Thursday, January 21, 2016

Family Reunions - Panther Family Reunion 2016

Do you have a family reunion scheduled for this year? If you are related to the Panther family you do!

If not, you should organize one! Why? To get back in touch with your relatives, to share information about what you've been up to and to learn what your relatives have been up to. And, for genealogists, the most important reasons: To share family history information about your ancestors and to learn stories and obtain copies of photos and documentation that you don't already have. Just imagine, you have a family reunion and a distant cousin brings along the baptismal certificate for your grandmother! Or a photo of the old family home in the family's home country!

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Stumbling Upon Historical Documents

While searching for your ancestors in historical records, occasionally, you'll come across records documenting something of historical significance. I wanted to post this because, while doing a little bit of research on the history of the area my Panther family is from, I noticed that the church record documenting the death of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen is not posted anywhere on the web. Grimmelshausen fought in the Thirty Years War and is a noted German literary figure.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Confederate Cemetery Vandalized

The Oakwood cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina, was vandalized. Headstones in this Confederate cemetery were toppled and defaced with spray painted "KKK", "white supremist", "slavery" and other graffiti.

Cemeteries are a place of rest for our ancestors. A place of peace and a place of remembrance. It's a place of history. Likely, most of those people buried in this cemetery are someone's ancestors. If someone disagrees with what the people in a cemetery lived for and died for, they should just stay away, not vandalize it. If everyone vandalized the headstones of those they disagreed with, every single headstone in the entire world would be damaged. No matter what their political orientation and no matter how they lived, how would you like it if your ancestors' headstones were damaged?