This week's news includes: the Vatican has issued a letter
instructing all dioceses not to give any information to the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, due to concerns about the
Mormons' practice of posthumous rebaptism; a new Midwest Genealogy
Center (see
http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/genlh/mgc.htm)
will open in Independence, Missouri, on 21 June 2008 with the
largest collection of genealogical materials in the U.S.; DNA links
have been found from the ancient "iceman" found in British Columbia
in 1999 to at least 17 living people; an American couple touring in
Germany visited a gasthaus in Binningen and were introduced to a
relative -- a man who looked exactly like the husband. The men
shared the same great-great grandfather.
Listen e-mail included: loss of HeritageQuest Online in the
Satellite Beach, Florida, library; a thank you for our discussions
of the Mozy (
http://mozy.com/) computer backup facility;
Catholic parish family books (Familienbuecher) in Germany;
suggestions for locating information about Black Seminole people
(see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Seminoles
and
Seminole & Apalachicola Indian Records); a listener asks for
help when his own DNA and that of his family members disagrees;
teaching genealogy to and for kids; the occupation of "vanman" is
defined; and the origins of the surname
Turtle are discussed. [Drew referred to
the book,
A Dictionary of
English Surnames: The Standard Guide to English Surnames by
P.H. Reaney and R.M. Wilson, published by OxforndUniversity Press
in 1995.]
George discusses the practical use of DNA in conjunction with
genealogy, archeology, and geography in the research of the Lost
Colony Center for Science and Research (
http://www.lost-colony.com/). The
"Lost Colony" was the second settlement on Roanoke Island on the
Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina. It began in 1587 and it
was there that Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the
New World, was born on 18 August 1587. When the relief ships
finally returned from England in 1590, the settlement was deserted,
and a single word -- "Croaton" -- was carved into a post of the
fort. Croaton was the name of one of the local Indian tribes. One
suggestion is that the settlers were assimilated into one or more
of the three tribes. The DNA testing and analysis being done by the
Lost Colony Center for Science and Research is seeking to validate
or refute this hypothesis, and the project is infinitely
interesting.