"Weekend Chat" - All Members are Invited! (21-22 Aug 2015)

+34 votes
1.6k views

 

Welcome!  This is an ongoing "Chat" post that can be added to throughout the weekend.  All members of WikiTree are encouraged to join in, especially first-timers!

Say Hello and introduce yourself... where are you from and what are your interests?

Do you have any tips to share?

How can we improve WikiTree?

What do you enjoy most about WikiTree?

How do you spend your time when not online?

What's the weather like in your neck-of-the-woods today?

What did you do for fun when you were 18?

Do you have a unique pet?

Any great recipes to share?

... anything that you want to talk about!

Post answers here, comment on answers, up-vote things you like or agree with and have fun!  To receive notice when future Chats are posted, add Weekend_Chat to the list of Tags you follow.  You can edit your list by clicking on "My Feed" on G2G, then click to "add or edit".  Separate words with and underscore.

in The Tree House by Keith Hathaway G2G6 Pilot (634k points)
Keith can you make Sir Sandford Fleming's picture's show?
Ok joining chat today cause I have some great news!!! I have been a member now for a year or so and adding to my family along with helping greet and mentor. Had to take a break due to burn-out. I got invited to a family reunion thanks to a cousin finding me on Wikitree. How exciting is that. This is my dad's side of the family which is the Maxey's (Maxey-856) which I have never met anyone other than my dad.

Hope this will get me back in the swing of things and back to doing what I love, the history, researching and helping others find a way to break walls or just get started.

Big, BIG thank you to Wikitree and all of you that have helped me along the way...

Blessings

Bobby
Sounds really exciting Bobby , so great a lot of us finally seem to meet family members, we, without Wikitree would never have known, have a great time ! :D
Congratulations Bobby, glad to have you back!

Thank you for posting the good news and sharing :)

18 Answers

+19 votes

Going to share an really old  family recipe! So easy men can make it!! My son does every holiday. Don't let the name fool you. This taste like the old Custard Pies almost.

MAGNOLIA PIE (BUTTERMILK PIE)  

2 cups sugar
1 stick butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons flour
3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell

In large bowl cream together sugar, butter and flour. Add eggs, buttermilk and vanilla.

Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool and serve.

Double for two pies and pour evenly into two shells.

Sugar can be cut by 1/2 cup for those on low glucose diets.

by Gigi Tanksley G2G6 Mach 4 (43.7k points)
Yum! Yum! (scoop of vanilla ice cream with mine please!)
That sounds delicious! It reminds me of the Chess Pies my Grandmother used to make. I think I may have to bake this weekend.
A chess pie must be similar to Bishop's pie (just add rooks, knights, king, queen, and a few pawns). :D
Any recipe which starts with two cups or sugar and one stick of butter can't be bad!
And you can even spice it up with cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, there is another thats used in pastry alot, cardamon?  Maybe a few drops of mint, or even bourbon. The heat will cook the alcohol out. Butter scotch.
I have never added to it. We usually make it just like it was passed down but I have considered added some fresh coconut to it a time or two. We may have to try that this year.
Tip on the buttermilk. If you don't want to buy a quart of buttermilk, there is a product called Buttermilk Blend. It's powdered buttermilk, and keeps in the fridge for quite awhile. Combine with water, and voila, buttermilk.
Yucck!! My dad would let store bought buttermilk set in the fridge till near soured. See he grew up without a refridgerator. And he prefered just near sour, tangy buttermilk to fresh store bought. It was too sweet. If you buy a 1/2 gal of buttermilk, you can make a pan of cornbread.  We would have a glass of buttermilk with cornbread crumbled up in it and watch the stars come out. One of my best memories.
Lynette I came back to say I didn't know about the powered but why not cornbread and milk. I have a healthy 6'5" boy who eats it about 5 nights a week at work. I don't mean he is overweight, he isn't just healthy and loves eating milk and bread. The ladies in the cafeteria keep his buttermilk stashed back and make sure he has cornbread. He loves it although I do not and have honestly not even tasted it since I was about a 1st grader back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. I may have to try it again since I am older and my mind won't say your drinking spoiled milk automatically. Sometimes even our taste buds grow up!
near sour isn't spoiled yet. but you gotta use it fast. I think Daddy acquired the taste, as I said growing up without electricity on a farm in rural AR, depression era, you used ever drop of everything.


Soured milk makes better cornbread and bisquits. Don't believe me?

Use one tablespoon of white vinagar in a cup of milk and make your cornbread or biscuits. Even works with Bisquick. The only good thing my mama ever had to say about my dad's grandmother was Granny could make the BEST biscuits, even better then her own mama's.

When you make the biscuits, take the amount of a biscuit, put it in a bowl, cover with the soured milk, cover with a tea-towel, and let set on counter till you are ready for your next batch, which was the next meal. Add the ingredients and start over. then Pinch back.  And Voila, you have good sourdough biscuits without all the work of making the sourdough starter that I've seen. And you can make cornbread in a pan or even cornbread biscuits the same way.  We don't do that today because we don't eat the same way as our pre-depression era grandparents did.

Plain milk would work with cornbread and milk. And I think my daddy liked it because it kept him from being too hungry as a kid. And you ate what was available.

A friend of mine mentioned that she had a bit of milk that was about to turn and didn't want to throw it out. I told her how to cook with it. She looked at me like I was crazy.  And I asked her had she ever made a cake that said to add vinegar to a cup of milk. Yes, she had. Whats the difference?
+13 votes
I remember the silly fads of the 1970s when I was a teenager.  Moccasins, Earth shoes, Roots (the shoes), bell-bottoms, uncut-hair, below-the-dashboard mounted eight-track decks and amplifiers in cars, These are things that might be associated with the 1960s if you lived in a more progressive place.  But what is considered the 60s really goes into the 70s. I would say the end of the Nixon administration would be the end of the 60s.  And what is considered the 1970s lasts until the Ronnie-ray-gun time (1981).

Today I see a great many people running around with sunglasses on the top of the head.  What is that?  In case of a solar eclipse, or maybe in case the sun becomes brighter than normal for a moment?  Any silly fads in your neck of the woods? When you were 18? Now?
by Vincent Piazza G2G6 Pilot (249k points)
edited by Vincent Piazza

Aaah Disco platform shoes , high heels... those were the heels eeh :P Now these would really do the trick whenever having an argument :D

Hahaha looking at all these shoes makes one think ..... people really are strange creatures willing to walk around and almost breaking their ankels  with some of these ''things'' at their feet  

I just remembered a "Fad" thing.  Strobe lights.  It was probably about 1970 and at the yearly state fair there were always "new" things.  Well, at night there was this warehouse with music coming out of it so I wandered in there. I was about 12 years old.  In there it was dark, light, dark, light, etc....There was a band playing and people dancing everywhere.  Here, gone, there, gone.  Every time the lights flashed the people were in a different place.  I had on my new wire-rim glasses (which were also a fad thing as cool people had wire rimmed glasses and Poindexters (that's Ken's nemesis in the Barbie world of my sister) had the 1950s ones  :D).  I was in trouble about my spectacles because my first two pairs I wouldn't wear them unless I needed to see something (which is constantly when you're nearsighted like me).  Anyway, my father agreed to get me wire-rims if I promised to wear them and not just carry them in my hand and lose them like the other sets.  Back to the strobe light room.  The next thing I know I've been stumbled over and knocked down and my glasses went flying onto the floor where everybody was dancing and now I'm crawling around on the floor like a blind person searching for my glasses and I see them and then the lights strobe and I'm in the dark again.  Then the lights come back on and I miraculously see them and manage to grab them before they were stepped on (wire-frame specs are very fragile by the way) and I got out of there.  

Speaking of fragile.  I got to see the band "Yes" a couple of years later and they had a new fad in their show as well.  Laser beams, shining directly at the audience, I'll probably not need cataract surgery after being in the audience at that show (1973).
Ooo whahaha soo hilarious I can picture it , my husband's asking why I'm cracking up here  XD , poor little ''cool'' Vincent crawling like some blind mole on the dancefloor , thanks you shared this , youre a great storyteller Vincent ..still laughing here !
We moved (1972) a few kilometers away to a different neighborhood and in the new house was a basement like a warehouse.  It (the basement) got the traditional 70's black-light room; complete with waterbed, black walls and blacklights, a parachute ceiling, Jim Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the silhouette of the Acapulco diver looking down at the water and various other fluorescent posters.  Incense seemed to always be burning and it had a fridge.  And a ping-pong table in the other part of the basement. Party Central until my parents figured out what was happening and started watching a little more, "The "Good Life" in other words.  :D

Comparing Lucy and Ricky as a typical couple against Sid and Nancy as a typical couple would be similar to comparing the television show "The 70s Show" against the times in that basement. :D
Sounds like a great childhood and youth Vincent ;)
I thought about what that sounds like but I would like to assure anybody that read that that practically all those children turned into just everyday normal people like everybody else.  We'll the others at least..... :D
Actually, it sounds like the movie Pleasentville. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789/?ref_=nm_knf_i4
It sounds like Subterranean Homesick Blues to me. : D
So very psychedelic. A great place to turn on, tune in and drop out. Far out!
+16 votes
Happy Weekend to All,

I'm getting hungry just reading Gigi's recipe.I'm much better at eating than cooking.

A super simple old family recipe for dip (pretzels, potato chips, veggies) that tastes great:

* Softened cream cheese

* Ketchup

* Garlic Powder

Whip until smooth

Be prepared to fight off double dippers

 

In the fad department, I have plenty of old pictures that make me wonder what the heck was I thinking!

For those of you that like Grunge music, I saw Alice in Chains in Atlantic City last weekend.....better than ever!

Wikitree remains awesome, great people, great environment...thank you to all!
by Doug Lockwood G2G Astronaut (2.6m points)
That sounds very similar to what our family calls "party cheese" since my grandmother always made it for parties:

softened cream cheese

cottage cheese (about equal proportions)

salt to taste

mix well.

At Christmas, she would add green food coloring, sprinkle the finished product with ground red peper and add a sprig of parsley.
Alice in Chains....that reminds me, I need to run down to the basement and feed "what's her face"!  :D
+20 votes
What pleases me the most about Wikitree is the liberating feeling of not being the only source of information anymore for my family.  I"ve been the "family genealogist" among my kin for over forty years.  When ever someone had a question they came to me and I would go to my files for the answer.  The prior "family genealogist," a second cousin once removed died about the time I was getting interested and all of his research was lost.  I had a concern that might happen to my files one day.  Now that I have put the core information up on WT, I know it is readily available.
by Foster Ockerman G2G6 Mach 3 (36.3k points)
And you'll have your files with you wherever there is an internet connection!
+14 votes

The man who changed time.

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Fleming-4074

railroad standard time

 

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=fleming&GSby=1827&GSbyrel=in&GSdyrel=all&GScntry=10&GSob=n&GRid=8073028&df=all&

Engineer (1827–1915) Sandford Fleming was a civil engineer and scientist best known as the chief railway engineer of Canada in the 19th century.

Sandford Fleming was a civil engineer and scientist. He emigrated from Scotland in 1845 to Canada, and by 1857, was the foremost engineer for the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron Railways. In 1871, he became the engineer-in-chief of the Canadian Pacific Railway until his retirement in 1880. From 1880 to 1915, he served as chancellor of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Throughout these years, Fleming devoted himself to writing and scientific research, with contributions to the establishment of standard time zones and telegraph communication. In 1851, he deigned Canada's first postage stamp, the three penny beaver. He was knighted in 1897.

Fleming-4074-1.jpg

Fleming-4074.jpg

by Chris Mckinnon G2G6 Pilot (610k points)
edited by Keith Hathaway
+14 votes
Schools here in the Denver area started for our kids this last week. Big change in the household with the kids going from summer vacation mode to full school mode. Homework every night instead of movies, but worst of all I get stuck with all the yard work now! I used to have do yard work and home work but the kids think school's harder now. Actually, with all the AP classes they take in High School, I think they're right. Their High School coursework is a lot harder than mine was.
by Peter Whalen G2G6 Mach 2 (26.4k points)

Same here for us and our youngest one (Elementary School) in Overijssel, Holland, Holidays are over and back to normal hectic life again. High school starts two weeks later, so the eldest one is still watching movies every night ;) 

Here in Mississippi we started three weeks ago in heat index temps of 108 to 112. Just Crazy!

I keep my grandchildren 4 nights a week while the parents work so homework and study time is definitely cutting into my Wikitree time.  :(

I shudder to think of AP courses I am really doing good to get my head wrapped around  numbers being added and subtracted  from left to right or grouped by two numbers and added or subtracted from left to right being totaled and then totaled again left to right.

I'm too old for this!  lol

I'd rather DO yardwork!
Hi Peter....Im here in Colorado also but I homeschool my kids so we wont start until the 31st. This year I am changing things up more but we are all excited. We are pulling down the pool right now - dont want a surprise snow to ruin the pool lol....although today is so hot. Just wanted to jump in and say hi from Colorado also!!
Our local schools have been given the choice to start before Labor Day or after Labor Day.  Some have gone each way.  I pity whoever has to set up the schedules for the students who go to the county wide technology school in the afternoons and attend their local school for required courses (English, social studies, etc.) in the mornings.  Some will miss the first five or six classes in the tech school.  How do they catch up?  As if teachers didn't have enough problems before this happened!
+15 votes
Some random thoughts on conflict and genealogy:
My family comes from one of 20th century's ethnic and political hotspots, Bohemia. The tensions between German and Czech inhabitants led to the partial annexation of Bohemia ("Sudetenland") and occupation of the rest of it (Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren) by the Nazis, and to the expulsion of what were deemed ethnic Germans after the war. German settlement of the border areas of Bohemia had begun in the 12th and 13th century so that by the time church books start in the late 16th to early 17th century these German families had already lived there for 4 – 500 years. The different ethnic groups often stuck together in separate villages and towns but people moved back and forth so that by the late 19th century, when censuses started documenting the language of the household, there are Schindelhofers whose language was Czech and Dworschaks who spoke German. Today there are still Jungschaffers living in the Czech Republic, and Klabouchs having been deported to Germany after the war.
The beauty of genealogy is that if I go back only a few generations in my family I have as many Czech ancestors as I have German. And by few generations I mean back to grandparents. How many recent ethnic conflicts/wars/tensions really hold up when we look at the genealogy of the people involved?
by Helmut Jungschaffer G2G6 Pilot (595k points)
+12 votes
Just relaxing on this beautiful weekend nursing a summer cold and making plans to start up building a computer from parts. I used to do that several years ago but got away form that and figure now that I am retired I can start up again. The main purpose for it will be for remote control of my ham radio station so I will also set it up with the LINUX OS. The only other things going on for me this weekend are this afternoon they are having a cardboard boat race, I will just be a spectator, and tomorrow afternoon I will start my first shift as a Greeter.
by Dale Byers G2G Astronaut (1.7m points)
For a recipe how is this, If you have a group of 6 or 7 for breakfast cut up 1 lb. of smoked sausage and in about 1/4 cup oil in the bottom of a Dutch Oven cook about 1 pound of either hash brown potatoes with or without some chopped onion and peppers.  After the potatoes add the sausage and warm that up.  Then you just add  dozen eggs and scramble them in the mix. when the eggs are cooked dish it out and serve.
That sounds delicious for breakfast or dinner. That is how I make my filling for breakfast burritos. I use the roll breakfast sausage instead, add some green chile, cumin and lots of cheese.
+11 votes
I am still cleaning up the profiles from gedcom imports. I have about 9 more for the month of August in my anniversary list. That will make about 90 so far. Only about 450 more to go. That's OK. I am on a mission!
by Amy McAndrews G2G6 Mach 3 (31.7k points)
+12 votes
I was just cleaning up some cemetAry categories (as in, creating and then pointing everything to the cemetEry ones!) when I ran across a pair of names that made me laugh.  Apparently Abbott married Costello:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Costello-328

I just want to know - who's on first?!?!  :)

Either way, they are now both properly in "Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin" and not "Glasnevin Cemetary".

What I'm not quite sure of now is how I got there - I was working on cleaning up the profiles of my GEDCOM-imported Swedish ancestors, trying to add/update categories in the Sweden Project, but somehow ended up fixing Irish cemeteries.  Those wiki links - they take you on such adventures!
by Kim Jordan G2G5 (5.9k points)
+12 votes
Hello everyone, I am Daniel Ashworth, Jr. and I have really just begun digging into my family history. I have mostly been focused on the Ashworths of Louisiana (1800s) and South Carolina (1700s) and Lacashire, England (1700s and before). I have also been looking into the Roberts of Washington Parish, Louisiana, and the Malones & Garrards of Mississippi, which round out the 4 grandparent lines of my genealogy.

Thanks for any tips, help, and input!
by Living Ashworth G2G Crew (560 points)
Daniel I bet some of the Washington Parish, Pike County, Mississippi crew I am working on can help you get some good stuff.

Allan, Teresa, and I are all profiling in that area digging in deeper every single day. If there is something we can help with let us know.

We are looking at the Ott, Simmons, Varnado, Jenkins, Corkerns, Thompson, Seal........and many many more.  :)
+12 votes

A couple of my family history discoveries of the past week were about ailments that my ancestors died from, but are now easily treated.

At the website Rudy's List of Archaic Medical Terms, I figured out that the mysterious diagnosis "inflammation of the bowels," which had killed a great-great grandmother at age 27 back in the 1860s, was appendicitis -- an ailment that used to be pretty much universally fatal. It must have been very sad for the family to lose that young mother to that sudden and painful condition.

And Ancestry.com has obtained some Pennsylvania death records dating back to the early 1900s, from which I learned that a great-grandfather died from scarlet fever (a streptococcal infection) in the years before antibiotics.

Life was a lot less predictable before modern medicine...

by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
Your link shows just the I category, but if you change the last i in the link you can view other diseases ;-)  Thanks for this!!
+9 votes
Hello All,

Another sunny day in Brightlingsea, Essex, England and an afternoon spent at our beach hit on the promenade and getting a suntan. Apparently the warmest day since July 1st this summer.

Family history has sort of taken a bit of a back seat, but have followed up on my maternal grandmother's father - Finally work out he is Thomas King and find out there were other children I was not aware of - or my grandmother did not mention as far as I recall. I also thought I  had a further mystery, my grandmother had 2 sisters that I knew about Nell and Janet, but the census shows Janet and Helen.....  However Google tells me that Nell is a nickname for Helen.

its all interesting......

Happy weekend everyone....
by Chris Burrow G2G6 Pilot (220k points)
+10 votes
It is always interesting to me to see what the "watershed" moment is for a particular generation in a particular culture.  Sometimes, the change is literally overnight.

If you ask my generation, where they were the day John F. Kennedy was killed, every one will know.  For an earlier generation, it could be Pearl Harbor Day, VE or VJ day.  For a Japanese of the same generation, it probably isn't any of those, but it could be the day Hiroshima or Nagasaki was bombed.

What is the watershed moment for you?
by Vic Watt G2G6 Pilot (355k points)
I think for anyone that is still living, no matter what generation they are in, it would have to be 9/11. That day will be burned in my mind forever.
You are right Amy.  There could be several for any one person.  Mine was JFK's assassination for almost 40 years until 9/11.
I can't remember where I was when JFK was assassinated, I was 7. I remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and when John Wayne and John Lennon died.
+11 votes
Hello, all! I just may be the youngest person here at 19.

I'm mainly focusing on my paternal line of Calder woods (tablet keyboard keeps leaving an unwanted space). I have the most luck on Ancestry on that line. Interestingly enough, my paternal great grandmother has a maiden name entirely new to this site, Beneker, she was the very first one. That intrigues me.
by Krystle Calderwood G2G Crew (920 points)
Hi Krystle,

It is wonderful to have young people involved in their heritage. Best of luck on your journey!
+9 votes

Hello everyone

I was looking for something else in my boxes of family history papers, which need scanning and filing. I couldn't find what I was originally looking but did come accross this photo of my Swiss Great grandmother  in traditional costume.

http://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/StollFamilyPublicPhotos-14

If someone could help with embedding the image in this answer I would be very appreciative. Whatever I do it doesn't seem to work like the photos shown above.
 

by Anna Hayward G2G6 (9.9k points)
edited by Anna Hayward

Hi Anna, 

Great pictures you have ! Guess it is because of the privacy settings (green) normally you can add photo's to the txt, you could try the feature sharing it with the Wikitree community, you'll  find below the image ( right side, the yellow lined box) and here's a G2G about adding a photo to a G2G .

Good luck !

Bea 

Thanks Bea

The coding in the text in bios work with the settings on green but don't appear to work in G2G. I also tried using the image icon on the WSywig editor in here and just got a square with no image. The share with G2G share facility does work but then it would have gone in a separate thread rather than in this one. I'll experiment with the privacy settings.  At least I know it's not just me doing something wrong so thanks again.
Your welcome, guess when you change the privacy settings to open (white) it should work, just edit your answer and follow the instructions added to that G2G link (so the how to add a photo to a G2G) than it should work :)
+10 votes
Morning all. This past week I've been working on Unsourced profiles. If you have family in Massachusetts, dating before 1850, there are loads of published vital records. Sometimes you have to be creative with the title, but most are "Vital Records of ....". You do have to search, however. Many are on Google Books, some are on archives.org, and also Ancestry.com. On Ancestry, it is best to search Card Catalog. Some of the records are in multiple volumes, so you might find one on Google and others on archive. Happy hunting.
by Bob Keniston G2G6 Pilot (260k points)
Thanks for this advice, Robert. Massachusetts vital records are generally more available than those for just about any other U.S. state, but no one search path will locate all of them.

In addition to the resources you list, I suggest the NEHGS website AmericanAncestors.org. It has some Massachusetts vital records that aren't readily available elsewhere, and I find the search utility to be better-behaved than the one on Ancestry.com. You need to be a registered user to access the vital records, but you don't have to be a paid NEHGS member.

There are a few Massachusetts towns for which I've been unable to find good sources of early public records. Do you know of any source of electronic records for the town of Hadley? The town of Greenwich has been another challenge for me. It's one of the four towns that was disbanded when the Quabbin Reservoir was created -- and those towns don't even appear on resource lists like http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Online_Vital_Records_Research_Guide . I found some images of handwritten records for Greenwich at Ancestry, but it was very hard to find content in them.
I found some new web-published content for Greenwich on http://scua.library.umass.edu/ead/mums011.xml -- the images of early records are hard going, but the content is free.

Bob, I've been trying to "reassign" profiles in the Unsourced category to narrow it to "New York Unsourced Profiles" or "Washington Unsourced Profiles," etc. (Then I get sidetracked and involved in actually sourcing a profile.)

Hope everyone realizes that they can find Unsourced profiles by going to Unsourced Profiles.  If you want to work in a particular geographical area, choose a country, state, province, or county to choose a profile.  You don't have to be an expert to add a source to a profile . Just work in an area you know.

+14 votes
Thank you Keith Hathaway for the invite here and Hi to all!

I am Astrid, 55 years old, mum of two and a speechtherapist, and searching for a long time for my ancestries at my fathers side as they re difficult to catch. Parents seperated, both passed and many of my dads fam died during the WWII.

I hate hot weather and as the work is low in summer I had lots of time to search again.  And I AM so happy!!! I got send a census of the household of my great-grandfather of 1900, and found out I have three great-grandaunts!  Great summer here!

I m living in the Netherlands near Amsterdam so anyone looking for drugs. :D surprise, surprise!!!...  ain t at the right adress here :D But if anyone needs help at searching Dutch family, I m in.

I think I need to start the midweek chat as I don t have much time during the weekends "to three" (new verb or already existing?). As the weekends are mostly filled with too much rl.

Okay, back to my three....... I just started it here.

Happy searching all!

A.
by Astrid Spaargaren G2G6 Pilot (280k points)
reshown by Astrid Spaargaren

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