BackTrack

Prefabrication

2007-02-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

Mike Nifong is the name of the DA who started the Duke lacrosse case. I have a lot of questions about the whole affair, but I will stick to the one that's been bothering me for a while:

What kind of name is Nifong???

I poked around in some records and found that the Nifongs have been in North Carolina for a long time. George Nifong, the DA's 4th great-grandfather, is on the 1790 census in Rowan County. George's father Balthasar came to Pennsylvania from Germany in 1748 with the last name Neufang. The name was quickly corrupted to Nifong (North Carolina branch) or Knifong (Missouri branch).

So you can see that the DA's name has been around for quite some time and is not just recently trumped up.

Discredited

2007-02-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

When Roger and I watch a movie, we always watch the credits at the end. All those names! We enjoy reading and wondering about the names as they scroll by. Not just the stars, but all those behind-the-scenes name that most folks don't see because they are filing out of the theater.

Sometimes we wonder where a name came from. Like, what kind of a name is Garant? It appears in the credits of Night at the Museum. (Pierre Garand, Rouen to Quebec 1665) What about the name Winick in Charlotte's Web? (Abraham Winnik, Russia to New York 1906)

Now and then we recognize a nicely corrupted Swiss name like Niswanger or Lookabill. Or we spot a probable cousin named Robidou or Dutcher.

Some of the names just have to be read aloud. Go ahead, nobody's listening:

Samrod Shenassa
Hazel Catmull
Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
B. Tennyson Sebastian III
Mark 'Guns' Navarette

Speaking of movies, you might want to rent Akeelah and the Bee. If you pay attention, you will see Roger and me sitting right behind Angela Bassett in the auditorium at USC. Besides being able to see us on the big screen, you will probably enjoy the movie.

Our names, however, do not appear in the credits.

Death Spiral

2007-02-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

I've been working with death records a lot lately but the rules various jurisdictions set up can be really frustrating and nonsensical. They are just not set up to deal with genealogists. I'm telling you, without Joe Beine's always up-to-date death indexes site, I could not even find half the places that issue death certificates.

Some places have rules based on how long its been since the person died. In Texas, if they've been less than 75 years, they're not dead enough. Why does it matter how long the guy's been dead? He's dead.

In New York, to get someone's death certificate you need to provide "an original, notarized letter signed by that person authorizing release of their certificate to you."

Utah, bless them, puts the actual certificates on line. Now that's a state that knows genealogy!

California has always allowed anyone to order a death record. But as part of recent "statewide efforts to reduce identity theft," they now stamp it as Non-certified. Can someone please explain to me how someone would use a death certificate to steal someone's identity???

The Only Things About Me You Didn't Know

2007-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

There is a rumor that there are some things about a person that cannot be found on the Internet. To rectify that, some bloggers have called on other bloggers to reveal facts about themselves. I've been tagged by eminent genblogger Randy, and yes, I'll come out to play:

1. I have an MS in psychology and was a psychotherapist for 10 years. That was after I was a systems analyst for 10 years and before I was a technical writer for 10 years. I have about 6 years left on my current career.

2. I hate cilantro, though if you have sat near me in a Mexican restaurant you already know that.

3. I met my husband on a BBS called The Hot Line.

4. I have a titanium rod in my right leg. No, it does not set off alarms in airports.

5. My TV debut was on Lloyd Thaxton's teenage dance show on KCOP.

Because of the chain-letter aspect of this tagging thing, I'll only tag Lloyd Thaxton even though I never read his blog and it is not about genealogy. The rest of you can just send your $5 to me and we'll call it a day.

Person of the Year

2007-01-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

Did you see me on the cover of Time a few weeks ago? Well, it was not really me; it was all you other bloggers, YouTubers, and Wikipedians, too.

Time's Person of the Year is usually some powerful person we've all heard of who has shaped our world in some way. I like that they've chosen Every Man this year - it reminds me of my family tree. None of my known ancestors were anything but bit players whose exits and entrances went largely unnoticed by the world, but who certainly shaped my world.

Time says that now, thanks to the Internet, "millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity" have been "backhauled into the global intellectual economy." In other words, we all get to appear on the world stage and we all get speaking parts!

Last summer, the Forward got people curious when they ran an article about the possible Jewish ancestry of then-Senator George Allen of Virginia. They noted that Wikipedia "takes Allen’s mother’s Judaism as a given, saying that 'Henrietta Lumbroso was a Jewish immigrant of Tunisian/Italian/French background.'” The Forward article led to a reporter's question and Allen's head-scratching response.

Could the genealogist who added Allen's connection to the august Sephardic Lumbroso family into Wikipedia have played a role in Allen's apparent implosion, his not getting re-elected, and the change of leadership of the Senate? That's what Time's choice for Person of the Year is all about. Anybody, even obscure genealogists, can now be heard and make a difference.

In that case, my face on the cover is not unwarranted.

To find the voices of genealogists on the Web, check out Chris Dunham's Genealogy Blog Finder with its neat-and-tidy, catogorized layout.

Hello, My Name Is Sharon and I'm a Genealogist.

2007-01-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning while eating breakfast, I read that Yvonne De Carlo had died. Some folks wondered if De Carlo was really her mother's maiden name of if Yvonne really had Italian ancestry. I spent the rest of the morning searching for records on the Internet.

I looked at census, marriage, death, birth, and divorce records for California, British Columbia, and Canada as a whole. I found the death of Yvonne's mother Marie Middleton, which gave her maiden name (De Carlo) plus the maiden name of her mother (Purvis). I found marriages and deaths of people named De Carlo in Vancouver that could have been Marie De Carlo's siblings (John and Constance) and parents (Margaret and Michael). I found nothing in Canadian census records, which only go to 1911.

I also found nothing on Yvonne's father, a man named Middleton, at all. British Columbia marriage records did not have the marriage, but they may have married elsewhere and not all provinces (or states) are indexed, so I did not even know his first name.

Then I made the bed and ate lunch.

In the afternoon, I searched immigration records for American and Canadian ports. I found records for John Purves De Carlo, a merchant sailor based in Vancouver, who was the right age to be the brother of Marie De Carlo, Yvonne's mother, and his middle name matched her mother's maiden name. He said he was born in France.

I found a record of Margaret De Carlo entering the US in 1923 for a visit. She was born in Scotland and had arrived in Quebec in 1902 or 1912 on the Ionian.

I looked at census, marriage, and birth records for Scotland -- which I found little of -- and England, where I found a Margaret Purves the right age born in Scotland, but nothing to tie her to Yvonne.

I did a bit of grocery shopping, ran a couple errands, and made dinner.

After dinner, I returned to the passenger lists for Canada. They are not indexed, but are available to be read online. In just a few hours I found the family. Father Michael, mother Margaret, children Concetta, Mary, and John. All the right ages. The whole family was listed as Italian and Presbyterian and on their way to Vancouver.

A few anomolies, but I went to bed a tired and satisfied genealogist.

This morning, I walked to the library and checked out Yvonne, an Autobiography. In it, Yvonne De Carlo talks about her grandparents Michael and Margaret De Carlo. Michael, she says, was from Sicily. He had moved to France when he was young. There he met and married the Presbyterian Scotswoman, Margaret Purvis. Their children were born in France and they emigrated to Canada in 1912. She talks in the book about her merchant sailor uncle John, her aunt Connie, and her mother's marriage to William Middleton in Alberta.

Aren't books amazing! They're the latest and greatest technology and maybe someday they could replace the Internet.

Relative Claus

2006-12-29T19:54:00.000-08:00

A Christmas card addressed to Stephen Votruba in Winona, Minnesota was somehow mistakenly delivered to the home of Frederick Novotny on Long Island in New York. In the letter accompanying the forwarded card, Novotny told Votruba that his great aunt had been married to a man named Votruba. Noting that the New Yorker is a possible relative, the Minnesota resident calls it a "Christmas miracle." “For all I know, he could be a distant relative from Ellis Island.”

Bzzzzzttttt. Your Votruba ancestors, Mr. Votruba, have lived less than a mile from your Minnesota home since at least 1880, having arrived in the U.S. some 20 years before Ellis Island opened in 1892. Novotny's uncle's family arrived in New York around 1902.

So the two Votruba families were not separated at Ellis Island, but what are the odds that the two men are related? Since Votruba is a not-uncommon Bohemian name and Novotny doesn't even profess any Votruba ancestors, I'd say the odds are just a little higher than for any two men of Czech ancestry.

Christmas miracle? Humbug.

Jeane Kirkpatrick's Sooner Ancestry

2006-12-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

Jeane Kirkpatrick died last Thursday. The former United Nations Ambassador left a rich political legacy. I guess those who help make history don't necessarily know history.

Kirkpatrick once said that one of her grandfathers was in the Oklahoma "Sooner run for land." The first and most famous land run in Oklahoma was in 1889. There were a few more in the next few years but they were over by 1895.

Kirkpatrick's maternal grandfather was Henry Kile. Born in Tennessee in 1871, he never made it to Oklahoma. He spent most of his adult years farming in Texas where he died in 1951.

Kirkpatrick's paternal grandfather was Lee Frank Jordan, also born in Tennessee in 1871. In 1900, the family was in Texas, but by the 1910 census they were in Oklahoma. Their children were all born in Texas, except the one-year-old who was born in Oklahoma. BLM land records indicate he took out homestead papers there in January of 1910.

Looks to me like Kirkpatrick's grandfather missed the Oklahoma land run by about 20 years, but he got there sooner or later.

Silly Genealogist: "Greifeld" Is Italian, Not Irish

2006-12-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

The London TimesOnline was not surprised when the genealogist hired by Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld was unable to find all that many Irish ancestors.

Maybe they think with a name like Greifeld, he can't be all that Irish. I wonder if they really understand the term "melting pot" or if they think that a person's ancestors all had the same last name.

Greifeld should have a goodly share of Irish ancestors. The parents of his paternal grandmother Celia were Patrick and Mary Gannon. Mary was born in Ireland as were Patrick's parents. That means that Greifeld is a quarter Irish.

But Greifeld's mother's maiden name is Cafasso and all her grandparents were born in Italy. Therefore, Greifeld has twice as many Italian ancestors as Irish ones.

Maybe Greifeld's genealogist would find more ancestors by looking near Palermo.

To round things out, Bob Greifeld is an eighth German -- from the Harz Mountains of Saxony -- and an eighth Swedish.

~ via Genealogue

Out to See

2006-11-18T18:56:00.000-08:00

Some of our favorite genealogy bloggers have been out to sea lately. We'll be glad when they get back. Meanwhile, take a look at this picture taken in my neck of the woods last week.

It looks a lot like Dick Eastman with some engineer types, apparently evaluating antique microfilm readers.

Motivational Speaker

2006-10-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we just need a bit of inspiration to get past those road blocks in our family tree. Something to wake us up and spur us into having a go at it one more time!!

CarlisleCockney provides just the thing and shows us that Roots Television is not the only one with stimulating genealogical videos.

A Vacation That's Off the (Pedigree) Chart

2006-09-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

We are off on a strange adventure. For the first time in a bazillion years we are taking a trip to a place where we have neither descendants nor ancestors. I have no idea what to do there.

All our vacations are to either visit kids or explore ancestral homelands. These extremeties of the family tree have taken us to such exotic locales as Queens, New York; Bluffton, Ohio; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Cambridge, England; and Seoul, Korea.

But on this vacation there's not even a slightly-out-of-the-way place to go when that overwhelming urge to do some genealogy strikes. Like last summer's "Here we are in Yellowstone, we might as well swing by Ft. Morgan, Colorado to see where your great-grandfather got hit by the train." Or like a few years ago with my sister in Southern France: "Let's just zip across Northern Italy to see if we can find the coal hut in Austria where Mom's grandpa was born."

Not this trip. We'll be stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. No ancestors. No kids. Just the two of us with nothing to do but sit in a hammock all day and sip Mai Tais.

See you when we get home in a week when I'll at least have broadband again. Meanwhile, Randy Seaver blogs about the kind of trip we usually take and suggests there will soon be more at Jasia's Creative Gene via Blog Carnival.

Last Word on Annie Moore

2006-09-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Megan Smolenyak is probably exhausted from her whirlwind celebrity tour of New York, so while we wait to see more of what she and Brian have on Annie, I've updated my web site with what I came up with in my own research.

I have posted records that ID her brother Philip and her parents Matthew and Julia. I've also put up some records for Annie Schayer that I found after Megan identified her on Friday.

Now that Annie has been found, I can focus on important things. Like the latest celebrities to lie about their age or be confused about their ancestry. Easy pickin's compared to lost girls from the Lower East Side.

Ellis Island on Ancestry.com

2006-09-07T03:09:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg evaluated the upgraded tools at Ancestry.com for building a family tree. I found it interesting that, according to Walt:

The company says the Ellis Island data are coming within months.

A while back, Ellis Island disallowed downloading of manifests. Will Ancestry be making them available for downloading or storing? That would be much better than the tacked-together-screenshot method I am currently using.

Walt's columns on technology are always open about the pros and cons of a product and clearly detailed. He writes about the tools he reviews as if he were a novice. Indeed - he was impressed by the "Family Facts" that appeared while he was searching on Ancestry. He summed up his experience thusly:

Ancestry.com is a rich site that uses a sensible layout and encourages
learning.

Check out the tree-building tools yourself at Ancestry Ancestry.com

Mod Jobs

2006-09-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Looking back at the 1880 census, Family History Circle (via Genealogue) lists the most popular jobs of the time, including many quaint occupations -- such as saloon keeper, corset maker, and blacksmith -- that harken back to olden days and remind us how far we've come.

But 1880 was a year just brimming with opportunity and invention and the people then were as eager as people are today to adopt the latest technology.

The telephone had been invented just a couple years earlier but already over 1700 telephone workers were on the job. A good number of them were operators, mostly male, and a dozen telephone repairers had found their calling.
The phonograph, slower to catch on than the phone though invented around the same time, was supported in 1880 by 83 "phonographers."
Thomas Edison had patented the incandescent light just a few months before the census was taken when there were 49 men working with electric light. A thousand electricians were already on the job.
The development of the dry-plate process in 1878 revolutionized photography and opened the doors for over 9000 photographers by 1880.
The first typewriter was introduced commercially in 1873. By 1880 there were over a hundred "typists" or "type writers" using the machines. Many of the 900 stenographers were probably also using the device.

You can see a glimmer of today's coolest pastimes in the 1880 census: There were over 50 baseball players, six genealogists, a handful of balloonists -- including one woman -- and, as a possible forerunner of new-age color therapy, one "pyschromatic healer."

In a few years, the people of the 1880 census became eager adopters of motion pictures, automobiles, aeroplanes, and pop-up toasters. No wonder: in 1880 there were 782 inventors working in America.

You can search the 1880 census by occupation at Ancestry Ancestry.com

Days of Wine and Ruses

2006-09-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

William Ingraham Koch, yachtsman and art collector, bought some wine a few years ago that was purported to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson. Turns out it probably wasn't.

Koch spent more on finding out that the story was bogus than he did on the wine itself but there's more millions where that came from and, not to worry, Koch can still go on with his collecting. Some of Koch's collection was on exhibit last year at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which said:

At the core of the collection is Koch’s ancestor, Captain James Lawrence, a naval hero of the War of 1812. Captain Lawrence’s bravado expressed in his dying words “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” later became the motto of the United States Navy. The Koch collection of marines includes several paintings devoted to Lawrence.

Maybe the person who sold Koch the wine is the same person who sold him the story about James Lawrence being his ancestor. James Lawrence was survived by one daughter, Mary, who was born about 1811. She married Lt. William Griffin in 1838.

Tracing Koch's ancestry back to the early 1800s lookng for Griffins or Lawrences turned up Koch's great-great-grandmother Marie, who was born in 1812 to Isaac Lawrence, and who married William Ingraham Kip.

Turns out Isaac Lawrence and Captain James Lawrence both had ancestors who came to Long Island from Hertfordshire, England in the 1630s. I would not be surprised if the two Lawrence guys from Hertforshire are related. But even if they were brothers, that would make William Koch something like 10th cousin, 4 times removed to Captain Lawrence. Hardly an ancestor.

I am more closely related to Madonna than Koch is related to Captain Lawrence and there is not a single portrait of her in my collection.

Nor any bogus wine.

Panned Planethood

2006-08-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

The inhabitants of Earth learned this week that there is one less planet, not the nine they thought they knew about, revolving around the Sun as the earth does.

According to Time.com, this was posted March 24, 1930.

The inhabitants of Earth learned last week that there is another planet, beside the eight they knew about, revolving around the Sun as the earth does.
.
.
.
Clyde W. Tombaugh, 24, an assistant at the observatory, saw a strange blotch of light on a new plate. He hastily took the photograph to Vesto Melvin Slipher, director of the observatory. Dr. Slipher joyfully notified his younger brother, Earl Carl Slipher, and the rest of the staff, including Carl Otto Lampland. They were quite excited.

Astronomy may not be static but history is. Those scientists can be found today just as the census enumerator recorded them 10 days after the article appeared in Time.

From Ordinary Beginnings to the Greatest Generation

2006-08-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

Ira Hayes was a member of the Pima tribe from Arizona, son of a grocery store clerk. Franklin Sousley's father was a truck farmer in Kentucky. As a 4-year-old, Michael Strank came with his mother from what is now Slovakia to join his father in the coal fields of Pennsylvania. Harlon Block's father, the son of German immigrants, had a farm in Texas, just north of the Mexican border. Rene Gagnon's parents were French-Canadian cotton mill workers in New Hampshire who separated when Rene was young. John Bradley, who lived most all his life in the Wisconsin dairy lands, was the son of a railroad brakeman.

On February 23, 1945, Joe Rosenthal, Washington D.C.-born son of a Jewish clothing merchant from Russia, took their picture on Iwo Jima. Joe died last Sunday.

Annie's Family

2006-08-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

As Megan announced, Brian Andersson was the first to locate Annie Moore's family. Congratulations, Brian!

I've started posting records I've found for Annie's family on my research notes site. Brain has even more compelling evidence, so stay tuned to Megan's Roots World for further updates.

Brian, by the way, has access to some wonderful records at the NYC Department of Records. All of us who do research in NY are delighted to have a genealogist heading up the department. One of us! And quite an accomplished researcher, too.

Maybe soon Brian or Randy or another researcher will find Annie. Meanwhile, I'm still enjoying the hunt!

Lessons in Research from the Wall Street Journal

2006-08-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today's issue of the WSJ has an article entitled, "Going Online to Mine the Growing Wealth of Genealogy Data." The search by Lan Nguyen, the Journal's Cranky Consumer, for her husband's ancestors offers the opportunity to discuss some basic tenets of genealogical research.

1) People born in New York did not have to travel through Ellis Island to get there. The columnist reports looking for her husband's grandfather, James Jewel, born in New York in 1910, on EllisIsland.org. I would recommend Steve Morse's Ellis Island portal for better results, still it's not where I'd start my search for a native New Yorker.

2) Danish people are not well represented in Jewish genealogical databases. The author says she searched for her husband's grandmother on Jewishgen.org. A great site, but not necessarily the best for looking up the ancestry of a Danish woman who married into a Jewish family in 1934.

3) Women are not born with the last names of their future husbands. The writer evidently did not know that records for events that took place before a woman's marriage will be under the woman's maiden name. All her searches for the grandmother were for "Evelyn Jewel."

4) Researching your family tree takes longer than 5 hours and can even take weeks. The columnist allotted five hours to do the research on her husband's ancestry. After running into so many problems, she contacted the help desk at Ancestry.com for some pointers and was able to find her husband's grandfather in a matter of weeks.

I admit, my own genealogical research has not been much quicker, even allowing for the time I have evidently wasted reading up on the process.

More Castles for Nic

2006-08-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Cage bought a castle in Etzelwang bei Amberg because the ancestors of his mother, Joy Vogelsang, "are all from good old Bavaria." In fact, Nic's great-great-great-grandfather Louis Vogelgesang is the only one I can identify who came from Bavaria.

Maybe Nic'll just buy a château in Alsace in memory of his great-great-great-grandmother Josephine and scoop up a Schloß or two in Prussia in memory of his mother's Muentnich and Daum ancestors. He's got a number of manors in the British Isles coming to him, too, what with his mom's Lewis, Caldwell, Ramsey, and Lockhart ancestors.

And that's just on his mom's paternal side.

I don't know anything about the background of Nic's maternal grandmother. She is 91 and living in Los Angeles so I could just ask her. Though she goes by Louise, Ancestry.com says her name is Della Murray, which, now that I think of it, does not sound particularly Bavarian.

Hat tip to The Genealogue.

Annie to Attend Moore Family Reunion?

2006-07-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

Annie Moore, that long-lost Irish gal who has the genealogy world in hyper-search mode, will probably not be attending the Moore Family Reunion in California next week. I'll be there -- Moore is my maiden name -- as will my parents, siblings, and four generations of assorted relatives.

I admit to being one of those caught up in the search for Annie that Megan fiendishly instigated. Being intimately acquainted with early 20th century New Yorkers -- I searched thousands of them for an urban history project -- I thought I would give it a go.

With my addled brain, I soon realized that I needed some kind of organization for the Annie project. Who said what and when? What's been searched? I am way too easily confused! You can check out my first attempts at organization here.

So far, Annie has eluded everyone's efforts. If she does show up at the Moore Family Reunion next week, I'll let you know.

June Allyson Dies

2006-07-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

June Allyson died Sunday. In 2001, she gave an interview on Larry King Live in which she said her name was originally Ella Van Geisman, a Dutch name. Others have decided, for no apparent reason, that she was Jewish.

The 1920 New York census lists her as Ella, daughter of Anna and Robert Geisman, a chemist. Her parents were married in 1914 at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in the Bronx by the pastor, William Junge. Her grandfather, Henry Geismann, was born in 1864 in Ahsen, then part of Prussia, and christened in the same Catholic church where his parents were married. So again, it appears that the Dutch are really Deutsch.

On her mother's side, Allyson's grandmother's ancestors were from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her maternal grandfather was named James Provost. He may have been a descendant of the early settlers of New Amsterdam, which would make him -- and June Allyson -- Dutch.
______________________________________________________
You can view the census records and more genealogy for June Allyson at Ancestry Ancestry.com

The Devil's in the Details

2006-07-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Meryl Streep reports that "Streep was a name taken by Jews in Holland in the fifteenth century." In a 1998 interview, she told us that the Streeps were originally Sephardic Jews from Spain.

That may well be true. The name Streep is Dutch. And Jews from Spain did go to Holland in the 15th century.

But when we check out the details -- by, of all things, starting with her father and working backwards -- we find that her branch wasn't even named Streep so we don't care about the origins of the Dutch Streeps.

Streep's father is Harry Streep, Jr. In the 1930 census he is with his parents Harry and Lena in Newark, NJ.

Harry Sr's WW I draft card says he was born February 5, 1884. In the 1900 census, Harry, born February 1884, is in Newark with his parents Frederick and Elizabeth who are both born in New Jersey. Their parents were from Germany and the surname is spelled Streeb. (Those of you familiar with German pronunciation are nodding right now.)

In the 1870 census, Frederick is in Elizabeth, NJ with Godfrey and Christian Streep who are both from "Whertenburg." Records from Madison Street German Presbyterian Church in New York City, where their first child was born, include the marriage of Christine Zeltmann to Gottfried Streebe in 1851.

The Wuerttemberg, Germany Emigration Index says Christine Zeltmann, who sailed in 1846, is from the town of Loffenau. Her husband may be the Gottfried Streeb reportedly born in Loffenau in 1815.

Maybe the Streeps living in Holland today descend from Spanish Jews. And maybe they think they are related to Meryl Streep. But they are not kin unless, long ago, some Dutch Streeps moved to Germany's Black Forest. Maybe the Streebs living in Loffenau today would know.

There once was a women in Prada,
Who sailed with the Spanish Armada.
She says she is Dutch.
I think - not so much.
So it turns out the devil wears nada.

______________________________________________________
You can view the draft card, emigration index, census records, and more records for Meryl Streep at Ancestry Ancestry.com

Who's My Daddy?

2006-06-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of me taken soon after I was born with a man in an army uniform. A staff seargent with some kind of communications patch on his sleeve. Palm trees in the background so it could be California. My mother says the man is my father.

Could the soldier be Marlon Brando? Brando was known to hang out in Southern California sometimes, so that's a good possibility.

Maybe my father is Italian soccer player Alessandro del Piero -- currently playing in the World Cup -- though this seems less likely since Alessandro wasn't born until 1974 and the picture appears to be somewhat earlier.

Perhaps it's Yasser Arafat in a crafty disguise.

Other likely matches are Jon Stewart, Chuck Yeager, George Clooney, and Luciano Pavarotti.

Those are the possibilities listed at myHeritage which uses "sophisticated algorithms that facilitate the use of face recognition for genealogy."

I don't have any sophisticated algorithms. To me, he looks a lot like the guy my mom has always called Fred and I've always called Dad.