When the Dead Come Back to Life

Sylvia Kewer from Viriginia, grew up as an only child, adopted by a loving couple. At 66 she learned she actually had 5 other siblings, all of whom thought she had died as a child.

Her discovery was the result of DNA testing on Ancestry.com.This is where DNA gets so exciting - imagine finding long lost siblings. Imagine those siblings thinking a sister was dead, actually meeting her for the first time since she was a toddler.

Read the rest of this amazing story at Adopted woman whose birth family thought she had died finally meets them at 66 years old

Ephemera Postcard to Leora Aultman

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. This postcard is to Mrs. Leora Aultman in Rhode Island. It is from Cape Cod Massachusetts

Richter Family Ephemera to Phoebe Rockwell

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication.

This postcard is to Miss Phoebe J. Rockwell c/o Mrs. M. Brown, Camp Star Acres, Eaton Center, [--]

It is signed "Grombie" in Falls Church Virginia. I suspect this is the original Richter Family writing to a granddaughter.

Ephemera Schulze & Richter

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. This postcard is addressed to Miss Connie Schulze in Georgia and is signed "Mother"

Richter Ephemera from the Grant Family

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. This postcard is to Lee Richter in Falls Church Virginia. It is signed from Bob and Peggy Grant

Richter Family Ephemera New York to Virginia

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. This postcard is to Leora Richter in Falls Church Virginia. It is from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and signed "Jane"

Richter Family in Virginia Ephemera from San Juan

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication.This postcard is to "Mom" - Leora Richter in Virginia from Toby and Libbet in San Juan

Richter Family Ephemera 2 from Jersey Shore

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. This item is a postcard from the Jersey Shore sent to Mrs. C. V. Richter in Virginia

VIrginia USA Richter Family Ephemera

Annette P. has generously donated several ephemera items from the Richter Family in Virginia to Olive Tree Genealogy for publication. Here's the first one sent to Craig Richter in Virginia from Portugal in 1994

Do You Have New Netherland (NY) Ancestors?

If you have New Netherland ancestors, come join us on the New Netherland Settlers Facebook group.

On September 19, 1609, the East India Company ship Halve Maen, commanded by Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for Dutch businessmen who were seeking a passage to the Orient, reached the present-day Albany New York area. 

It was not until 1624 that the first colonists arrived in New Netherland (now New York) to settle at Fort Orange (present day Albany), the mouth of the Connecticut River, and High Island (Burlington Island) in the Delaware River. 

English colonists were in Virginia and Plymouth, and England was claiming the northeastern Atlantic Coast. They both laid claim to Long Island, where the Dutch took hold of the western end and, later, the English settled on the eastern end. 

(Source: http://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/nn/overview.shtml )

Can a Lost Colony Come Back to Life?

Baptism of Virginia Dare, 1st English child born in N. America

England’s first settlement in North America vanished completely three years after it started. In 1587, 116 English settlers led by John White landed on Roanoke Island. He left them there when he sailed back to England that same year for more supplies. Delayed by war between England and Spain, he didn’t return until 1590.The colony had disappeared and no trace of the settlers or the settlement was found.

The mystery may be solved as some archaeologists  suspect that the colonists found their way to the inland site south of the Chowan River bridge, roughly 50 miles from Roanoke. It first came to light in 2012, when researchers at the British Museum in London announced they had found a drawing of a fort that had been obscured under a patch on a map of Virginia and North Carolina drawn by White in the 1580s.

Read the full story at What happened to the Lost Colony? U.S. developer wants millions to save land that might hold clues

Credits: Image By Henry Howe - William A. Crafts (1876) Pioneers in the settlement of America: from Florida in 1510 to California in 1849, Pioneers in the settlement of America: from Florida in 1510 to California in 1849. edition, Boston: Published by Samuel Walker and Company, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10182700

Virginia Slaves' Identities Discovered and Online

Recently the Virginia Historical Society found the names and occupations of 3,200 slaves listed in private documents. These documents came from basements, attics and stuffed in drawers of old papers. 

These papers had been donated to the Virginia Historical Society long ago but had never been sorted or read. They consisted of letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s.

Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names  is their free online resource listing slaves' names. It is fully searchable. Search results include images of the original record, as seen from the image above.

Read more at Long-lost identities of slaves uncovered in old Virginia papers

S. R. Turley 1896 Ledger Book, Culpeper Virginia ONLINE

Great news. The S. R. Turley Ledger Book from Culpeper Virginia for the year 1896 is now online and available for download as a PDF file. There are 5 files total on the Ancestors At Rest website.

There are many names of customers in this one-of-a-kind ledger book. Each page has a customer name and the list of items purchased that year plus the cost. Some customers have more than one page of items. It's very interesting to see what food cost in 1896 and what an ancestor was buying!

S. T. Cornwell in the image on the left, bought eggs, candy, oil, flour, socks, shoes and more. One pair of shoes cost $1.15 that year.

In some cases, one page has several customer names on it, such as the page on the right. If your ancestor lived in Culpeper Virginia in 1896 there's a good chance you will find his or her name in this gem.

I had a quick look for some of these names and found several of them living in Prince William County, Virginia. It seems Mr. Turley was a very bad speller as many seem to be phonetic representations of the person's name.

For example there is a "Page Bumery" buying laundry and gloves on one page. However his real name  is Page Bumbery. We also see "Tasker Fisher" and "Georgiana Fisher" A search of the 1900 census shows a black man Tasker Fisher and his wife Georgia in Prince William County, Virginia. 

All pdf file downloads are freely available. Brian is scanning adding the ledger books he owns as quickly as he can, so be sure to keep checking on Ancestors At Rest for updates

National Genealogical Society Announces 2014 Family History Conference Richmond, Virginia, 7–10 May 2014 Virginia: The First Frontier

ARLINGTON, VA, 29 MAY 2013: The National Genealogical Society is pleased to announce the 2014 Family History Conference will be held 7–10 May 2014 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and Marriott Hotel located in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Conference highlights and contact information for conference hotels can be found in the Announcement Brochure, which can be downloaded at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/galleries/new-gallery/2014_Announcement_Brochure.pdf. The conference theme, Virginia: The First Frontier, will explore the records and history that draw so many back to their roots in the Old Dominion. Lecture topics will also include migration into, within, and out of the region down the Great Wagon Road, over the Appalachian Mountains, and across the south to Texas and beyond.

Genealogy conferences in Richmond, Virginia, are always well attended, so plan to make your reservations early. The five conference hotels will accept reservations beginning 1 June 2013 and the special conference rates apply three days before and after the conference. The hotels offer a variety of amenities and dining options, so choose the one that best fits your needs. The convention and visitors bureau will be providing shuttle buses between the convention center and the Crowne Plaza, Omni, and Holiday Inn Express hotels, which are a few blocks away, while the conference is in session. For more details please see the NGS conference website at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/accommodations. Consider arriving early to experience one or more historical tours in and around Richmond provided by Richmond Discoveries’ Tours on Monday afternoon 5 May 2014 and Tuesday morning and afternoon 6 May 2014. Details can be found at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/tours. Tour reservations will be accepted beginning 1 December 2013.

The four-day conference will include more than 150 lectures by nationally known experts on topics including the history, records, repositories, and ethnic and religious groups in Virginia and the neighboring states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The program will also feature broader genealogical categories including military and other federal records, the law as it relates to genealogy, methodology, analysis, and problem solving. There will also be an emphasis on the use of technology (GenTech) in genealogical research including genetics, mobile devices, and apps.

An Exhibit Hall with more than 100 vendors will be free and open to the public from Wednesday through Saturday at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, directly across from the Marriott Hotel. Exhibitors will include genealogy database and software providers, booksellers, genealogy societies, providers of genetic testing, and much more.

Sign up for the NGS Conference Blog at http://conference.ngsgenealogy.org so you do not miss any of the conference news or announcements. Conference registration opens 1 December 2013.

Founded in 1903, the NationalGenealogical Society is dedicated to genealogy education, high research standards, and the preservation of genealogical records. The Arlington, Virginia, based nonprofit is the premier national society for everyone, from the beginner to the most advanced family historian seeking excellence in publications, educational offerings, research guidance, and opportunities to interact with other genealogists.

Cannibalism in the Jamestown Settlement

Reconstructed face of
Jamestown 14 year old cannibalized

Scientists revealed recently that there is evidence of cannibalism in the Jamestown Virginia settlement. Jamestown was settled from 1607 to 1625 by English colonists. It was a harsh environment and many of the early settlers perished.

There have been rumours of the settlers devouring human flesh to survive and at least two contemporary written accounts refer to this practice.

Early Jamestown colony leader George Percy wrote of a “world of miseries” that included digging up corpses from their graves to eat when there was nothing else. “Nothing was spared to maintain life,” he wrote.

Percy and Capt. John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) documented an account of a settler who killed and ate his pregnant wife to survive.

“One amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it was known, for which he was executed, as he well deserved,” Smith wrote.

Even with these eye-witness accounts, scientists had trouble believing they were accurate. Until now. Recently the skeleton of a young girl, believed to be about 14 years old, was found in what was a trash heap. Her bones were dumped among the garbage and bones of animals that had been killed and eaten by the settlers. 

The young girl's bones showed signs of chop marks and dismemberment, and there had been crude attempts to open her skull, no doubt for brain matter.  The chief archeaologist for Jamestown had this to say “We found her in a trash dump, unceremoniously trashed and cannibalized, and now her story can be told. People will be able to empathize with the time and history and think to themselves, as I do: What would I do to stay alive?”

It's a good question. We should not judge the settlers. If you or your children were starving, what might you do? Our culture teaches we should not kill in order to eat, but if a person dies, is it so wrong to eat their flesh in order to live? I

t's a question we might not want to face but the desperate settlers of Jamestown had no choice but to make their own personal decisions. And we will never know who participated and who did not.

I for one would want my family or friends to feel free to partake of my body if I died during a time of hunger and starvation. If my death could help them survive I would say "Go for it!"

U.S.S. Monitor (Sank in 1862) Sailors’ Remains to Be Buried With Honors

Civil War sailors perished in an 1862 storm after making military history.

A funeral service for two unknown sailors who died when the Monitor went down off the coast of North Carolina was held in Arlington Virginia. The Monitor's 63-member crew included sailors born in Wales and Scotland, as well as African-Americans who were former slaves.

 The remains of two sailors, recovered when part of the iconic warship was raised in 2002, were buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. The faces of the two unknown U.S.S. Monitor sailors were re-created by forensic anthropologists.

 Continue reading and view the forensic reconstruction

Court Ledger Book 1883-1937 Wythe Co. Virginia online

AncestorsAtRest has a new Court Records ledger book online for Wytheville, Wythe County Virginia. This Court ledger book belonged to William C Pendleton.

At the top of the first page of court records we read Wm [William] C. Pendleton, Clerk Court of Appeals at Wytheville, The Commonwealth Of Virginia. 

William C. Pendleton was born in Marion, Virginia, in 1847 and served in the 8th Virginia Cavalry in Tazewell County. After the Civil War he studied law and practiced in Richmond, Virginia.

He was the author of the History of Tazewell County and Southwest Virginia 1748-1920 . This volume has long been recognized as the definitive history of Tazewell County Virginia.

This court ledger book is full of entries starting in 1883 and ending in 1937. From 1883 to 1897 the book contains a record of what appear to be court cases in the Court of Appeals at Wytheville.

The second part of the ledger is a list of several hundred people who purchased his book History of Tazewell County and Southwest Virginia 1748-1920. 

Sullivan Co. Tennessee Genealogy Database

The Sullivan County Department of Archives and Tourism announces its newest addition of the Lane Genealogical Research Database to its Special Collections.

Donald W. Lane, Ph.D., has donated his research database containing names and genealogical information on approximately 350,000 individuals and over 139,000 families primarily from the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia region.

The following family names are found in the database: Allen, Alley, Anderson, Arnold, Babb, Bailey, Baker, Baldwin, Ball, Barker, Barnes, Barnett(e), Begley, Bellamy, Berry, Bishop, Blair, Bledsoe, Blevins, Bowen, Brickey, Brown, Burke, Campbell, Carter, Castle, Childress, Christian, Clark, Cole, Collins, Compton, Combs, Cox, Crawford, Cross, Culbertson, Darnell, Davidson, Davis, Dean, Dingus, Dockery, Dougherty, Edwards, Elliott, Estep, Fields, Flanary/Flannery, Fleenor, Fletcher, Ford, Frazier, Gibson, Gillenwater, Gilliam, Graham, Gray, Hale, Hall, Hamilton, Hammond(s), Harris, Hensley, Herron, Hicks, Hill, Hillman, Hilton, Hood, Horne, Horton, Jennings, Jessee, Johnson, Jones, Ketron, Kilgore, Lane, Lawson, Light, McClellan, McConnell, McDavid, McMurray, Meade, Miller, Moody, Moore, Mullins, Nickels, Osborn(e), Owens, Pendleton, Penley, Pennington, Peters, Phillips, Pierson, Porter, Powers, Price, Quillen/Quillin, Ramey, Reed, Rhoton, Roberts, Robinette, Robinson, Rogers, Roller, Salyer, Sanders, Shelton, Smith, Stallard, Stanley, Stapleton, Starnes, Stewart, Strong, Taylor, Templeton, Thompson, Tipton, Vaughn, Walker, Webb, Wells, White, Williams, Wilson, Wolfe, Wood.

The database is available Monday to Friday at the Sullivan County Department of Archives and Tourism. Visit the website for more information or to find out what other genealogy items are held at the Archives.