Restaurants Have Histories, Just like Families . . .And They Often Intertwine

Yesterday my friend and fellow early baseball aficionado David Lambert from the New England Historic Genealogical Society sent me a note, asking if I could recommend any restaurants in downtown Albany. David will be here guiding the NEHGS group that will be mining the New York State Archives and Library for family treasures later this week.

I sent him a list of six downtown eateries, warning him that because Albany is the state capital, downtown restaurants can be pricey, since their usual customers are lobbyists and legislators, with bulging expense accounts and per diems.

And strangely enough, that got me thinking about restaurants in general and their place in family history.  Only two of those restaurants I recommended were around way back in the 1970s when Mrs. Blogger and I came back to Albany from East Africa. That’s really not surprising since, just like people, restaurants come and go.  And – also just like people – restaurants have histories, and those histories are often intertwined with those of local families.

One of the restaurants I recommended was Jack’s Oyster House on lower State Street.  Everybody who comes to Albany should eat at Jack’s at least once, knowing that they’re joining a long line of politicians, mayors, governors and presidents.  (Is this where Al Smith sat?  Where’s the FDR table?) 

Jack’s has been run by the Rosenstein family for three generations and I suspect that after its most recent renovation  it looks almost the same as it did 80 years ago, right down to the black and white tile floor.  Today it’s run by Brad Rosenstein, the grandson of the founder.  His granddad Jacob Rosenstein got his start in the food business – at least as the story is told around these here parts – working in the kitchen of another famous Albany landmark.   That landmark was a restaurant called Keeler’s, formerly Keeler’s Hotel and Restaurant.  

The picture above, from the Library of Congress collection, shows Keeler’s circa 1908 – 1910. Keeler’s later moved to State Street, more about which later.

Keeler’s on State Street – both as a business and a building – is gone now, having fallen victim to changing tastes in the late 1960s.  But in its day …

The Keeler’s on State Street was built as a replacement for the original Keeler’s Hotel and Restaurant, which had been destroyed in a great fire in the fall of 1919.  The original Keeler’s – referenced and shown in the streetscape photo above - had been located on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane.

When I was in high school and later, at university, Keeler’s was THE place to eat in downtown Albany. 

With its faux-Tudor wood-carved exterior and its fine wood paneled interior, leather chairs and seemingly endless English prints by W. Dendy Sadler (see left)  on the walls, it exuded that “old English gentleman’s club” atmosphere. There were small private dining rooms that could be gotten for special occasions and, of course, all the waiters were male, with white shirts, black bow ties and trousers and white aprons, for the proper “club” look. 

When the building was demolished to make way for a great steel and glass boxlike bank office building, the paneling inside went to the venerable Fort Orange Club, where today it graces the walls of several public rooms.  The more than 100 Sadler prints that lined Keeler's walls are there as well.

My parents and I went to Keeler’s occasionally for special occasions, once I was old enough to be taken out in public and could eat in a restaurant like a “proper young gentleman.”

While not exactly a family tradition,  Keeler’s was, after all, the restaurant at which they had their wedding breakfast in 1942, so it was a “special” place for those “special” occasions.

Here’s the other “family – Keeler’s” connection:  it was at that original Keeler’s location on Broadway that my grandfather was treated to a “state-like” dinner in his honor in October of 1917, following the World Series.  As you may know if you’ve been reading this blog, my grandfather was a member of the Chicago White Sox and that was the year they beat the New York Giants and won the World Series.

This is how the local newspaper described the event:

MANY ATTEND RECEPTION FOR MEL WOLFGANG

Albanians Turn Out En Masse To Honor North End Ball Player

Albany outdid itself last night in welcoming back Mellie Wolfgang, the North End boy, after an absence from the city of six months during which he achieved fame as a member of the Chicago White Sox, winners over the New York Giants in the recent series for the world’s baseball championship.  In the past Albany always has honored her sons, but the demonstration given to Wolfgang last night easily excelled any other welcome received by an Albanian in some time.

Wolfgang, John “Shano” Collins, right fielder on the Chicago team, and roommate of Mellie’s all season, and “Skull” Devine, another Albany boy, were met at the Union depot early in the evening.  They piled into a waiting automobile and rode at the head of a parade arranged in Wolfgang’s honor.  Baseball enthusiasts and friends of Wolfgang marched over the following route: Broadway to Clinton Avenue, to Lark Street, to Washington Avenue, to Eagle Street, to State Street, to Broadway, to Keeler’s hotel, where a banquet was served.

The writer then proceeded to describe the banquet’s speakers and events.  Here’s one:

Mayor Joseph W. Stevens paid a fine tribute to Wolfgang, whom he met for the first time last night.  The mayor said, “I, as mayor of this city, extend a hearty and cordial welcome to Mr. Wolfgang and his friend, Mr. Collins, of the White Sox, and our townsman, Mr. Devine, of the Red Sox.  I give the keys of the city to them, although I think it is hardly necessary, as I do not believe there is a cop in Albany who would dare to catch either one of them.”  In closing the Mayor advised Wolfgang to enter politics, expressing his opinion that Wolfgang would be highly successful if he ran for office.

My favorite part of the story comes close to the end.  The writer continued:

At the beginning of the dinner, Wolfgang was presented with a floral horseshoe and the little North Albany lad hid behind the piece throughout the banquet. Toastmaster Cooke paid his final tribute to Mellie in presenting a diamond fob to him.  The diners yelled for a speech, and Mellie, in his unassuming and modest way, said simply, “I am happy. I’m glad.  I certainly thank you all.  I don’t deserve this.  Thanks.”

It’s hard to imagine any ancestor of mine at a loss for words!

Good For What Ails You: Lydia E. Pinkham's Magical Compound and User Testimonials

My grandmother was a close friend of Lydia E. Pinkham.

Not an actual and personal friend, of course, since Mrs. Pinkham died in 1883, a full seven years before my grandmother was born, but a friend nonetheless. 

You see, Mrs. Pinkham had concocted a “medical elixir” on her kitchen stove in Lynn, Massachusetts many years earlier. For inventing and marketing this wonderful elixir, women all over the United States praised and sanctified her, even long after her death.

My grandmother thought Lydia Pinkham was a saint. She always had a bottle or two of her magic elixir around the house.  Usually there was one upstairs in the bathroom and one downstairs in the kitchen. Apparently she never could tell just where and when the “vapors” might overtake her.

Each of those bottles bore the visage of the grandmotherly Mrs. Pinkham, who was indeed a real person, unlike Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima. The elixir was called “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound” and at the end of the 19^th century, it was well-nigh impossible to pick up a newspaper in the United States and NOT find an advertisement for Mrs. Pinkham’s magic medicine that was guaranteed to cure (or at least improve) all manner of “female complaints.” 

Mrs. Pinkham advertised widely and often, usually writing her own advertising copy and requesting that satisfied users of her “Compound” write directly to her and tell how it had helped them.  In most of her ads, she selected a few of the letters she had received and excerpted the key parts. In effect, she let her satisfied customers write her ads.  It worked so well that the company continued to use this kind of advertising long after Mrs. Pinkham’s own demise.

The more she advertised, the more bottles of the compound she sold.  The more she sold, the more the women of America wrote to her, singing the praises of her elixir.  Mrs. Pinkham and her family did very, very well for themselves.

There was something special about this tonic that made women of all ages feel good.  It may have been the special mixture of herbs with exotic names like pleurisy root, unicorn root, black cohosh, life root and fenugreek.  Then again, it may have simply been the fact that the mixture contained 18% alcohol.

In other words, Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound was a nearly 40 proof alcohol, making it about half the alcoholic strength of rum or gin.  It was about the same strength as port or sherry and could produce a similar buzz, and because it was sold as a medical “vegetable compound”, it remained available during Prohibition, making Mrs. Pinkham’s descendants even more friends and money.

The ad below caught my eye as I was checking out an obituary elsewhere on the page of the April 26, 1899 edition of the Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Press.  Who knew that the wonderful Compound could tackle the “Sorrows of Sterility”?  I might have believed the “heartbreak of psoriasis”, but sterility?  That seemed a bit far-fetched, even though the ad promised that the “…medicine is so well calculated to regulate every function of the generative organs that its efficiency is vouched for by multitudes of women.”

Anyway, here’s the ad:

Note the testimonials at the very end of the ad. Could these women be actual people? 

Let’s check it out.

The very last part of the ad is the testimonial of one Flora Cooper from Doyle, South Dakota.   After describing her symptoms and implying that they were the cause of her lack of children, she noted “… I wrote to you for advice and began taking Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. I had not finished the first bottle before I felt better.  I took four bottles, and have been strong and perfectly healthy ever since, and now have two of the nicest little girls.”

Remember, the ad was run in April of 1899, a little more than a year before the 1900 federal census was taken.  Could Mrs. Cooper and her “nicest little girls” – partially produced through the positive effects of Mrs. Pinkham’s Compound - be located?

Turns out that little, tiny Doyle, South Dakota was in Meade County at this time.  (Meade County is also where Sturgis of motorcycle fame is located, but that’s neither here nor there.)

A quick check of the census shows that – yes, indeed – there is a Flora Cooper there.  In fact, she’s the only “Flora Cooper” in South Dakota.  She was married to John M. Cooper, lumberman, and they surely do have two little girls, although the census does not reveal anything at all about their “niceness.”

Here's the listing:

Little Inez M. Cooper, born in October of 1896, and her younger sister Cora A. Cooper, born a year later in October 1897, are no doubt the children referred to in Mrs. Cooper’s 1899 testimonial.

I’m a bit surprised that Flora didn’t name one or the other “Lydia”, aren’t you?

Think of it for a minute:  hundreds of women wrote to Lydia Pinkham – even long after her death – and their letters, often revealing the intimate details of their “female complaints”, ended up in the company ads in small-town newspapers all over the country.  Think about how much “local color” this sort of thing adds to a family history when you learn that your grandma may have been in some way the indirect result of your great-grandma's five bottles of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound! 

Now I’ll be on the lookout for letters from my own ancestral females in the Lydia Pinkham advertisements and you should, too.  It’s one of those “you just never know” things.

One more thought – I can’t remember whether or not my grandmother had a Lydia Pinkham’s over ice before dinner every evening, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Canada Conference, Three New Talks and A Baseball

This coming Saturday and Sunday (June 2 &3), I’ll be on the north side of the St. Lawrence River in the Province of Ontario, Canada.  Region VII of the Ontario Genealogical Society is hosting the annual OGS conference at St. Lawrence College in Kingston and I’ll be presenting three of the talks, all of which are brand-new.

On Saturday, I’ll be discussing some underutilized references and resources for doing effective newspaper research and (in the other presentation) will be discussing some of the small wonders available for family researchers in the New York State Archives and Library. 

In the “newspaper” talk, I’ll be stressing that most newspapers have not yet been digitized, and even if they had been, there’s much more to competent newspaper research than just putting a name in a search engine on the internet and hoping for the best.  In the “Archives & Library” talk, I’ll be highlighting some of the manuscript resources of interest to United Empire Loyalist families from New York and also pointing out how to locate some of the obscure digitized material available for free research on the Library/Archives website.  I’ll also be pointing out the advantages of driving south from Ontario to Albany to use one of the best genealogical research collections in the northeast.

On Sunday, I’ll be doing a new talk called “Keepers of the Family Stuff: Some “Best Practice” Tips on Maintaining the Family Home Archives for Genealogists and Family Historians.”  This time, the focus will be on what we should be doing as the (sometimes accidental and inadvertent) curators of family documents, photographs, memorabilia and other treasures.  I’ll be stressing the importance of preservation, thorough identification and documentation, all of which are steps that even the most dedicated genealogists often fail to take.

The point here is that while family genealogists are often the repositories of detailed information about family and the “family stuff”, all too often that “repository” exists only in the family genealogist’s memory.  More often than not, it’s not written down, and even when it is, it’s not in a location or form that’s accessible to the uninitiated.  In a sense, it’s much like a “hidden collection” in an archives, understood by only a few archivists. 

Unlike institutional archival collections, however, family collections kept at home are in greater danger of loss. Should anything untoward happen to that genealogist, the memory (i.e., the repository) is lost for all time.

Sometimes, artifacts in family collections are obvious as to what they are.  In other cases, however, they often need further explanation when they are actually more than they seem on the surface.

Here’s an example from my own collection of “family stuff”.  Take a look at the picture:

It looks like a beat-up old baseball, right?. 

Not much to look at, and very likely the kind of thing that  - if found in my rather extensive collection of stuff - someone (other than me) might think was just an old baseball.  Something to pass along to a child as a plaything. After all, it’s just an old baseball.

But look again … this time on the other side.  Note that there’s some kind of faint writing.  Note also that there’s a date of “Oct 9, 1916”  

 

What’s that all about?

Oh, by the way, this ball belonged to my grandfather and was kept for years in his study.  My grandfather was a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in 1916 and, as a result, I know the significance of the post-season date.

So, just in case I get taken away by aliens, I wrote it all down and added it to my “Family Stuff” spreadsheet, where it will eventually find its way in to the collection’s finding aid, if the aliens don’t get me first.

Here’s what I wrote:

Inscribed 1916 “Official American League” Baseball

From the personal collection of Meldon J. Wolfgang (1890 – 1947), this inscribed baseball is dated [handwritten in ink] “Oct 9, 1916”.  The ball shows some soil, scuffing and wear, possibly because it was used in game play or practice prior to being inscribed.

The inscription directly above the date is illegible. On the panel opposite the date, the ball is inscribed “Best Wishes [illegible] Best of Luck”.  The inscribed date (October 9) was a Monday, two days after the last game of the four-game post-season Chicago “City Series” between the White Sox and Cubs on October 4 – 7, 1916.  The White Sox won the 1916 City Series, beating the Cubs in every game (8 – 2; 3 – 1; 3 – 0; 6 – 3). 

Mel Wolfgang was a White Sox team member at the time, and although he was used mostly for batting practice and did not pitch in any of the four Series games, he would have shared in the proceeds of $19,581.88.  On October 7^th, a Chicago Tribune sports writer estimated that since the winning team got 60% of the proceeds, each White Sox player would receive $489.55.

It is highly likely that each player received his share (probably in cash) along with an inscribed baseball like this on Monday, October 9, 1916. As a point of comparison, a wage of $20.00 for a six-day work week (48 hours) was the norm for skilled factory workers at this time, so a player’s “take” from the City Series would be about as much as a factory worker would earn in half a year.

The description places the baseball in context and surrounds it with additional data that allows for further interpretation.  So, it’s much more than an old beat-up baseball, especially to a family historian.

Yeah, it takes time to do this kind of documentation, but it sure beats thinking that the baseball will likely end up being tossed around by some little boy and his dog at some point in the future, just because nobody knew what it was.

Archives: Politicians' "Ducks In A Barrel"?

Less than two weeks ago, I wrote about the draconian cuts to the National Archives and other cultural institutions in Canada.  The cuts were the result of the implementation of the Conservative Harper government’s 2012 budget.  Virtually overnight, the six-year old National Archival Development Program (NADP) was garroted and its tiny corpse tossed out on the trash heap of history.

As it died, the program took with it a lot of stuff genealogists use.

Of course, folks south of the border here in the US aren’t taking much notice of this.  After all, it’s Canada, not the good ol’ US of A, so what’s the big deal?  It’s not our problem, right?  We have bigger fish to fry, like the yahoos wanting to shut down public access to the SSDI because of their misplaced understanding of “identity theft.”  

Surely what happened in Canada can’t happen here.  Or could it?

Actually, it could. That’s why I keep saying that elections often have unintended consequences.

Let’s look at the Harper government’s response to criticism. In a Canadian Senate debate on May 10^th, the question was raised by the Hon. Dr. Claudette Tardif (Liberal, Alberta and Deputy Leader of the Opposition) about the elimination of the NADP. 

She asked, “For the past 26 years, Library and Archives Canada has been supporting over 800 local Canadian archives working to preserve and make available unique archival documents pertaining to the history of Canada and its people. Since 2006, that financial support has been distributed through the National Archival Development Program, which was shut down by the government on April 30.  … Why did the government choose to cut the long-standing funding that our national archives need to continue the important work of preserving and sharing Canada's heritage?”

The conservative government’s response from Hon. Marjory LeBreton (Leader of the Government): 

Honourable senators, I am sure the honourable senator has noticed, as I have, much to my chagrin at times, that we have moved into a new age of technology, which some of us still find difficult, but are managing.

Library and Archives Canada is moving into the digital age, and more services will be available to Canadians online. The evidence thus far is that Canadians are utilizing and accessing information to a much higher degree than they ever did in the past.

This is very good for Canadians, who will be able to access historical content regardless of where they are located.

This is too cute for words.

In other words, the official Harper government response went something like this: hey, no big deal; we’ll be putting more and more archives stuff online soon.  Just you wait and see. Technology is complicated; we don’t really get it, and most of us don’t understand it, but the geeks we’ve hired tell us it will probably solve the problem. At least, that’s the party line. Besides, we never bothered to find out what the NADP actually did, but it looked too good not to cut. Money is tight.  “Job creators” need tax cuts. Get over it.  Move on.

Of course, this government response is predicated upon the belief that the general public, like the government, has absolutely no idea what the NADP program actually did and that saying something – anything – that suggests that the government is going high-tech and digitizing stuff with abandon will make folks think that the government is “cutting edge.”   

And high-tech “cutting edge” is good, right?

Therefore, this is a “good idea.”  Sadly they’re probably right about this (the “depth of public understanding” part, not the “good idea” part…).

In fact, the working rule in politics is that if you don’t understand a question or you don’t want to talk about it, change the subject and refer to the talking points you’ve been given by your handlers.  Keep saying the same stuff over and over again, and the problem will likely go away eventually.

With programs like the NADP, it isn’t so much WHO was funded but rather, what was actually DONE with the funding.  NADP funded the preservation and cataloguing of unique and important records at many small institutions. When word of its demise became public, one of the first institutions to speak out was the Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal.  (Even if you’re Canadian, you probably never heard of it, right?) A few days after the cuts were announced, the blog on the Jewish Public Library Archives told THEIR story with regard to NADP.

It wasn’t about all about digitization.  It wasn’t all about technology.

It was about service. And professionalism.  And access to records.

Here’s what they wrote:

“The JPL-A was itself a recipient of two NADP grants, one in 2007 that supported the up-dating and professionalization of the archives, and another in 2010 that supported the appraisal, arrangement, description and initial digitization of the Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association fonds.  Without a doubt, this large amount of work would have been impossible to achieve without the support of the NADP.  The first grant resulted in the cataloguing of over 10,000 images and the second one contributed to the  Y’s 100th anniversary celebrations as well as making preserving and making accessible the social history of this key cultural institution.”

In fact, you should take the time to read the entire blog here.  

Then, you can poke around on the rest of their website to see the good things they’ve been doing.

The Jewish Public Library Archives is just one of the hundreds of archival programs that have benefitted from the NADP grants.  The total size of the NADP budget was about $1.7 million dollars.  Canadian.  In the very same budget, the conservative Harper government set aside $11 million dollars for this year’s commemoration of the War of 1812.  Whoopee!

There’s a moral here.  It’s simple. 

Here’s the takeaway:  archives and history and document preservation are small potatoes in the big world of politics.  Governments look at those “blue-haired old lady” issues as sitting ducks in a barrel. They’re an easy enough kill, and the governments doing the killing can point to “savings”, “tax relief” and any number of canards that will lead the voting general public by the nose to their (the government’s) way of thinking.

And here’s the real bottom line: the entire budget of the National Archival Development Program in Canada was $1.7 million Canadian.  It wasn’t a whole lot of money in the big scheme of things. 

In fact, that’s  almost enough to pay Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, for about three and a half weeks of his very valuable time, despite the bank’s most recent $2 billion trading losses.

But as we’ve been told on both sides of the border:  times are tough, “job creators” need tax breaks and the money has to come from somewhere.

Archives are an easy mark. Let’s not let it happen here.

Gallinippers, Gee-haw Whimmydiddles and Ziggerboos

The long-awaited fifth volume (Sl – Z) of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE for short) has finally been released by Harvard University Press.  Those of you who have been following this blog for a while might remember that I wrote about DARE and its founding editor and longtime driving force, the late Frederick Gomes Cassidy, back in March of 2011. 

Fred and I both presented lectures at a conference sponsored by the Indiana Historical Society way back in 1987.  At the time I wrote last year, I described the forthcoming fifth volume as the “final” volume, not knowing that a sixth volume, with yet more maps, regional indexes and all manner of good analytic stuff was also in the works. It is now almost "in press", as they say in the book biz.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has had its home at the University of Wisconsin since its very beginning. You can learn much, much more about the Dictionary of American Regional English on the project’s updated website here.  

Be sure to visit the “DARE in the News” page here to read about the release of the latest volume and also to read the reviews and related stories.  If you have even a passing interest in “English as she is spoke”, you’ll be glad you did.

But why should you care about DARE in the first place?  After all, you’re unlikely to find a single ancestor’s name in it.

Simply put, DARE can provide family researchers with a unique linguistic insight into regional language and culture, including unveiling patterns of immigration and migration that local historians and genealogists will find exceedingly valuable. 

Here are some examples.

Mrs. Blogger (who is NOT from these parts) sometimes finds things to be all “cattywumpus”, but I know that they’re really just “cockeyed”. Her relatives ate “smear cheese”, while mine ate “cottage cheese” (the city folk) or “pot cheese” (the farmer folk).  Just by knowing that she says these two things goes a long way to identifying her origins.  Likewise with me.

Much of what she says is the result of growing up around her parents, who grew up around their parents, and so on.  Same with me.  Each of us speaks a kind of regional English, peppered with words and expressions that are unique to a specific part of the United States.  And that peppering gives a unique spice and flavor to our spoken language.

Here in the Northeast, folks used to go “down cellar” and “down street.”  Business or shopping might take our grandparents “down city.” If it wasn’t too far away, they often went “down along” to the post office. They rarely went “down the line”, however – that was an Upper Midwest kinda thing.

And, of course, everybody knows that going on vacation “down East” means going to Maine, right?

Here, we have “dooryards” in the country and “stoops” in the city. Some city folks live in “flats”. Whether we sit on couches, sofas or davenports often depends on our age and social condition. And if you ask us whether the noon-ish, midday meal is "dinner" or "lunch", our answer will depend on that "urban/rural/age/social class" thingamabob.

What we actually eat is also important. Our words for foods tell a lot about where we live and where our ancestors lived. For example, it’s pretty hard to find “frankforts” outside of the Northeast and a few parts of the Upper Midwest. Most other folks call ‘em “hot dogs”, although a few call ‘em “frankfurters.”  Go far enough east in New England and you can get a frappe (no “e” sound on the end, please) or a “tonic” with your frankfort, or maybe even a “coffee milk.”  If you’re near Boston, you can finish it all off with a nice piece of “election cake” the right time of year.

Folks around here prefer “sodas” and “milk shakes” to wash down their food.  In the South, “coke” is the big thing.  Just be ready to be asked what flavor “coke” you want.  Orange?  Lemon-lime?  Root beer?

In many parts of the Midwest, farm folks made “fourteen-day pickles.”  In Maine, however, they’re called “fifteen-day pickles” and they take a little bit longer.  Maybe it’s the weather down East.

Eggs seem to have a regional history all their own.  “Dropped eggs” are popular in New England, while “egg bread” is a Southern thing. In Boston, “egg coffee” was for company.  In New York City, if you order an “egg cream”, you will get something entirely without eggs or cream.  Go figure.

If you enjoy “flannel cakes”, chances are very high that you have roots in Pennsylvania, Maryland and those parts of the Appalachians settled by Pennsylvanians or Marylanders. You also might be a bit older than most folks. The term began to die out in the 1940s and 1950s, as “pancakes” and “hot cakes” became more common.  “Funnel cakes”, once an isolated Pennsylvania delicacy, are now widely available at state fairs all over the country.

That’s simply a linguistic fact of life: as people move around the country, regional vocabularies and dialects that reflect early immigration and migration patterns are often driven out in favor of more homogenous “national” words and sounds. Still, the old words and expressions crop up in diaries, stories and oral histories that folks left behind.

Of course, it’s not just all about food.  There are those nasty flying bugs and creepy crawly things as well. 

In some parts of the South, you might well be pestered by “gallinippers” in the summer.  Depending on the area you’re in, the term could refer to any number of large flying insects, ranging from mosquitoes to dragon-flies (which, of course, are properly called “darning needles” in these here parts and “eyestitchers” in some parts of Wisconsin.)  Then, there are the southern "dog flies" and the northern "no see-ums."

Even the gadget-y, appliance-y stuff we use in our daily lives is subject to regionalisms.   For example, in the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast parts of the US, the generic term “frigidaire” (used to describe any brand of electric or gas refrigerator) stuck around a whole lot longer than it did in the Northeast or Mountain states, where the shortened “fridge” became the term of choice.

And when things went wrong with fridges, radios and TVs, they were described as being “on the fritz”, at least in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and West Coast states.  Apparently, the folks in the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast states didn’t have the same problems with malfunctioning appliances, since “on the fritz” is not widely used there. 

If you ever played with a “gee-haw whimmydiddle” when you were a kid, there’s a very good chance you grew up in the southern Appalachians.  If you had access to a copy of the second volume of DARE, you’d be able to learn what a “gee-haw whimmydiddle” actually is.  Here’s a hint: in parts of Tennessee, they call them “ziggerboos.” 

That, of course, can easily be found in the just-released Volume V of DARE.

Nuff said for now. 

Now . . .  go pester a librarian and look it all up.

Kentucky Derby 2012: From Pedigree Charts to a Family Connection

Later today, the Kentucky Derby will be run for the 138^th time.  

Twenty thoroughbred horses – a very large field – will thunder around the track at Churchill Downs for a mile-and-a-quarter in an attempt to win what their owners and jockeys have been dreaming of: the first and likely the most impressive jewel in racing’s Triple Crown.   Before darkness falls tonight, millions of dollars in bets will have changed hands, and it’ll all be over in about two or three minutes, start to finish.

Horse racing is all about good breeding and good training.   Good breeding comes first.

If there are people anywhere who are as passionate as genealogists about tracing pedigrees, they can be found in the world of thoroughbred horse racing and breeding.  Untested yearlings are bought and sold for staggering sums by folks who study the horses’ genealogical charts for ten generations or more.  It’s a sport where bloodlines are everything…at least in the beginning.

Today’s race has an interesting genealogical twist.  Every horse in today’s Kentucky Derby is a cousin of one sort or another to every other horse.  In fact, each horse racing today is a descendant of an English-born stallion named “Bonnie Scotland.” 

I know this piece of racing trivia because I spent part of last night and this morning poring over the contending horses’ genealogical charts, acting on the hunch that Bonnie Scotland would likely appear somewhere in each thoroughbred’s ancestry.

Bonnie Scotland died in 1880 in Davidson County, Tennessee, after serving eight highly successful years at stud, siring the ancestors of all of today’s Derby contenders, and thousands of other thoroughbreds.

And so begins our unusual family tale, which will first take us back to early Virginia and to an early ancestor of Mrs. Blogger named Rene Massoneau LaForce.

Rene Massoneau LaForce, immigrant from France, died in Goochland County, Virginia in 1728. Two of his many grandchildren were Zulima LaForce (daughter of his son Rene Junior who was Mrs. Blogger’s ancestor) and Zulima’s younger cousin Giles Harding, son of Rene Senior’s daughter Sarah.  (For those interested, an excellent and thorough study of the early LaForce family of Virginia was researched and written by Cameron Allen, FASG, and was published in several parts in The Genealogist in 2004/2005.)

Rene’s granddaughter Zulima married and settled down not far from her parents and grandparents homeplaces in the part of Virginia where Goochland and Fluvanna counties meet.  Her cousin Giles and his brother William, however, had other, more adventurous radical ideas.  Like many other Virginians of the time, Giles set out with his young wife to try his luck in Tennessee, while his brother William went south to North Carolina. 

No one can say if Giles or William Harding kept in touch with their first cousin Zulima and their other kin in old Virginia. Chances are, it didn’t take long for the families to lose touch.  Chances are, Zulima never learned much, if anything, about Giles and his children and grandchildren in Tennessee.

What follows is the story of that part of Giles’ life that Zulima never learned about.

Giles Harding and his wife settled in the part of Tennessee close to Nashville.  His son John Harding started acquiring large tracts of land early on and was quite successful in his land dealings.  Young John Harding’s holdings grew and grew, and he was soon one of the county’s largest landowners. 

He called his ever-growing plantation “Belle Meade.”

John Harding’s son William Giles Harding took over the day-to-day management of Belle Meade from his aging father in the mid-19^th century.  By then, Belle Meade had grown to more than 5,300 acres, and its master was a very wealthy man.

The 1860 census tells us approximately how wealthy. 

William Giles Harding, the great-great grandson of Rene Massoneau LaForce, owned Davidson County land worth $275,000 and had personal (other than real estate) wealth of $130,500.  You can see Harding’s 1860 census entry here:

While Belle Meade was a very large working farm, part of the family’s wealth came from horses.   

You see, William Giles Harding, like his father John before him, had a way with horses.  They bred them.  They boarded them for others, including their friend and neighbor President Andrew Jackson. They trained them. And then they raced them.  The Harding horses were thoroughbreds, with impeccable bloodlines.

In fact, the very first racing silks ever worn in the United States were the Belle Meade silks. And the Belle Meade-bred and Belle Meade-trained horses won races, with ever-increasing regularity.  Word soon spread.

After the Civil War, William Giles Harding devoted all his energies and resources to his thoroughbreds and his stud farm.  Belle Meade became known around the racing world on two continents as the premier thoroughbred breeding operation in North America. Winner after winner traced a lineage to the Belle Meade Stud.  

When the very first Kentucky Derby was run in 1875, six of the fifteen horses in the race had some ancestral connection to William Giles Harding’s Belle Meade Stud.  It is said that Harding’s collection of silver racing trophies was the largest in the world.  In the racing world, William Giles Harding was a man to contend with, as were his horses.

In 1872, Harding bought a stallion for stud that had been raced in England a few years earlier.  The stallion’s English racing career wasn’t particularly distinguished, but he had an impeccable bloodline.  That horse was named Bonnie Scotland.  While at Belle Meade, Bonnie Scotland’s performance at stud far surpassed his performance on the race course.

Bonnie Scotland appears in the genealogical charts of many of American racing’s greatest horses.  Secretariat. Northern Dancer.  Seattle Slew. A.P. Indy. They can all trace their pedigree back to Tennessee and a stallion named Bonnie Scotland who lived out his later life at Rene Massoneau LaForce’s great-great grandson’s Belle Meade Farm and Stud.

Sorry to say, Mrs. Blogger’s "stay-at-home" side of the same family did not prosper to quite the same degree. While they also had some land and they also had a few horses, their land and horses were different, in both kind and degree.  You see, none of their horses were known for winning races, even at the county fairs.  In fact, most of their horses saw service behind ploughs, where stamina was more important than speed.

So when we watch the Kentucky Derby later today, we’ll be cheering on the distant progeny of very distant cousin William Giles Harding’s magnificent stud horse Bonnie Scotland. 

All twenty of ‘em.  

Remember -  no matter what the outcome, one of Bonnie Scotland's descendants is certain to win.  You heard it here first and you can bet on it.

Like I said, good breeding comes first.

Archives? Who Needs All That Old Stuff? A Look At Our Northern Neighbours

Last night, Edvard Munch's painting called "The Scream" brought nearly $120 million at auction at Sotheby's.  An as-yet-unknown buyer had some very deep pockets.

These days, deep pockets are hard to come by.  In fact, the Canadian Council of Archives could sure use some right about now.

Even though you probably never heard of it, you should be very, very concerned that the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) will be forced to close its office doors in Ottawa tomorrow afternoon. 

Having lost its principal funding source, the not-for-profit CCA is now one of the latest casualties of the Harper government’s current war on just about everything “not-business.”  Remember, these are the same government folks that decided last year that Canada’s “long-form” census was just a waste of money, having no practical business use.   

Abstract demographics and statistics is not their best game.

This time, Library and Archives Canada (LAC)  will have to reduce its own staff by 20%.  Overall, LAC will wave good-bye to $9.6 million over the next 36 months.  Of course, they’re not alone.  The CBC, the National Film Board, the National Battlefields Commission and other cultural agencies will lose substantial chunks of funding as well.  

At first glance, museums seem to have escaped; still, they got hit hard last year.

Of course, for some, there’s a bright side, even in these austere times.  The budget contains $400 million to increase private sector investments and support creation of large-scale venture capital funds. Oh, yeah, then there’s that $110 million per year to the National Research Council to double support to companies through the Industrial Research Assistance Program.

See, there’s still money for the basics and the essentials.

So it appears that the Harper government has determined that archives and libraries are essentially “non-essentials”, especially when there are deserving private-sector businesses in need of additional subsidies. You know, the “job creators” and all that …  It appears that it has also been determined that “real” research needs to be business-oriented and profit-directed.

While going very politely, the CCA is not going very quietly.  In fact, they’ve issued a “call to action” on their way out the door.

The “call to action” below from the CCA came across my desk yesterday evening and appears in full below.  

Remember: it’s not just those retired hobbyist-genealogists who are worrying about the devastation wrought upon the Library and Archives Canada (LAC)  and other institutions by the 2012 budget of the Harper government.  Here’s the take by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, who, like genealogists, find some passing value in libraries and archives.  

As you read the CCA “Call To Action” below, think hard.  

This is a 100% Canadian thing and could never, ever happen here in the good ol’ US of A, right?  

Crippling budget cuts for cultural institutions and subsidies for businesses? No way!!!  Shuttering libraries and archives?  Unheard of!!!  Who would ever think of such a thing??!!??  We’ll always have our own beloved National Archives and Records Administration and its regional branches, right? 

What’s that?  They shut down the NARA “reading room” in Pittsfield last year to save $$$?  Oh,  well then, never mind….

As I continue to harp on about all this, I also will continue to stress the point that elections usually have unintended consequences.  Failing to understand that can cause you to look very much like that person pictured in the Edvard Munch painting referenced above once you've realised what's actually happened.

Anyway, read the CCA’s “Call” below:

CALL TO ACTION

 Who:  To members of the archival community and archives supporters

What:  The following call to action is in response to the elimination of the National Archival Development Program by Library and Archives Canada (LAC) on April 30, 2012, and the resulting impact on Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial archives councils, and the Canadian Council of Archives.

Background:  On April 30, 2012, LAC eliminated the National Archival Development Program (NADP), a 1.7 million contribution program administered by the non-for-profit Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) for LAC and distributed to Canada’s 13 archives councils to support archival activities locally.  Through the councils, NADP funding is on the ground in our 10 provinces and 3 territories, ensuring that Canada’s history is preserved in local communities.  Canada’s archival councils provide user-centred services, providing support to archives and archivists so that they may better serve all Canadians.

 A one-of-a-kind program, NADP’s goal is to assist in the preservation and accessibility of Canada’s archival heritage through the following objectives:

-          Increase access to Canada’s archival heritage through the national catalogue of archival descriptions ARCHIVESCANADA.ca

-          Increase awareness and broaden use of Canada’s archival heritage

-          Increase representation of Aboriginal peoples and under-represented ethno-cultural groups in Canada’s archival heritage

-          Increase the capacity of archival networks to undertake strategic and development activities; and;

-          Increase the capacity of archival institutions to preserve Canada’s heritage. 

 NADP funds the following activities across Canada:

-          Development of the national on-line catalogue of archival descriptions, and its provincial and territorial counterparts, so all archives, including the very small, can reach Canadians

-          Provision of archival and preservation advice to archives

-          Job exposure for new graduates from Canada’s archival and information studies programs

-          Access to archival holdings information on-line

-          Outreach and educational activities in communities to help small institutions manage their treasures

-          Cataloguing of archival materials to make them accessible to the public

-          Training opportunities for local archives run by volunteers or one-person operations

-          Site assessments to both urban and rural archives, to safeguard Canada’s documentary heritage

-          Preservation  of at-risk documents and other archival materials, including electronic records

Impact:  NADP was a joint federal/provincial/territorial initiative; NADP, and its predecessor financial assistance program, was a critical source of funding to the community – CCA has operated for 26 years; elimination of NADP means that 11 of the 13 provincial and territorial councils will collapse within 30 days to 6 months, without any financial support.  A number of councils have suspended their operations.  The CCA’s physical office in Ottawa will close its doors to the public effective May 4, as the organization moves to a virtual office and staffing has been immediately be reduced from 8 FTE to  4 FTE, and will soon be further reduced to a maximum of 2.5 FTE.  Further adjustments may be necessary  – but at this time minimum administration services will be maintained for the small program Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions, ARCHIVESCANADA.ca, Arcan-l and other secretariat services.

WHAT CAN YOU DO:  If your MP is a Cabinet Minister, call the local office and offer a briefing as well as the letter.  Write the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Honourable James Moore, and your MP asking them to stop the NADP cut. 

Use the following key messages:

·         Canada’s documentary heritage is preserved it its over 800 archival institutions

·         NADP supports archives to preserve Canada’s documentary heritage for Canadians

·         NADP leverages financial and partnership opportunities for archives across the country

·         CCA serves the Canadian public. CCA's work ensures the preservation of Canada's heritage for the benefit of all Canadians-now and for the future. Through initiatives such as www.ARCHIVESCANADA.ca , CCA is the window through which the world may access Canadian archival information

 ·         Archives support Canada’s economy. Sustaining Canada's knowledge-based economy means sustaining and facilitating access to our knowledge resources. Archives are fundamental to the success of countless public, private, and educational enterprises.

·         Archives preserve Canada’s past. Millions of historical documents, photographs, maps and audio-visual materials are held in archives across the country

·         LAC’s stakeholder forum meetings cannot and will not take the place of an archival network of dedicated professionals and volunteers across Canada that took 26 years to build.  The damage done by elimination of NADP will take years to re-build.

Tell your own story about the value of the NADP and CCA’s services; use the following examples:

• books and other outputs that have utilized holdings made accessible by NADP

• non-traditional users whose access has been facilitated by NADP

• achievements realized through expertise made available to you through archives advisors, preservation services, training opportunities.

• how has www.ARCHIVESCANADA.ca and provincial/territorial networks helped users find you

• what holdings have been preserved through NADP and in what ways has that had public acknowledgement

• what activities by other groups have been assisted through the results of NADP funded projects

• what federal initiatives have benefitted by records that were preserved or made accessible through NADP