Pete Catches

Pete Catches

by Justin Durand

Pete Catches was my dad’s “blood brother” (hunka).

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  • 10 Sacred Native American Places (Feb 27, 2017), at Youtube.com, visited Aug. 8, 2019. From the Grand Canyon, to the little known eerie Black Hills, these are 10 Sacred Native American Places !
  • Art In Motion presents Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches: “Walks With Fire” (Sep 28, 2017), at Youtube.com, visited Aug. 8, 2019. I met the late Medicine Man, Pete Catches in Moscow, as part of the American contingent at the 7th Generation Conference, and then interviewed him in Philadelphia, although he lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Of all the “Holy people” I’ve ever met, Pete was the only one I ever believed could speak with the Almighty.
  • Pete Catches (Aug 5, 2009), at Youtube.com, visited Aug. 8, 2019. Medicine man Pete Catches sits down with Art In Motion. This 36 second spot is only a glimpse into the culture and life of Pete Catches.
  • Peter Catches sharing vision of Oceti Wakan (Aug 24, 2010), at Youtube.com, visited Aug. 8, 2019. Peter Catches (Jr.) sharing his vision of Oceti Wakan, a healing/educational center on the Pine Ridge Reservation for the Lakota people.
  • Sacred Buffalo People (Feb 26, 2009), at Youtube.com, visited Aug. 8, 2019. Pete Catches, Sr. tells a traditional story: how the bison and the Lakota came to be related.
Findagrave needs some empathy

Findagrave needs some empathy

by Justin Durand

A few days ago I wrote about how Findagrave had taken credit away from me, even though I added some close family graves first. Instead, they reversed their own algorithm in order to give credit to one of those people who compete with each other to see who can add the most memorials. A stranger.

Now I see an article by Judy Russell (“the Legal Genealogist”) suggesting oh so gently that Findagrave might want to reconsider the way they allow (I would say “encourage”) strangers to add memorials even while the family is in deepest mourning.

This struck a cord with me because this is what happened to me when my sister died. We weren’t even back from the funeral before a stranger had created her memorial on Findagrave, and added her obit, and picture.

It doesn’t take much for me to see that my sensitivity to having credit for my step-mother’s and step-brother’s memorials taken away from me is just that much worse because some other stranger grabbed the credit for my sister’s memorial.

Truly, the folks at Findagrave aren’t thinking about the human connection. They are working to reward the volunteers who churn out the volume and create the money. Which is really what matters.

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  • Judy G. Russell, A modest proposal (Aug 5, 2019), The Legal Genealogist, visited Aug. 5, 2019.
Rootsweb is back

Rootsweb is back

by Justin Durand

Rootsweb is back up after 18 months in the toilet. I’m not cheering. The whole thing was mismanaged start to finish. It took them 18 months. Let that sink in.

Rootsweb is one of the old guard of genealogy websites that host user-contributed data. When Ancestry bought Rootsweb in 2000 they promised to take good care of the data, and not turn it into a pay site. (Yeah? I was skeptical too.)

Ancestry took the site down in December 2017 after discovering it had been hacked.

And they were oh so sad. They got everyone’s data back up and running but they couldn’t allow anyone to log in or remove their data. Safety concerns, you know. And if that meant they were locking thousands of users out of their own data, well surely you don’t think it’s intentional do you? All for your own good.

Now they’re back. I’m not celebrating. In fact, now that I have access to my data again the first thing I’m going to do is get it off this unreliable site.

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Edited to fix broken link.

Cleve

Cleve

by Justin Durand

Maybe I have too much time on my hands. One of the projects I was working on this week involved finding the ancestry of my dad’s best friend, Cleve Henry.

One of my middle names — Cleve — is after this guy. He and my dad were cowboys together in the glory days of their youth. Then they married sisters. Then they divorced the sisters. By the time I was born Cleve counted still as my uncle but purists would snarl.

The way I heard the story, Uncle Cleve was named after a plantation his family had before the Civil War. And somehow he was a distant, very distant, cousin. So it was the name coming back to our branch of the family.

When I was doing genealogy in my teens this was one of the stories I wanted to know about.

It was easy to find the plantation. It’s famous. Cleve Plantation in Virginia belonged to Charles Carter, of Cleve (1707-1764). A very famous family.

But as it turned out, it would be very generous to say my family is related to those Carters. Charles Bowen Howry (1844-1928), an ancestral 2nd cousin, was married to a Carter descendant, but that’s as close as it gets.

Then I found out that there is a Henry family that uses the given name Cleve. They’re descended from Oliver Cleveland Henry (1805-1863). I couldn’t find Uncle Cleve’s father among them but his full name was Oliver Cleve Henry, so I was pretty sure he would turn out to be a descendant. So, that’s it, I figured. There’s no connection on that other side either.

This weekend I did another push to find Uncle Cleve’s missing father. As I often do. But this time I found him. Here in Denver.

And, now I know the end of that story. Uncle Cleve was not descended from the Carters of Cleve, probably wasn’t named after Cleve Plantation, and is not descended from Oliver Cleveland Henry.

He’s just some guy whose parents like the name Cleve. And that pleases me greatly.

Extinct Romans

Extinct Romans

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This is a piece from Masaman about different ethnic groups in the old Roman Empire. Toward the end there is a brief bit about the Etruscans and Rhaetians in the Alps.

Of interest to the Hauri DNA project because our G-L42 haplogroup seems to be concentrated in this region and probably originated there.

  • Masaman, Extinct Romans (July 19, 2019), at YouTube.com, beginning at 10:18, visited July 27, 2019.