For as long as I could remember, I firmly believed my great-great-grandfather’s birthday was June 24th, 1930. That’s what it said in a county history, three obituaries, and his death certificate. If that’s not solid evidence, I don’t know what is.

Then along came Daniel’s brother Isaac, who claimed by the time of his death that he was born June 24th, 1830 as well. It’s engraved on his tombstone, noted in the US census of 1900. But here’s the odd part… no one, in either brother’s family (and there is substantial documentation), ever mentioned the two men being twins. It should’ve come up, doncha think?

What’s more, there is a substantial gap in the birth records between oldest brother Edmund, born in 1825, and Daniel, born (for the sake of argument) in 1830. There’s no mention of miscarriage or infant mortality in that period and let’s just say that birth control was less than reliable. So, was it possible that either Isaac or Daniel was born earlier than 1830?

Harry S. Blaine, an early Leonard researcher who was in contact with Edmund’s daughter and fellow researcher Jennie Leonard Hutchinson, once pinpointed Isaac’s birthday as June 23rd, 1827, but he never cited his sources. The date always seemed to make the most sense to me, but the evidence (including several census reports) all pointed to 1830. Until now.

New Bible records, appearing to be those of William and Mary (Van Ort) Leonard, parents of Daniel and Isaac, have surfaced. I say they appear to be, because William and his wife are listed on the Parents page, Edmund, Isaac, Daniel, et al, are listed on the Births pages. These records show Isaac born June 23rd, 1827 and Daniel born April 23rd, 1830.

I can understand these pioneers losing track of their own birthdays, particularly if they both fell on the 23rd day of different months. But to confuse the year by three years? Still sounds a little fishy to me. I, for one, am going to go with what appears to be a mother’s remembrance and take Daniel and Isaac out of the twins category.

Cheers!
Rick

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Some damned hacker got into the site today and started sending off phishing messages pretending to be some British bank. I doubt that any of you are affected as this kind of scam is usually targeted outside of the domain it’s using to send the phony emails.

Your email addresses remained protected, but I DID have to set more stringent permissions on the entire site. It looks fine on my end, but please let me know if you run any error messages or can’t reach parts of the site for any reason.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Damned hackers.

I’m forever getting distracted as I go about my genealogical business, often duplicating, complicating, or worse of all, neglecting genealogical sources. And that “pending” folder in my file cabinet?… is about to become a drawer unto itself. I had a research plan at one time and I know I should focus on one family group at a time, but sometimes a shiny object whizzes by and completely derails my best intentions.

I don’t make New Years resolutions, but if I did, I would vow to get my genealogical poop in a group. All the research in the world goes for naught if it never gets condensed into something usable, like a compiled history of one family group. I’ve written not one, but two summaries of the life and times of my great-great-grandfather and, as always, there’s new information to be added. So that’s where I’ll be in the early part of this year… heads down on the third edition.

That, and reconciling the data in my family history software with the online database on this site. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as exporting and importing a GED file from one source to the other. Learned that one the hard way back in October.

And, taking a clue from a few ancestors past, I’ve started recording my own life and times. You never know, after all, when the grim reaper might come a-calling. Of the hundreds and hundreds of ancestors I’ve researched, only four bothered to sit down and tell me (us) what they actually did and thought in their own lifetimes. I consider those, as crude as they may have been, the real treasures of family history.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still stories to be found, research to be done, data to be recorded… but for me, I think 2010 is going to be The Year of Organization. Yeah, like a year is gonna do the trick.

How ’bout you?

I won’t bore you with the details, but I decided to upgrade the Leonard Database this week. The good news is… we’ve gone from 1726 family members… to 2816. There were 669 families yesterday. Today there are 1017. There were 495 different surnames. Now there are 780.

Does this make me a name collector? (Don’t MAKE me stop this car!) Every one of those people has a story and I have personally touched their, uh, data. No bulk downloads from Ancestry or other sources for me. The bad news is, by updating the database, I completely broke all the links to family photographs. Don’t get me wrong, the photos are still there, but you’ll have to look a little harder to find them. At least until I get some fixin’ done.

Speaking of databases, Darrin Lygothe’s The Next Generation software, which powers the Leonard Family database, is also behind an interesting new project from FamilySearch. FamilySearch Community Trees are lineage-linked genealogies drawn from specific locations and time periods around the world. The idea is to assemble enough information to get a pretty good idea how people actually lived in those ancestral villages. And that’s about as far from name collecting as you can get.

A quick search on the Leonard surname turns up 46 hits, including several in Monmouthshire, England. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d love to know what life was like in Solomon’s hometown! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to stick my head back under the hood and see if I can fix what I’ve broken. Pass me that roll of duct tape, will ya?

Chase Leonard was born 1 Jun 1998 under a rundown porch outside of Portland, Oregon. Her parents were of pit bull and Labrador extraction, her mother being a bitch and her father a bastard. Chase was rescued from these sordid conditions at the age of six weeks and adopted by Julie and Richard Leonard of Seattle, Washington, where she lived until her death on Thursday.

While the name is generally associated with dogs of the male persuasion, Chase acquired her moniker by bolting through the front door at every opportunity. Inevitably, a brisk chase would ensue. She lost a short battle with cancer on 10 Sept 2009, but her tail wagged and her bark sounded right to the bitter end.

A gentle soul with a heart as big as all outdoors, she was often teased by the other puppies for giving her (pit bull) breed a bad name. The Fourth of July was Chase’s worse nightmare.

A bonifide member of the Canine Olympic Swimming Team, Chase was also well traveled, having spent many a day in the back of a Jeep Cherokee as it toured the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Tetons.

Her favorite place of all, however, was home sweet home, with her head on her Momma’s lap or her Daddy’s shoulder, snoozing away a rainy Seattle Sunday afternoon.

Chase outlived all of her siblings by more than a decade, never married and never had any puppies of her own. She is survived by her two grieving humans, a boyfriend and dozens of loving friends and neighbors. She will be missed. Her ashes will be spread on Lake Washington a week from today.

[Damn, the blog is getting downright morbid! This post will only remain for a day or two before we move on, but seriously, don't you wish your ancestors had told you about their pets?]