Ancestry- Newsletter- February 22, 2025

22 Feb Ancestry- Newsletter- February 22, 2025

ANCESTRY- THE SOCIETY OF PRESIDENTIAL DESCENDANTS GATHER AGAIN

A year ago, we attended a panel of the Society of Presidential Descendants on President’s Day weekend at the Truman Little White House- 2024 Society of Presidential Descendants

We enjoyed it enough to go again this year. In addition to the descendants of Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Cleveland, we also had a descendant of Grant and Teddy Roosevelt in attendance this year.

Here are some of the tidbits from the panel:
Ulysses Grant Dietz told us of the irony in that General Grant, who became the Union Army soldier most responsible for ending the scourge of slavery, had his children cared for by his wife, Julia Dent Grant’s family’s enslaved servants, including Henrietta, Sue, and Jeff. Jesse Root Grant II, the youngest of the Grant children, wrote in his memoir that his nurse was a slave. We wrote about Grant’s father-in-law Dent in July 2023- Grant’s family Pictured below is Julia Grant with daughter Nellie, son Jesse, and her father Frederick Dent.

We recently covered presidents who played football – Football playing presidents Tweed Roosevelt told us how T.R. saved college football by inviting the head coaches and alumni leaders of top universities to the White House to address the violence that led to death and injury in football. He supported the Intercollegiate Athletic Association: The IAA eventually adopted safer rules of play, which included:

▪ The forward pass: allowing teams to move the ball down the field without shoving into each other
▪ The neutral zone: established a neutral zone between offense and defense, now called the “line of scrimmage”.
▪ The First down distance: doubled the first down distance to 10 yards
▪ The mass formations: outlawed body-breaking mass formations
Truman’s grandson told a story about how Grover Cleveland loved guns (pictured below), to the point that post-presidency, his wife Frances once forbade him from talking about them with her company coming over for dinner. He agreed unless the company was to bring it up.

So, Cleveland asked a servant to fire a couple of shotgun shells off the back porch during dinner, and once the company commented on the sound of guns, he carried the conversation forward.

Mary Jane Eisenhower told us that when her grandfather was building his home in Gettysburg, he went up the ladder to where they were working on the second floor. The foreman explained that they had realized the plans were off by a couple of inches, so he asked Ike if Mrs. Eisenhower preferred the extra space be added to the bathroom or the bedroom. Ike said, “I am sure that Mamie would prefer two more inches in the bedroom!”

Truman’s grandson Clifton Daniel told us how upset his grandmother Bess was about the picture of Lauren Bacall upon Harry’s piano (pictured above) that she forbade from ever playing the piano in public again.

He also said that when the White House structure was being rebuilt with concrete and steel, the contractors wanted to knock down an outside wall to bring in heavy construction equipment, but Truman forbade them from doing so. Instead, they built a tunnel under the wall to do so (pictured below) and it is still in use today.

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ANCESTRY- ZOLA NEALE HURSTON AND DANCESTORS

Dancestors recently undertook a project to record all of the descendants of Zora Hurston’s parents (as Zola had no children of her own), so some 500 relatives of hers. We placed all of this into a very large descendant’s chart that will be displayed in the Smithsonian Institution when a traveling exhibit “A Place for All People” (based on Hurston’s novel of the same name) is present.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays.

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research as a scholar at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community’s identity.

She also wrote about contemporary issues in the black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African American experience and racial division, were published in anthologies such as The New Negro and Fire!! After moving back to Florida, Hurston wrote and published her literary anthology on African-American folklore in North Florida, Mules and Men (1935), and her first three novels: Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939).[6] Also published during this time was Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938), documenting her research on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti.

Hurston’s works concerned both the African American experience and her struggles as an African American woman. Her novels went relatively unrecognized by the literary world for decades. In 1975, fifteen years after Hurston’s death, interest in her work was revived after author Alice Walker published an article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” (later retitled “Looking for Zora”), in Ms. magazine.

In 2001, Hurston’s manuscript “Every Tongue Got to Confess”, a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives. Her nonfiction book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018), about the life of Cudjoe Lewis (Kossola), one of the last survivors of slaves brought illegally to the US in 1860, was also published posthumously.

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ANCESTRY- IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SPEND SIX FIGURES ON DUAL CITIZENSHIP

Reach out to Dancestors as we help people all the time with the documentation for dual citizenship, and we don’t even cost four figures. Here are excerpts from this article:Americans want a second passport and are willing to pay – Sherwood News

One method to gain legal citizenship that doesn’t involve your finances comes down to your DNA. At least 50 countries invite those with ancestral ties to apply for citizenship by descent. That list includes Austria, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Italy, India, Lithuania, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, and more. You might have to stumble through some antiquated rules — for example, Italy passed down citizenship only from fathers until 1948, and it took until 2009 for courts to recognize ancestral lineages through women — but it could be worth the deep dive for lifetime access to a second home.

“I had clients considering a multi-citizenship program, and when I saw their Italian last name, I asked if they’d investigated citizenship by descent. They said they didn’t qualify, but I had my team dig in,” Green said. “Turns out, they did qualify — and we saved them a million euros by pursuing the pathway of descent instead of investment.”

Green says Italy, Poland, and Ireland are the most common countries for citizenship by descent because they recognize lineages as far back as grandparents or even great-grandparents. Italy goes back unlimited generations, but the line must not be broken — meaning your ancestor can’t have naturalized in the US before giving birth to the next of kin.

So, if you’re thinking your next financial move might take you across an ocean, know that you have several options depending on your price point. Digital nomadism is the lowest barrier to entry, but you won’t get the privileges of residency or citizenship, which allow you to travel within the diplomatic region of your host country visa-free. Citizenship is the only path to double passports, but the fastest way to get it come with considerable investment minimums, unless you can prove a bloodline connection. No matter what your choice, check the fine print, talk to a tax pro and immigration lawyer, and make sure your plans won’t come back to haunt you. When approached strategically, a second passport can be both a backup plan and a power move.

We also covered dual citizenship last month Dual and in November 2024 Citizenship

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ANCESTRY- SOMETIMES HISTORY IS DIFFERENT THAN WE WERE TAUGHT

While using microfilm to research a family in the early 1800s in Natchez, MS, at the MS Department of Archives, I noticed this article alongside something else I was looking at.

The article refers to a school for children of colour, which surprised me because I had always heard that it was illegal to educate slaves. I did some research and confirmed what I had read.

If I had realized how rare this was, I would have looked for more articles of this type. I searched all the digitally available newspapers, and no such article was found that did not reference a northern state.

So how was T. Jones able to offer such education in early Natchez?

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ANCESTRY- SO WHAT’S THE REAL STORY- PART 7

In the last edition https://gem.godaddy.com/p/a1bcdb1 I showed how a bad Ancestry.com family tree has led to many people accepting a false narrative that the parents of Enoch Major Terrill (CT Enoch) pictured, were Enoch (NJ Enoch) and Nancy Denman Terrill.

Here is the collection of proof that CT Enoch’s parents were Enoch M. and Sarah Andrews Terrill:

• We know that CT Enoch was born on July 19, 1805, in CT. Enoch M. was listed in the Waterbury, CT 1800 census and 1805 resident’s list.

• Sarah’s father’s name was Asahel and that explains how that became the name of CT Enoch’s brother Asahel.

• Enoch M.’s daughter Charlotte Terrill married Albon Hoppen in Waterbury, CT in 1808.

• Enoch M. last sold land in Waterbury in 1809.

• Enoch M. and family are listed in 1810 Smithville Township, Chenango Co., NY census under Enoch Turril. So, they must have moved between 1809 and 1810 to Chenango, NY.

• Enoch M.’s presumed son Asahel was born in NY in 1813.

• The only other 1810 census records are for a VT Enoch (accounted for), and NJ Enoch (dismissed as impossible in the last edition).

• Enoch’s brother Lemuel also had settled 20 years earlier in Smithville, Chenango, NY.

• Somewhere between 1813 and 1820, their family moved to Dearborn Co., IN where the family would have consisted of Enoch M., Sarah, Enoch Jr. and Asahel according to census ages.

• In the 1830 Dearborn census Enoch is listed with age correct Sarah and Asahel. CT Enoch Major is now on his own.

• In 1835 Enoch and Sarah Terrill deeded Dearborn land to William Barton.

• In 1840 Enoch M. and Sarah appear to be living (age-wise) with his son Asahel’s family in Dearborn.

• In 1843 Enoch M. sold 48 acres to Asahel, and 18 acres to Enoch Jr.

• In 1850 Enoch M. was living with Asahel’s family, and Sarah must have passed away and is listed as Enoch M. Tirrel.

• He was no doubt the “Father Terril” l referred to by Judge A.J. Cotton in his 1858 book “Cotton’s Keepsakes,” “as the now deceased parents of Asahel Terrill, one of the very best county commissioners we ever had. . . “This was concerning several families that moved to new homes in the “Far West.”

• I would assume he passed away by 1860 where he is not listed and would have been about 91.

• Asahel gave his son the name Reuben Hoppens Terrill which would reflect a connection to his sister Charlotte Hoppen (wife of Albon Hoppen). Another son of Asahel, E. Major Terrill had a son Albon.

• Lastly, a DAR reference shows Charlotte as the descendant of Sergeant Enoch Terrill Jr. (Enoch M.’s parents were Enoch and Experience Wilmot Terrill) and Sarah Andrus (pictured below).

After listing out all of the reasons NJ Enoch could not be Enoch Major Terrill’s father and why CT Enoch would be the father, I shared the information with all of the people on Ancestry.com who had public trees. Many did not respond, but those that did offered reasons not to change like “I already finished that line” or admitted to only copying other people’s trees. One person who appeared to be tree “zero”, referred to a Tyrrell/Terrill book that had been published out of Canada that gave the incorrect line (pictured below).

I tracked down the author of the book in Canada, Bruce Tyrrell and he said all he did was take his great aunt’s notes and placed them into a book, he never validated any of her research!

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ANCESTRY- HAS THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE BEEN SHRUNK BEFORE?

It turns out is has been cut before. Here is an excerpt from an article in that regard:

CIVIL SERVICE RIFS

“Well, okay. It began really in the Bush administration, and it was part of what they called the Cold War dividend, where they offered buyouts to people in the national security and Defense area because, for instance, they didn’t probably need as many Russian speakers as they used to need, that sort of thing. When the Clinton administration came in, I worked with Al Gore to lead the National Performance Review, and we saw that technology was reducing the need for ranks of middle management. And we went to Congress, and we asked for bailout authority for the domestic side of the government. And in March of 1994, Congress passed buyout authority up to $25,000 for the domestic side of the government as well. It was a bipartisan bill. It passed big on both sides. So, when we offered buyouts in the Clinton administration, it was clear that Congress had already authorized this, that there would be money there to pay the buyouts. And it was in one I think it was mostly one lump sum. And so that was the history of it. I don’t think there’s been anything else since then until we have the Trump and Musk proposal for it. And I purposely did not call it buyouts because I think they didn’t want to limit themselves to the $25,000 limit, which is in the current law. So they called it something else. And of course, calling it something else is making everybody wonder if this is going to happen or not, if it’s legal or not.” By Elaine Kamarck

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ANCESTRY- A 1959 VIEW OF CANADA BECOMING THE 51ST STATE

If you’re interested in remapping the world, then you should enjoy this video.

Mapping the history of civilization in one minute. (via YouTube)

Below is a 1947 clip regarding Greenland the U.S. and there was at least one imperialist Canadian some 20 years ago that had his eyes on Greenland.

I am not sure Greenland fits Canadian culture, as hockey doesn’t make their top 5 sports list (not for lack of ice), as according to this excerpt “sport is a significant aspect of Greenlandic culture, with the population generally active. Typical sports include football, track and field, handball, and skiing. Handball is often considered the national sport, and in 2001, the men’s national team was ranked among the top 20 globally”.

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ANCESTRY- PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY, TODAY

Reach out to Dancestors Genealogy. Our group of genealogists will research, discover, and preserve your family history. No one is getting any younger, and stories disappear from memory every year and eventually from our potential ability to find them.

Preserve your legacy and the heritage of your ancestors.

Paper gets thrown in the trash; books survive!

Ready to embark on your family history journey? Don’t hesitate. Call Dan Nelson and get your project started!