A FLUTAPHONE FANFARE, PLEASE!

The flutaphones are to celebrate the return of Janice Brown to her
Cow Hampshire blog. She's been absent far too long from the
genealogy blogging community and we've missed her wit and humor.
Having her come back now is, as footnoteMaven put it, a geneablog
Christmas Miracle.

Welcome back, Cousin Janice!
(Now if we can only get Chris Dunham to post new entries for The
Genealogue.....)

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN - WHICH GENEALOGIST WOULD I LIKE TO MEET?

Even though Randy Seaver is out at the SCGS genealogy jamboree, he still
managed to issue us a Saturday Night GenealogyFun challenge:

"1) Identify one genealogist that you would like to meet. The person could
be living or deceased.

2) Why do you want to meet with this person?

3) What would you talk about? What questions would you ask this person?

4) Write about your choice on your blog or in Comments to this post."

Now this is a tough one, but not because I couldn't think of anyone. On the
contrary, it's because there's just so many folks out there I'd like to meet.
But I finally managed to settle on just one.

1) I'd like to meet Chris Dunham.

2) As to why, I've always enjoyed his The Genealogue blog, but besides that,
we are distant cousins through my descent from my great great grandmother
Florilla Dunham.

2)Along with talking about that Dunham line, I'd hope we'd talk about Maine
genealogy. Chris has several other blogs dealing with Maine records and sources
such as Maine Genealogy , and Oxford County Genealogy Notebook as well as
contributing to Strange Maine so we might talk about those, and about genealogy
and geneablogging in general.

4) And now I've blogged about it.

BLOGGING BRUNCH12

Well, I guess Autumn is finally here. It certainly is chilly enough
around here to bundle up a bit and huddle around the computer
for warmth.



Okay, it’s not quite that bad. But I do have my hooded sweatshirt
on and a hot cup of coffee at hand as I browse the genealogy blogs
and news.



First off I read the new CoG that Blaine Bettinger hosted over
on his Genetic Genealogist. Of course it’s been out a few days and
I’d already gone through it once but it was late at night at the end
of a long day of work so I went back and reread all the posts again.
The theme was genealogical mysteries and brick walls and how
DNA testing might help solve them and Blaine made comments
on how each blogger might go about doing it. A great Carnival of
Genealogy all around!




And as usual, I found more genealogy blogs to add to my
bookmarks. I’ve added Lisa’s A Light That Shines Again,
100 Years in America and Small-Leaved Shamrock ,
Colleen’s The Oracle of OMcHodoy, Lee Anders’ I Seek Dead
People Blog, and other folks who made their first appearance in
this edition.


I didn’t contribute this time around. I’d already posted about the
Elusive John C. before and really couldn’t come up with another
problem that DNA testing would break down for me. The next
edition is going to be a Carousel edition on any topic so I’ll have
something ready for that one. The submissions deadline is
November 15th, so if you’ve never contributed to it before, now’s
your chance!




Then I made my usual rounds of my favorite blogs. Randy Seaver
at Genea-Musings has a couple of posts of what I would call
Genealogy Rock…adaptations of old rock songs with lyrics about
genealogy. Hmmm. I’m going to have to see if I can come up with
one myself. And there’s also an interesting post about the Mother
of All GenealogyDatabases. Randy gives a few examples of how it
does or doesn’t work based on some recent experiences.


I'd seen a news report about it last night on tv but information
at Chris Dunham’s The Genealogue made me do some googling
about the grave robbery at Bible Hill Cemetery in Hillsborough,
N.H.. Some of my family such as the Ellingwoods lived there so
I looked up Sarah Symonds and found her name on a Kimball
Family website. I learned there that her mother was Lucy
Kimball and that she was descended from Henry Kimball, son
of Richard Kimball and Ursula Scott. I’m also a descendent
through Thomas Kimball, another of Richard’s sons.



Irregardless of the connection, I’d still be disgusted by whoever
desecrated Sarah Symond’s grave. I cannot understand what
reason anyone would have to do such a thing.


Finally, a note of Tropical Storm Noel. I mentioned that my
sister likes to go out in storms. (I tend to huddle down in my
hobbit hole and wait them out.) Well, technology has brought a
change of habit for her. The last time she went out in something
this big the waves were flooding Ocean St. in Marshfield and she
decided that salt water was not a good thing for her car.



This time around, she found a website showing the surf from
the storm and watched the waves by webcam!

RALPH & THE RELUCTANT BRIDE

Chris Dunham’s post over on The Genealogue about the
upcoming book “The Naked Quaker” by Diane Rapaport
reminded me of a story about a divorce that might or might
not be among those in the book:


In June 1682, a twenty five year old man named Ralph found
himself being divorced by his young wife Katharine, who stated
words to the effect that she’d rather be dead than live with him.
She sued on grounds of her husband’s insufficiency to consummate
their marriage.


Ralph for his part did what any man in 17th century Salem Ma.
might do when faced with such an embarrassing situation: he
claimed that it had to be witchcraft. Not exactly original, and
highly ineffective in the light of the character witnesses Katherine
called to testify in her behalf.



It must have been the talk of the town. Both husband and wife
were given physical examinations, Katherine by a panel of
“goodwives” and Ralph by two men(one of them a chirurgeon)
appointed by the Court. Based on their reports the Court granted
Katherine her divorce and ordered she be allowed to take
whatever clothes and property that she had brought with her into
marriage.


All of this might have been lost in the mists of time except that
there was a court record of the proceedings and several centuries
later the case was cited in articles and a book about women in
Puritan society. I’ve not been able to read any of them in their
entirety but what I have read makes no mention of what
happened after. So in the interest of fairness to Ralph, here’s the
rest of it:

Ralph remained single for nearly 9 years but in August of 1691 he
wed Martha Rowlandson. The marriage lasted nearly 20 years
before her death.


They had 7 children


We don’t know what happened to Katherine after her divorce
from Ralph, There is no record of her maiden name. Hopefully
she too remarried and with a man she loved and who gave her
children of her own.


We’ll never know the exact reason why the marriage of my
ancestor Ralph Ellingwood and his first wife Katherine ended so
scandalously. Possibly it was an arranged match between a man
and a deeply unhappy younger bride. Possibly Ralph was not the
perfect husband and possessed bad manners and lousy personal
hygiene. Perhaps there just wasn't any...spark.

Perhaps he could have used a talk with Dr. Phil, but alas, there
was no Dr. Phil on 17th century Salem.


But obviously Ralph felt he had a point to prove to all of Salem,
and judging by the 7 children he fathered, I guess he did it.


He wasn’t “insufficient”!