This is a case where I'm glad I have the original newspaper clippings; they scanned better than the images I found on my favorite subscription newspaper website.
Margot Copeland, of Allison Park, won first place in this achievement test. My grandfather noted the date of this Pittsburgh Press article.
Tied for second place were John Trimble and Hugh Pendleton. Suzanne Collins came in fourth.
And here is another photo from the May 29, 1952, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of the top four winners.
Most of my ancestors came from England, Scotland, and Ireland, so their original language was English. However, If I go back far enough in my family tree, I do have some ancestors who came from other locations in Europe.
My sixth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Wendell was born in August 1704 in the Colony of New York to Abraham Wendell and Catharina De Kalj / DeKay. (She was baptized in the Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam on August 20, 1704.) Three of her four grandparents were born in New Amsterdam, New Netherlands, which is what New York City was known as from 1653 to 1664.
I have not researched this branch of my family tree in a long time. My tree in Family Tree Maker has several holes in Elizabeth Wendell's ancestry.
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| Screenshot Elizabeth Wendell's ancestors in Family Tree Maker |
However, others have researched this branch and shared their research in the FamilySearch family tree. (It is important to note that this is a crowd-sourced, open family tree that can be edited by anyone with a FamilySearch account. I have not verified any of the ancestral links in these generations.)
This week's theme is Changing Names.
My great-grandmother was named Frances Adelaide McAlpin, after her mother, Frances Adelaide (Rose) McAlpin.
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| Charles McA. Pyle, Jr. and his paternal grandmother, "Granny Pyle" circa 1927 |
This week's theme is Heirlooms, and the heirloom I am sharing is a copy of The Chapin Genealogy compiled by Orange Chapin and published in 1862. Exploring this book about 35 years ago, I was fascinated by the fact that through my father's mother, we could trace our ancestry back to one of the founders of Springfield, Massachusetts!
It is this book that started my interest in genealogy.
The 1862 book is not under copyright and can be found online in many places including the Internet Archive, FamilySearch Books, and Ancestry.com, among others.
However, the one that I have is an heirloom because there were slips of paper bookmarking the pages of one line from Orramel
Chapin (1791-1866) back to Samuel Chapin with handwritten notes on
those pages. This book has likely been handed down in my family for 125-150 years!
Deacon Samuel Chapin is noted G. G. G. G. G. Grandfather (no. 1), but the line that has been tracked in the book, he should have been noted as the note-taker's 4th great-grandfather. (Depending on which line is traced, he is also a 5th great-grandfather.)
This week's theme is Immigration.
I have previously shared a list of some of my Great Migration ancestors who arrived in New England between 1620 and 1635, though the Great Migration period covers twenty years from 1620 to 1640, when the political situation changed in England. The Wikipedia page for the Great Migration has a summary.
One of those ancestors was Thomas Lord, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut. There is a lineage society for these descendants, but I am not a member. Thomas's son-in-law, Thomas Stanton, was also a founder of Hartford.
