William Tucker: A Life of Hard Work and Hardship in the Victorian Era

I have been completely lost without a paper to write. I don't know what to do with myself!

When I picked up my paper, the first words out of both of my teachers' mouths was "you should publish your paper." I kind of didn't pay close attention to the publishing class session, luckily
other members of my class want to publish their papers so hopefully we can get together to work on it.

I have some minor punctuation and formatting to fix, and a little editing here and there and a few things that I really want to change now that I have had a chance to step away for a month. I was working on it right up to the night before I had to turn it in. I have also found more information on William's siblings and the nieces and nephews that I want to add.

I have properly cited all of my sources, but I will need to get permission to use some of the maps and pictures. I worked so hard on this paper I need to do something with it!

Family Reunion - Going to the Doll and Bear Show

Last Saturday, I finally got a chance to get together with my Aunt Cleta and cousin Theresa. I drove up to Bothell/Mill Creek and picked them up and took them down to the Puyallup fairgrounds to go to the Doll and Bear Show. They had been corresponding with and talking to Deb Canham who designs and makes bears that Theresa collects. Deb is a very nice lady with an English accent.

 Deb talking to Cleta and Theresa

Cleta and Theresa (ok just a little blurry)

We had a great time! We laughed and talked for hours. It was so good to get a chance to see them!

I Love High Tea!

My college friend Lynnette recently had a major birthday and six days later I turned one year older. Her daughter invited her friends and family to High Tea at The Secret Garden in Sumner. The food and tea was fantastic and they also had a very nice gift shop. I would definitely go there again.

Two years ago my sister Lisa celebrated our birthdays by taking us to High Tea at a shop in the Country Village in Bothell. Our first experience with High Tea was when my sister’s ex-husband Larry remarried almost four years ago. We had all known each other in college and I had found him on Facebook, told Lynnette and she started talking to him on Facebook. He had already asked my sister to attend the wedding and Lynnette managed to get the three of us invited. The wedding was at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC and they had a High Tea for the reception. It was my first High Tea and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We really, really liked his new wife Jan – she is a sweetheart!

 It was a beautiful wedding and the bride and the Empress Hotel were gorgeous!

Christmas in April - not July

I was very fortunate to marry and have three instant children. They were about 2, 4 and 6 when I met them and 4, 6, and 8 when I married their father. I love them as much as if I had given birth to them. My family always referred to their mother Diana "as the mother of my children" and Diana was included at family gatherings and with us to attend group outings to the Mariners games. Diana was more upset than I was when I divorced their father! She thought we would make it. Fast forward from the beginning to almost 40 years later. All five children (plus 3 more younger siblings) get together every Christmas Eve but this past year - busy and hectic schedules got in the way. I was emailing son #2 Steve about something else in late February and he said that he would rather just get together on a Sunday afternoon.  Working with all those different schedules I managed to find a weekend in April when we could all get together at my house since it was centrally located. Unfortunately the three younger siblings couldn't make it. I tried to get my ex there also but he was unable to get the day off from work. He did manage to make three of his grand-children's games the day before though.

Susanna and Patrick (eldest and his wife)

Kellie (wife of Steve #2), Nicole (#5 and daughter #2), Heather (#3 and daughter #1), her husband Rob

Heather and Rob

All of the Grandchildren

Jackson, Eli, Dylan, Madison

Bri and Courtney in front

Not pictured is Marc (#4 and son #3), Steve (#2 and son #2), and Mike (husband of Nicole)

We really had fun - everyone brought something to eat and I made my special lasagne - the recipe had been created for their father. I got the ultimate compliment from Steve - "Mom, I have to say when I was a kid I really didn't appreciate your lasagne. Now I do! That was great!"

A Certificate in Genealogy from the University of Washington

They are now accepting applications, and I have decided to sign up for the 2014-2015 Certificate in Genealogy program at the University of Washington. It starts September 25, 2014 and go until June 4, 2015. There is never going to be a really good time to devote every Thursday evening to something for nine months so I might as well do it now before I retire since I work about a half hour away from the University of Washington and I won't be able to afford to stay in this area once I retire.

http://www.pce.uw.edu/certificates/genealogy-family-history.html

From the website:

Learn to do professional-level genealogical research into your family history. Work with an array of resources – including cemetery, military and naturalization records – to help you uncover fascinating stories about your ancestors. Conduct research that illuminates the political, economic and social context of your family’s past. Interpret historical documents and photographs. Develop interviewing techniques. Gain problem-solving strategies to overcome investigative roadblocks. Produce a substantial narrative of your family’s unique story.

• Development and completion of a personal research project
• One-on-one consultation with instructors and written feedback on projects
• Access to databases and interlibrary loan at UW libraries

The application process required a credit card (of course!) a 250 word letter of application your experience doing genealogical research and the areas of family history you intend to explore in your final project and a resume describing education and applicable experience. I was very disappointed when it did not ask for my student ID# - which I have remembered for 43 years - 7135351.

The total cost of the program for nine months and 9 Continuing Education Credits is $2,337 which is a $50 application fee, tuition of $719 per quarter and a $44 per quarter registration fee. This is a bit more than my first year at $150 for 15 credits per quarter and my second through fourth years at $188 per quarter.

My son thinks it is a waste of money - that I could just learn on my own and my daughter laughed when I told her I was going to sign up. Not sure of what to think of that. I am certainly hoping that I am going to enjoy it. I do know that back in the day - a very nice, retired gentleman was taking a class every quarter and really enjoyed it. I would meet with him to help him with the math in Astronomy class.

52 Ancestors - #11 Lionell Burris Mitchell - The Inventor of the Stooley

(Thanks to my brother Terry for the Stooley story which took place between 1959 and 1961 – I was only 6 or 7 at the time.)

“When we lived in John Day, Oregon, Dad’s pride and joy was his 1957 Mercury Montclair with the Turnpike Cruiser engine. Unfortunately, it was also our eldest brother Marc’s pride and joy when it came to setting speed records (he was in high school at that time and we were surrounded by curvy mountain roads and long flat desert roads.) One morning after Marc had been out with the Merc the night before, Dad came into the house and demanded to know why Marc had been driving at a certain (excessive) speed. In spite of Marc’s denials, Dad insisted that he knew exactly how fast the car had been driven.  This went on for some time, and Marc asked Dad how he knew how fast he had been driving. Dad’s answer was that he had installed a ‘Stooley’ on the car.  He explained to Marc that a Stooley (short for stool pigeon) was a device trucking companies used to record all kinds of data on how their trucks were driven.  I don’t know if there was such a thing nearly 50 years ago (all cars basically have them now), but Marc was convinced.  Off he went to the local service station. He put the Merc up on the hoist. He looked everywhere he could under that car, under the hood, anywhere he could think to look. No luck. He could not find the fabled Stooley. Finally, in desperation Marc asked Dad to show him where this magical device was.  Dad explained that it was all very simple: He took the car out on the road, drove it at various speeds, and after each run at a particular speed, he would look at how long the bug splatters on the windshield were.  Armed with this information, Dad could always tell exactly how fast Marc had been driving.  I don’t recall whether Marc started washing the car more often or not.

Dad was really quite an inventor (as was his father), and the Stooley is a prime example of how his mind could work. The Stooley was a marvel of invention: no moving parts, very reliable and accurate, and completely undetectable.”

Even more remarkable was that everything that Dad knew was self-taught. At this time he was an electronics technician for the US Forest Service stationed at the Malheur National Forest. In 1961 – he was transferred to and put in charge of the Mt Hood National Forest communications in Portland, Oregon – and of all fire communications for Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. He continued to invent a number of things and managed to save the US Forest Service hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, the move to Portland was not good one for the 1957 Mercury Montclair. Our brother Marc stayed in John Day for a couple of years and then joined us in Portland to attend college. I-84 proved to be flat, fast, and too tempting for Marc going up the Columbia River Gorge one night and he managed to put a rod through the engine and then continued to drive it until it was dead. This was the summer of 1964 and we were leaving the next day for a family vacation to the coast. I was totally humiliated and wanted to duck my head as we drove into the resort in a ghastly ancient 1940 something loaner car with the trunk tied down with rope. The mechanic was not able revive the Merc.

DNA Results for Three Siblings

All I can say is that I wish I knew what our parents results would be!

Here is a post by The Legal Genealogist describing the results for four of her grandparents twelve children who were full blood siblings. Her first chart shows the amount of DNA each sibling has in common with the other and then later in the article she talks about how many DNA matches each sibling had with possible cousins and how many they had in common. With a total of 1,681 matches for all four by the end of February, there were only 159 that all four had in common.

Here is a great example from the Ancestry Blog on DNA inheritance that uses children's letter blocks.

 

When you see the results below REMEMBER my previous post that the most redheads are found in Scotland! (Well, 13% for Scotland with 10% in Ireland.)

What is it with the switched Europe West and Great Britain for Terry and then Lisa and me?

I haven't had time to check the matches we have in common on Ancestry.com but I did recognize about a dozen that we have in common with a quick look.

Terry	Maevè	Lisa
Europe West 62%	Europe West 6%	Europe West 8%
Great Britain 18%	Great Britain 82%	Great Britain 54%
Iberian Peninsula 8%	Iberian Peninsula 8%	Iberian Peninsula 9%
Ireland 6%	Ireland 1%	Ireland 11%
Scandinavia 5%	Scandinavia < 1%	Scandinavia 15%
Italy/Greece < 1%	Italy/Greece 1%	Italy/Greece 2%
	Europe East 1%	Europe East <1%

Area Definitions: 

Europe West
Primarily located in: Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
Also found in: England, Denmark, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic

Europe East 
Primarily located in: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia Also found in: Germany, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Estonia, Bulgaria

Great Britain
Primarily located in: England, Scotland, Wales
Also located in: Ireland, France, Germany

Iberian Peninsula
Primarily found in: Spain, Portugal
May also be found in: France, Morocco, Algeria, Italy

Scandinavia
Primarily located in: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Also found in: Great Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, the Baltic States, Finland

Italy, Greece
Primarily located in: Italy, Greece
Also found in: France, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Bosnia, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia, Algeria, Tunisia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo

Ireland
Primarily located in: Ireland, Wales, Scotland
Also found in: France, England

It is Hard Getter Older

Well, actually it is not difficult to do - frighteningly easy in fact - it just happens to you. Dealing with the results can be difficult. The knee and hand joints that disintegrate which I finally dealt with in the past year and a half (best decisions I ever made - waited far to long.) The new pair of glasses that I just picked up (the wear all the time kind.) The latest issue - my hair! It grows at least 1/4 inch  per week so I have to touch up my white roots at least every three weeks. The white is getting whiter and the red roots are getter fewer and farther between and some areas on the sides and in my bangs are not taking the color any more. Add to that the ache in my left elbow where I broke the upper bone in five pieces and pulverized one piece (3 large plates and 21 screws.) It is getting more and more difficult to dye my hair myself and I can't afford to have someone do it every month. I have a lot of use of that arm thanks to my brilliant surgeon Dr. Alexis Falicov, but my hair is so super thick that it takes me about 45 minutes just to pin my hair up and get it ready to dye - and although it just takes one package of dye if I just use the touch up stuff - it takes two packages.

My 35 year old son has also said that it is getting weird for him to stand beside me when his hair is getting so gray (and boy, is it!) As the years go by, time is getting more and more precious and I am really starting to resent the time I have to spend dying my hair. My two oldest female cousins Rita and Chris have gorgeous, perfect white hair. The next cousin Cheryl has beautiful white and gray with a hint of the black it once was.  If my hair would look like the three of theirs, I wouldn't mind as much. Now with that being said, my mind is also screaming at me, "you've always been a red head!"

Some of my earliest memories are of total strangers coming up to my mother in public and saying as they looked at me and my 18 months younger sister, "Just look at their red hair! Are they twins? Where did they get that red hair?" And my mother replying, "From the red-headed milkman." I didn't understand that response until much, much later. I mean, does anyone even ask that stupid question any more? As you can tell, a lot of people did ask it back in the 1950's and 1960's and my mom got really, really tired of it.

I going to do it. I think. Well, I did make an appointment with my hairdresser  - 4:15 Wednesday, February 12th. She said that I might have to go to a brown shade before going lighter (or whiter) so it may take awhile to get there. My sister said something about it may have been easier for her when she starting going gray 23 years ago to just let it happen. She rather firmly said that she is certainly not going to go white in her 60th year. If it takes me awhile then technically, I won't either.

Here is an interesting blog article about Red hair genes directly inherited from the world’s first Redheads 70,000 years ago.

The following is from the blog (who obtained the information from scotlandsdna.com):

"Between 2% and 6% of northwestern Europeans have red hair, compared with an average of around 0.6% of the world’s population as a whole.  In the British Isles the numbers are much higher.  In Scotland around 13% of the population have red hair, but over 30% are unknowing carriers of the redhead gene.  In Ireland about 10% have red hair, but as many as 46% are carriers.  Scottish and Irish emigration have made the USA the home of the largest population of redheads in the world at between 6 million and 18 million, with many millions more carrying the gene variants."

I always thought that Ireland had the most redheads - I guess, I was wrong.

The information below is from scotlandsdna.com where you can buy a test to see if you carry the gene for red hair. Unfortunately, the test is only available as an add on to their DNA tests which are out of my price range. They do an extensive historical analysis to go with the test results and it does come all the way from Scotland - which will add to the price.

The Punnett Square to the left shows the recessive inheritance of red-head genes. In this graphic, both parents carry one copy of a red-head variant, represented by the lowercase, red r. There is a 25% chance that their offspring will have red hair (rr) and a 50% chance that their offspring will also carry a red-head variant (Rr). There is also a 25% chance that their offspring will not carry a red-head variant (RR). For a child to have red hair, both parents must be carriers of a red-head variant - if a red-head has children with a non-carrier, then their offspring will only carry the redhead variants, not be red haired. Everyone who carries one of the variants is a direct descendant of the first person ever to have it.

Red-heads must carry two red-head variants, represented by rr. But there are both strong (represented by a dark red r) and weak (represented by a light red r, with a w) red-head variants. A strong variant increases the chance of having red hair about 50-fold. In contrast a weak variant only increases the risk of red hair by 5-fold and often results in light or strawberry blond hair.

Here is a link to various combinations possible.



Image credits: imgur.com


Frequency of Red Hair in the US

www.reddit.com

One Year Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of my blog. I managed to do 82 posts - and that was with skipping October entirely. I didn't get as much sewing and quilting done as I had hoped but I have gotten a lot of things organized! I now know what I have as far as sewing, quilting, scrapbooking, and genealogy materials - and I know what I have to do. Unfortunately, my biggest challenge to getting things done is having to work 40 plus hours per week.

Friday was my Aunt Dorothy Irene's 79th birthday and Saturday would have my father Lionell's 94th had he lived (he died in 1982 at age 62.)  His mother Ruby had been in labor for a week and the doctor could not hear the baby's heartbeat any longer so he decided since it no longer mattered and because Ruby needed some sleep that he knocked her out morphine. Ruby later complained that during her long week of labor the doctor partied and drank with men folk while they waited. When Ruby came to, Dorothy was kicking and Ruby was back in labor. When Dorothy was born on January 10, 1935, she had a long, narrow head from being in the birth canal for so long. After three boys the girl was unexpected, Ruby was exhausted and out of it, so the men were trying to figure out what to name the baby. Lionell asked if he could name her since his 15th birthday was the next day. He named her Dorothy after a girl he was either dating or fond of. The Irene was after her father's sister. Lionell and Dorothy were very close in spite of the difference in their ages. On September 14, 2013, she and her husband Dick celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary - with five children and many grand and great grandchildren.