My dad was into genealogy, but wasn’t serious about it at all. He never took it seriously but just did it for the fun of research and meeting distant relatives who were also interested. He discovered we have a number of ancestors who came over on the Mayflower, so he signed up for the Mayflower Society. He got a big certificate for the first ancestor he found, one of five actually. It turned out you can get a smaller certificate for each additional ancestor you can find. He got three of those, but he wanted a fourth (I swear) so that the big and four little certificate would make a nice symmetric pattern of frames on the wall. He found another ancestor, but the society wouldn’t issue the certificate, because the guy in question was the son of one of the other three. Makes sense I guess.
A challenge! He signed me up for the Mayflower Society by using the ancestor-son as my criterion. Then he argued that if his son could get in that way, he should be able to get the fourth certificate too. The society relented and sent him the fourth certificate. He thought it was pretty hilarious.
He was amused by how serious some people take this kind of thing. And I wonder what he would have thought of this:
After both my folks died, somehow I got stuck with custody of a number of boxes of research material. They’ve been sitting in the basement some 20 years now. Sometime I should ask if any of the next generation are interested . . .
I found this history really interesting. Back in the 1700s, some colonists tried to make a mine, but it was a failure. Then during the Revolutionary War, some people thought it’d make a perfect prison because there’s only one way in or out of the mine shafts. But, well…
Of all the inmates held in captivity in the prison during the war, it is estimated that approximately half absconded and escaped in some capacity.
Now it’s a tourist attraction.
And there’s a pretty cool virtual tour here, where you can walk through the old mine/prison in 3D photos. It can’t capture how dark and damp and stale it must’ve been in the 1700s and early 1800s, stuck in that cramped space with a hundred other people, but you can kind of imagine. No wonder they worked so hard to escape!
This is news to me, despite being from not too far away from that area. Also, according to IMDB, there’s a movie in the works about it.
Crazy how so much stuff like this happened just like a generation or two ago, but they never taught us about it in school. I went to school with a guy from Athens.
This is basically that case:
Coach: prays at midfield after game
School: “Um…you can’t do that. We’re a public school.”
Coach: “Ok, then I quit.”
School: “Ok. Bye.”
Coach: “You can’t fire me! I quit!”
School: “Um…we didn’t fire you. You did quit.”
Coach: “I’m gonna sue you!”
School: sigh
Trial Court: “You can’t pray like that. It’s a public school. Plus, you weren’t fired. You quit.”
Coach: “Appeal!”
Appeals Court: “Yeah, we’re gonna have to agree with the trial court on this.”
Coach: “SCOTUS! Help me!”
SCOTUS: “We got you. School, give him his job back! You shouldn’t have fired him.”
School: “But…we didn’t fi…you know what, screw it. You have your job back, coach.”
Coach: “I don’t want it anymore.”
School: “Oh, fer chrissake!”
