ancestors from my grandfather's line and the 2 ancestors who are duplicates, my percentage is a little more favorable:  a whopping 7%!

Either way you slice it, I have some work to do.

(I just didn't have the heart to calculate the percentage for 15 generations).

Do we share any ancestors? 

Please email me at lostancestors [at] gmail [dot] com

SNGF - #1 Songs

Randy Seaver at GeneaMusings has another edition of Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!  

What was the #1 song on the day you were born?  Or on your birthday when you were 15?  Or when you married?  Or some other important date in your life.



I went to This Day In Music to find the songs. (These are all hits on the U.S. charts)


Okay, so I'm not gonna lie ... I was born in 1968.  The #1 song on my birthday was Marvin Gaye's I Heard it Through the Grapevine.


Now that I feel really old, I might as well go through the list.


15th birthday (1983) - Say Say Say - Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson
ironically enough, today is the 2nd anniversary of Mr. Jackson's death.


Marriage (Feb 1989) - Straight Up - Paula Abdul
I guess I got the answer to that question ...

My divorce (2001) - Lady Marmalade - Christina Aguilera, Pink, Li'l Kim, Mya

My daughter's birthday (May 1990) - Vogue - Madonna

SNGF: Data Problems - FTM and RM4

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings issued this challenge:


Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Open your genealogy software program (on your computer or online), and use the Help function to determine how to make a "Problem Report" or "Data Error Report" (or something similar).

2)  Create a "Problem Report" or "Data Error Report" in your software for the persons in your tree (either everyone in the tree, or for a selected number of generations of your ancestors.  

3)  Tell us what type of problems or errors that your report found.  Tell us how many errors were found.  Tell us what problem or error surprised you.


______________________________


Because I'm transferring all my data from Family Tree Maker to RootsMagic 4, I decided to run the report in both programs.


My FTM file has 3,231 individuals and my RM4 file has only 70 people (gimme a break! It's slow going transferring everything by hand!)


So ... I ran the report in FTM and the first time it was 47 pages long.  I almost had a heart attack!  Then I realized that it was counting anyone missing a birth date and anyone missing a marriage date.  In my opinion, not data errors.  After filtering those out, the report magically shrunk to 2 pages.


1. Lots of individuals were flagged because their children were out of order.  Indeed they were.  A click of the "resort children" button fixed all of those problems, and reduced my report to less than a page.


2. Katherine [Huber] was flagged because apparently she was born (1864) after she was married (1860).  I checked my information and found a typo.  She was actually married in 1880.  This also fixed the problem with her husband being flagged for marrying someone younger than 13.


3. Margaret Egan was flagged for being born more than a year after her father died.  Unfortunately, this is a glitch with FTM - her father died sometime in 1862.  She was born in December 1862.  Thus, not a year later, but FTM reads it that way.


4. There were a couple of individuals flagged for having an "illegal character" in their name, where I had typed the last name as Brown/e or Crow/e.  A couple more were flagged as including a title.  Two had the first name of Dean, the third was Father Leonard F. Zwinger, who was - indeed - a priest.


5. The remaining problems were not problems as much as they were multiple dates for a single event that conflicted with each other - but this will get sorted out once I obtain the proper documentation.


My RM4 problem report consisted of two entries:


1. My grandmother is flagged as having been married at age 80.  This is true.  Go Gramma.


2. My GGgrandfather, Joseph Huber, was flagged as being "born after birth."  This is also true -- sort of.  I have two birth dates entered for him because I still do not have his birth certificate and have conflicting information elsewhere, so his birth dates are one year apart.


I'm glad Randy issued this challenge tonight.  I knew those reports were there, I just forget to run them periodically.  Maybe I should set up a schedule entry to run those reports the same day I do my backups!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Ancestor Roulette

It's Saturday night, and Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings gave us the following mission (which I have chosen to accept):

1) How old is one of your grandfathers now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

I chose my paternal grandfather, since he is still living.  He is 89 years old.  89 divided by 4 is 22.25, which I rounded down to 22.


2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person?

That person is my great great grandfather, Joseph E. Huber.

 3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

• He was born in McGregor, Clayton Co., Iowa on 22 Feb 1867.
• He died in Los Angeles, California at 7:00 p.m. on 29 Oct 1930 after an 8-month battle with prostate cancer, and is buried at Sigel Cemetery in Yankton, South Dakota.
• He married Emma T. Rothmeyer on 9 Oct 1892 and the couple had 8 children: Clara Rose, Anna Christina (my great grandmother), Ellanora B. (died at 4 months), Martha Mabel, Joseph Peter, Mildred T., Alice Agnes, and Paul M.

Note: not sure if anyone else's Blogger is acting hinky ... it took me 3 tries to finally get all the text to show up in my preview ... and had to retype twice!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Make a Genealogy Wish!

Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings posted this blog prompt yesterday:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  If you found a bottle on the shore, and it had a genea-genie in it, and rubbed it and you had ONE WISH to make about your genealogy and family history research, what would it be?

Okay, so technically it's Sunday Morning Genealogy Fun.

Well ... this one was easy for me.  I would wish that my Genea-Genie would magically unseal the 1928 adoption records for New York City, which apparently take a literal Act of Congress to open.  I just want to know who my grandfather's biological parents are so I can grow that stubby little branch of my family tree.  My grandfather tried to get them unsealed prior to his death in 1990, and I have been trying to find a way to do it ever since.  All parties involved are deceased, so I'm not sure what the big deal is ...