White Americans love to say they’re part Cherokee. Experts say identifying as Cherokee gives people a feeling of being native to America, but that doesn’t explain how they get the idea. There are a lot of theories here, as you might expect. RF Tree Genealogy suggests many of these people have Melungeon ancestry. The Melungeons…
Author: Justin Durand
Heraldry is vanity
This title really caught my eye. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a heraldry aficionado willing to give time to anything that implies a criticism of heraldry, particularly an outright moral failing. “Medieval churches still abound in coats of arms depicted on tombs, epitaphs, windows, altarpieces and other commemorative devices. And of course it was…
Compare a Face
Which Ancestor Do You Look Like? Use Compare-a-Face at FamilySearch.org. Looks like I need to upload more family photos. “Unfortunately, there are no menu links to this Family History Activities section of the website. You can most easily find it by doing a Google search for FamilySearch activities. A link to the Activities page is also…
You’re Descended from Royalty
Everyone is descended from royalty. It’s just the way it works. At this point this fact should be so well known the universal reaction should be a yawn. But somehow the news hasn’t reached a lot of researchers. So, worth another post. Adam Rutherford wrote about this recently. He starts off, “Charlemagne, Carolingian King of…
Indo-Europeans Re-Defined
The Indo-Europeans were a patriarchal people from the steppes, said Marija Gimbutas. Not so, said Colin Renfrew. They came up from the Middle East with the spread of agriculture. This debate was famous. I don’t remember the world before. Renfrew had the mojo. The science types sided with him. Gimbutas was a whack-job. She was…