Here’s another story to illustrate the malleability of oral history. We should not trust our family stories, but always look behind them for ways they might have been elaborated over time. This story comes from Mircea Eliade, a Romanian historian. “Sometimes, though very rarely, an investigator chances to come upon the actual transformation of an … Read more
One of the canards of genealogy is that professional genealogists always prefer the earliest recorded name. The idea is that name is the most authentic. More or less true, but not quite, not always. William Shakespeare, for example. You think you know his name? His baptismal record, the earliest in a scant collection, calls him Gulielmus … Read more
I used to think my dad’s ancestors were Métis. They’re not, but I ended up with a seemingly permanent interest. The Métis are a Canadian group, a mixture of Anglos and Indians from the area between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains. Not all mixed-race people in Canada are Métis, just the ones where … Read more
“Germanic pre-Christian ideas of ancestry wouldn’t necessarily be totally intuitive to a modern person looking back.“ This is a favorite topic of mine. I rarely pass up a chance to point out others who agree with me. Here, Simon Roper. The old, poetic genealogies handed down by our remote ancestors “were probably not completely reflective … Read more
A video about the scenic beauty of Sublette County. That’s where my grandmother was born and raised. So many familiar names. Big Piney, Marbleton, Daniel, Cora, Pinedale, Boulder. Someday I’m going to take a couple of weeks to explore. Bridger Productions, Sublette County and Pinedale Wyoming, YouTube <youtube.com>, Nov. 12, 2012, retrieved Aug. 17, 2020.
Another Wyoming video. This is drone footage of South Pass City, one my favorite places. It’s a ghost town on the old Oregon Trail. I lived here in a past life. When I was a teenage boy in Grand Junction I had some very vivid dreams about dying here as a teenage boy in the … Read more
I don’t think I knew the Eden Point was named after Eden, Wyoming. I wondered, of course. My mom knew, though. Of course she did. She grew up at Farson. Here’s a video clip from a 1940/41 archaeological dig at Farson. The Pennsylvania Museum (University of Pennsylvania) conducted the dig at a site they named … Read more
Very interesting article about pre-settler Wyoming. I wonder, briefly, whether the author might be related to the Justin Nickerson who went to school with my mother in Farson, Wyoming. I found this one because I was searching for information about American Indian place names in Wyoming. Specifically, I was wandering off on a tangent after … Read more
In the novel American Gods, Neil Gaiman quotes Richard Dorson: “One question that has always intrigued me is what happens to demonic beings when immigrants move from their homelands. Irish-Americans remember the fairies, Norwegian-Americans the nisser, Greeek-Americans the vrykólakas, but only in relation to events remembered in the Old County: When I once asked why … Read more
