“For me, the sto­ry is the first thing and the last thing.” – Nor­man Rock­well Today, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the North Car­oli­na Muse­um of Art to view the exhib­it they had put togeth­er of Nor­man Rock­well’s work. Today was the last day of the exhib­it, so it was “now or nev­er.” What… Con­tin­ue read­ing Nor­man Rockwell’s “Fam­i­ly Tree”

I don’t rec­om­mend doing this, but I left an SD card in the breast pock­et of a dress shirt and then put it into the wash. It went through warm water (but not the dry­er; we don’t even have one of those, which is anoth­er sto­ry for an envi­ron­men­tal blog). After the Tran­scend 4 GB High-Capac­i­­ty… Con­tin­ue read­ing Unin­tend­ed Sub­mer­sion Test

Sea­son Two of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? pre­miers Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 4th, 8/7 Cen­tral. (The episodes of the first sea­son are avail­able for free stream­ing from NBC’s web­site until Feb­ru­ary 5th at: http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/video/categories/season‑1/1197290/.) In hon­or of the forth­com­ing sea­son, Ancestry.com is run­ning a sweep­stakes: http://www.ancestry.com/wdytya2011 The site says the Grand Prize is $20,000 in trav­el mon­ey, plus:… Con­tin­ue read­ing Sea­son 2: WDYTYA? and Ancestry.com’s Sweep­stakes

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has end­ed its plans to build a super­store on part of the site of the Civ­il War Bat­tle of the Wilder­ness (May 5–7, 1864) near Orange, Vir­ginia. In 2009, Wal-Mart received local approval to build the store, but a legal bat­tle ensued, and Wal-Mart announced today that it would build its store… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Site of the Bat­tle of the Wilder­ness, Pre­served

Oprah Win­frey announced on her show today that she has a long-lost half sis­ter. Her moth­er left this daugh­ter at the hos­pi­tal when she was born, in 1963. The daugh­ter grew up in fos­ter homes, and even­tu­al­ly won­dered about her birth fam­i­ly. After two attempts to con­tact her birth moth­er, Oprah’s new­ly revealed half-sis­ter found… Con­tin­ue read­ing Oprah’s Fam­i­ly His­to­ry Secret

Freight Con­duc­tor Killed. At 3:20 o’clock this morn­ing, Chesa­peake and Ohio Freight Con­duc­tor J. B. Lutz stopped his train near Sewell and on the bridge cross­ing the New Riv­er. While stand­ing there a fol­low­ing train ran into the caboose, instant­ly kil­lling Con­duc­tor Lutz and caus­ing seri­ous injury to Rear Brake­man Hugh Rat­cliffe. The approach­ing train… Con­tin­ue read­ing Cat­a­log of Mis­for­tune: Rail­way Acci­dent

Randy Seaver is one of the best known geneal­o­gy blog­gers. He’s con­sis­tent, ded­i­cat­ed, and a gen­uine jour­nal­ist. Randy’s reviews of new fea­tures on Ancestry.com and Fam­il­y­Search, cut­ting through mar­ket­ing spins to point out where fea­tures are actu­al­ly improve­ments, or bring more ques­tions than answers. He does this with­out ani­mos­i­ty or ran­cor. If you don’t know… Con­tin­ue read­ing Fol­low Fri­day: Randy Seaver

On July 14th 1908, my great grand­fa­ther Nels John­son’s barn burned to the ground. The sto­ry goes that his son Wal­lace had a pony in the barn and that the first ani­mal that Nels saved was Wal­lace’s pony. My own curios­i­ty is piqued by the fact that they actu­al­ly had time to take these pic­tures.… Con­tin­ue read­ing Word­less Wednes­day: Barn Burn­ing

CNN reports about a woman named Flo­rence Hand, who had an inkling that she had been sep­a­rat­ed from a sib­ling, 85 years ago. Using the Ancestry.com 1930 US Cen­sus, she found this broth­er liv­ing with her grand­fa­ther. She used this infor­ma­tion to find him, and they have been reunit­ed. The CNN piece is brief but… Con­tin­ue read­ing Woman Uses 1930 US Cen­sus to Find Long Lost Broth­er

Below are some tran­scrip­tions of news­pa­per arti­cles relat­ing to the like­ly mur­der of my 3rd great grand­moth­er, Jane Gra­ham, in 1854 in what was then Mon­roe Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, and is now Sum­mers Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia. [ Joseph Graham’s Barn ] Joseph Gra­ham’s barn, on Green­bri­er riv­er, Mon­roe coun­ty, was burned to the ground on the… Con­tin­ue read­ing Amanu­en­sis Mon­day: Jane Gra­ham Mur­der Case