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The Grave Humor of Genealogy

Genealogists have long used cemeteries as a source for finding ancestors in their family trees. Burial grounds are a repository of the history of people, they record lives lived and commemorate deaths.

They are frequently filled with beautiful statuary, touching memorials and every so often …humorous remembrances.

 

 

Genealogy Fun

When doing a graveyard search, humor is not likely the first thing most genealogists and family historians have on their minds; the graveyard is a solemn place. However, if you stick with this hobby long enough you may run across some extremely entertaining memorials such as the following.

• Written on the gravestone for talk show host Merve Griffin:

“I will not be right back after these messages.”

• On the memorial of Mel Blank, famous for the voices of the Cartoon series Looney Tunes.

“That’s All Folks”

• Written on a tombstone in Thurmont MD:

“Here lies an Atheist. All dressed up and no place to go.”

• On the memorial of a certain Mr. Cook:

“Ma loves Pa- Pa loves Women. Ma caught Pa with 2 in swimming. Here lies Pa.”

• On a 1905 Gravestone:

“I told you I was Sick”

• On the grave marker for Robert Clay Allison (1840-1887):

“He never killed a man who did not need killing.”

• On the Grave of Anna Wallace:

“The children of Israel wanted bread, And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife, And the Devil sent him Anna.”

 

• On a stone from Burlington Vt.:

“She lived with her husband fifty years, And died in the confident hope of a better life.”

Another great tool for your cemetery searches is a Cemetery Visit tracking form. Get yours free with a Genealogy Beginner 30 Day Free Trial.

 

Black Sheep Ancestors

Pirates, Outlaws and Ne’er do wells; it would be uncommon to research any family tree without finding at least one skeleton in the closet.

Ancestors with a criminal record can range from unfortunate debtors who paid a price for being poor to thieves and pickpockets or even those executed for murder. Although none of us wants to find we descended from a cold-blooded killer, having a rogue in the family tree does add a little excitement.

 

Throughout history there have been criminals and alongside them court systems and institutions for dealing with them. With prisons and courts come the records they generate and those records are a wonderful resource for genealogists and family historians looking for a missing ancestor.

Information found in court and prison records can include the accused or inmate’s next of kin, name and age. Whether or not they could read, their trade, the reason they were in trouble and the sentence they received for their crime.

Finding Criminals Past

Blacksheep Ancestors is a free genealogy site filled with prison lists and court records that encompass Great Britain, Canada and the US.

One fantastic and free searchable list is The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913, which has a fully searchable database that contains 197,745 criminal trials from London’s central criminal court.

The site also has links to the biographies of petty and master criminals alike where you can read the stories about:

• Catherine Hayes, who in 1725 conspired with her lovers to kill her husband and was tried, convicted and executed for her crime.

• The Fourth Earl Shirley, Laurence Ferrers, who was the last peer of the realm convicted as a common criminal and hanged

• Eliza Fenning, a young cook who was found guilty of the attempted murder of her employers by poisoning their food. Up until the moment Eliza was put to death, she claimed her innocence.

Whether you have an ancestor who was a minor miscreant or someone with an infamous criminal past, Blacksheep Ancestors is a fascinating genealogy website dedicated to helping you trace the romantic rogues and villainous scoundrels in your ancestral line. Share your Black sheep story on Genealogy in General.

Find Your Ancestors in Almanacs

Almanacs can be a great resource for genealogists and family historians. Along with weather predictions, advice for farmers and statistical information almanacs can contain tit bits of information about your ancestors that are not found in vital events documents or census. Additionally almanacs can give wonderful ephemeral information to round out your family history story and fill in your family template. Gutenberg printed the very first almanac in 1457 in Mentz, Germany and their use spread to almost every country by the 1600s. By the 1800s, it was possible to find yearly almanacs for nearly every county in Great Britain.

The best way to demonstrate what a great resource an almanac can be is by looking in one for information. For this purpose “Peace’s Orkney Almanac and County Directory, 1886” gives us a great example of genealogical and family history information that.

The Family History Element

Within the front and back pages of the almanac, there is a wide range of advertisements that present a window into your ancestor’s daily lives.

From these advertising pages, we get a glimpse at the fashions of the times, modes of travel, an idea of how they may have approached emigrating to a new land and even some insight into daily chores.

Almanacs and Genealogy

An almanac contains a wealth of information in the trades sections. From listings of “Inspectors of the Poor” to a list of “Registrars of Births, Marriages and Deaths” that can be very helpful in pinpointing those questionable dates. Looking at this entry, we can see the timelines given to register any vital events.

Almanacs can also be used to help you find resources for records. Peaces Orkney and Shetland Almanac names all of the churches, clergy, schools and teachers in the county. It also gives the names of newspapers that were published at the time along with groups, society’s guilds and clubs, which are all fantastic sources of information for family tree research.

Additionally, it is common for almanacs to break up the directory listings by parish where you may find information that is more specific to your ancestor. Flipping to the directory for Sanday we find out that Peter Sinclair is listed as a member of the Parochial Board as well as a member of the School Board, which suggests he was an active member of his community. Not information found in a census, in fact almanacs are probably the number one place to look if you are searching for clues about your ancestors between census years.

In this particular issue, we get lucky, as there is register of voters that not only lists the men but also gives a list of female municipal electors that predates women being given the right to vote in Great Britain. Looking at an almanac for genealogy can not only help locate ancestors and resources, it can also teach a few things that we may not learn from history books; such as areas where reform was more progressive. The pictures and stories of an almanac are one of those often forgotten information sources that can paint a surprisingly vivid picture of your family tree.

Image Credits: Ramona Hartley, Peaces Orkney Almanac and County Directory
Source: Internet Archives, National Library of Scotland

Rights: National Library of Scotland holds full rights in this digital resource and agrees to license the resource under the Creative Commons License: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland.
Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland
Licenseurl: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/