reddirt2, Author at Austin-Carr.org

January 23, 2025January 23, 2025Genealogy

Our 25th Great Grandfather Responsible for Giving Bluetooth Its Name

First, let me say that some of the information I am finding on FamilySearch.org seems almost too incredulous to believe. And as expressed elsewhere, I take it all with more than a few grains of salt. I am not sure I really believe any of it, but it would be interesting to get a professional genealogist’s opinion. Having said that, FamilySearch is a well respected site for genealogy research.

I have had my DNA tested twice. With FamiyTreeDNA, my DNA is 90% British Isles excluding Ireland, nine % Italian peninsula, and very minor smatterings in the Baltics and Arabia. When I had my DNA tested via National Geographic, when they were doing such things, the results were vaguely similar except they listed my DNA as over 40% Danish or Norwegian. That makes sense as the Danes (Vikings) invaded the southeastern portion of England in the 800s and 900s, and of many of them settled there. They also invaded and settled in what is now referred to as Normandy in France. Later the Normans would invade England in 1066, in all likelihood amplifying my Viking DNA.

I have a streaming subscription to Great Courses Plus. I cannot recommend this service enough. The last couple weeks I have been watching a course on the Vikings. In that course, they mentioned that a technology we all use all the time, Bluetooth, was named after a man who was king of Denmark and Norway in the late 900s, Harald Bluetooth. The inventor of Bluetooth, Jaap Haartsen, is Dutch and the company Swedish. For some reason this name appealed to them. Look at the Bluetooth icon on one of your devices. The icon’s provenance is the Viking rune character that is the name Harald Bluetooth.

Since I have been semi-immersed in family genealogy of late, I found this Viking king’s record on FamilySearch. I then clicked the link to ascertain my relationship (if any) with this ancient Viking. He came up as my 25^th Great Grandfather, his blood eventually arriving to us via John Franklin Austin on Grandpa Austin’s mother’s side. True or not, it is interesting to contemplate.

So now you know the rest of the story.

January 17, 2025Genealogy

Perry meets His Great, Great Grandfather Schulze

And then there is Perry Schulze who is frequently insulted by the nefarious Rush Boys who call their esteemed cousin, the 6th Rush Boy.

As has been my wont of late, I was digging around in the genealogy at FamilySearch.org. Perry obviously shares one side of his heritage with the aforementioned villainous Rush Boys, but I was curious to trace his father’s side. I did not go back very far before I encountered his Great, Great Grandfather, Johann Ernst Schulz, Jr. with his second wife, Louise Schmidt, Perry’s Great, Great Grandmother in one of those stiff, family photographs from the 1800s. Someone had actually summed up his life up to his first marriage in a brief memory attached to his information at FamilySearch.

Here is that story:

A Short History of Johann Ernst Schulz, Jr. ~~ Contributed By Lanell Rabner

John Ernst Schulze was born on 27 October 1826 in Anhalt-Dessau, Königreich Sachsen. He was the son of John Ernst Schulze, Sr. and Marie Dorothea Voigt, one of seven children, two brothers and five sisters. He was baptized on April 18, 1827.

In his youth, John Ernst followed the same occupation as his father, namely, cabinet making.

As was customary at the time, all young men had to serve in the military. When he came of age and entered the army, the March 1848 revolution broke out, seeking relief from heavy taxation and political censorship.The people wanted a constitution, social justice, and electoral reform. When the revolution failed, he fled to Tsaritsyn, Russia, which eventually became Stalingrad. During this time, many Germans left, immigrating to America from Wisconsin to Texas.

When the political turmoil settled down, he returned to Anhalt-Dessau and married Dorette Els, about 1853.

This is Lanell’s narrative end.

Looking at more detail on the FamilySearch listing, I discovered that he and Dorette had one child, Louise Marie Schulze, and Dorette died (reasons unknown) in 1860. Sometime shortly after this he immigrated to the United States settling in Texas. Wow, that took a lot of courage, desperation or maybe just unawareness of the conditions. But to immigrate to this country, with a small child, during our Civil War or just after…

He married Louise Schmidt in 1867 in Texas, afterwards having a total of nine children. The nights must have been long and cold back in the day in Texas.

As I ignorantly stumble my way around the genealogy world, I have encountered some interesting stories, but I cannot help but think of how many other interesting stories have been lost forever. How little do any of us know that as we lurch through life, just trying to get through each day the best we can, that we are making history.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025Genealogy

My 11th Great Grandfather beheaded my 2nd cousin 13 times removed

Grab your salt shaker as all of this needs to taken with many, many grains of salt.

I have been playing around a lot in the genealogy at FamilySearch.org. This is the genealogy sponsored by the Church of Latter-Day Saints aka Mormons. While it is a crowd source genealogy, having just one common “family” tree that everyone contributes to. It is generally well thought of by genealogist. It does have consistency issues at times, and third party software that accesses their database does not always agree with their site… such is genealogical research and crowd sourcing. Of course, inconsistent results drive this long time programmer nuts.

As I was playing around with my lineage, I kept bumping into one English monarch or the other. Being the OLD retired Systems Analyst that I am, I decided to construct a spreadsheet to get a better picture of the relationships. I began with a list of English monarchs, some vital stats on each of them, their FamilySearch ID. I then added my relationship to them, through which grandparent, and my first ancestor of that line to step ashore in the New World. I have a link to a Google docs spreadsheet below since probably most of you do not have Excel. The spreadsheet is a work in progress.

I have connections coming down through all four of my grandparents, Austin, Carr (through the Treadwells), Rush and Collings.

I say take all this with a grain of salt for several reasons. Outside of being interesting, I am not sure what it signifies. Another is the distance of most of these relationships. For instance William the Conqueror is listed as my 24^th Great Grandfather. At this level of genealogy, my number of grandparents can be found by taking the number two to the 26^th power. So any “blood” relationship is very dilute. I read an article that estimated that William the Conqueror has 5 million living descendants running around the planet currently, not an especially elite group of Homo sapiens.

Our genealogy is a treasure trove of information, probably for two reasons. First is the connections to European nobility. They were (and are) absolutely fanatical about lineage/blood lines. Because endogamic marriages were the norm, once you find that you are related to one, you are related to half the aristocracy. Second reason is that many branches of our family tree go back to the earliest European settlers to step foot on this continent. Again there are many folks absolutely fanatical about tracing colonial genealogy. FamilySearch.org has three of my ancestors on the Mayflower, but I am not sure I am buying this one as there are multitude of issues with the lineage and folks arguing over which is correct. Again the number of Mayflower descendants is in the millions. While many of my ancestors were seeking religious freedom, I suspect more than a few were younger sons of noble families. Due the practice of primogeniture, many had to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The clergy and military were common outlets, then the New World opened up.

Put the two together and we have a genealogy going back more than a thousand years.

It would be interesting to see what a professional genealogist would make of all this, not that this tacaño would ever pay for such a thing. I suspect I would have my semi-inflated bubble burst.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet I created: English Royalty and Our Genealogy

Oh the beheading… Not to bore you too much if you remember your English history, but there was a brief period (1649 to 1660) when they overthrew the monarchy in Britain and established a republic. Oliver Cromwell (11^th great grandfather) was the head of the revolt and the republic. He had the disposed king, Charles I (my 2nd cousin 13 times removed), beheaded. Interestingly, when they overthrew the republic and Charles II (husband of my 2nd cousin ten times removed) assumed the monarchy, he had Oliver Cromwell’s body dug up and the corpse beheaded.

Of course, when I think of my personal genealogy I think of the picture of my mother’s grandfather, John Franklin Austin, and his family, including my grandmother, that is in the Oklahoma History Museum. They had come down out of the Arkansas mountains (Pope County) for a better life sharecropping in Tom Joad country aka around Sallisaw, Oklahoma. A family legend I would like to verify is that my great grandfather Austin left Shelbyville, Illinois due to a shooting when he was discovered in the bed of a married woman. I am not sure how to prove or disprove this tale. They must have been fairly well off in Shelbyville as his father has an impressive tombstone (for the times) in the Austin cemetery in Shelbyville.

Just as an aside, I am attempting to train my wife to address me as Sir David of Snottingham.

January 9, 2025January 9, 2025Genealogy

My 4th Great Grandfather pardoned of his crimes

John Pugh is my 4th Great Grandfather who lived from 1744 to 1819. His daughter was Peninah Pugh, whose daughter was Matilda B Nichols, whose son was John Franklin Austin, whose daughter was Minnie Mae Austin, whose daughter is Wilma Juanita Carr, whose son is me.

I forget what I was reading, but it mentioned the 1819 novel by Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe. I realized that I had not read this novel which was a little surprising as I love the literature of the 1800s. Two of my favorite authors, the Englishman, Charles Dickens, and the Russian, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote in this time period.

So I checked out the audio book, Ivanhoe, from the library and I have been listening to it. The novel is set in England after the Norman Conquest. As an aside, that conquest is the primary reason there are so many French words in a Germanic language like English. The novel has mentioned several times the English King, Alfred the Great, who lived from 849 to 899.

Out of curiosity, I hopped onto the FamilySearch.org website to see if I had some connection to this king. The genealogy site is stating that he is my 26^th great grandfather. I take all this sort of thing with several grains of salt for a couple reasons. First, while FamilySearch is very well thought of in genealogy circles, it is a crowd source site. I have stumbled on to a few errors. For a while it had me connected to Pocahontas, but that would come and go. Two contributors are arguing about one individual in the chain of descendants. One would put him in, the other would take him out. The second reason is that at the 26^th generational level everyone has 2 to the 28^th power grandparents. That is a big number. I will let you grab your calculator.

I then started tracing the chain backwards from ancestors that I knew were right when I came across this statement on John Pugh’s record:

I for one, could not go on without learning more. Attached to his FamilySearch record was this source document:

This document mentions the Hillsborough Riot, an episode of colonial history that I have never heard of. All this happened in North Carolina in 1770. Essentially he was part of a political action group known as The Regulators. For various reasons, they were protesting the local government when the protest got a bit out of hand. A year later there was a “battle” between The Regulators and the colonial militia.

You can read about this interesting bit of side history here:

Hillsborough Riot (1770)

Battle of Alamance (1771)

Searching the genealogy/family history has me gleefully stumbling across all these gems.

December 29, 2024Genealogy

Carr Family Mystery

I have been playing around a bit with my genealogy on FamilySearch.org. It has been extremely interesting, but I have a mystery or two. Truth be told I have several things in the public records that have left holes in my understanding of the genealogy.

My great grandfather is Robert Anderson Carr, the father of Thomas Henry Carr, who is the father of my mother. He was interesting in himself, as he seemed to have moved a bunch when moving around was a big chore. He was born in Tennessee… I believe to a John Carr and Louisa Jane Carr. I am not sure they are the right parents and the tree ends there. John was from North Carolina and Louisa from Tennessee. They married in Wayne, North Carolina. The three, John Carr, Louisa J. Carr and Robert A. Carr are probably found in the 1870 US Census living in Georgia. Robert went on to marry an Alabama girl, Mahala (Mahalia) Weaver and they had their first child in Alabama. Robert A. is next found in Pope County, AR.

John Carr was 40 years plus older than Louisa, but I cannot find an earlier marriage for him. Strangely enough, the document “ratifying” their marriage was a document used to legitimize the marriage of former slaves or people of color or mixed blood, definitely a mystery there.

Mahala died at 18, probably due to childbirth, but there is no record of that. The birth year of her second child matches her death year.

Robert went on to marry a second time to Nancy Caroline Treadwell and they had a passel of kids together.

My mystery is what happened to his first two children with Mahala. They are Lourindia Carr born in 1878 and Dora Leon Carr born in 1881. Lourindia can be found on the 1880 US Census in Pope County, AR with Robert Anderson Carr. Then the two girls disappear until marriage certificates are found. I would assume they lived with Robert and Nancy, but there is no record. Part of the issue is the 1890 US Census was destroyed by fire before microfilm or digitization.

There must have been a decent relationship there as Lourindia had six kids. She named one son Robert and another Anderson. I wonder what her husband did as they moved all over Oklahoma. Her sister Dora was more settled, having 8 children and living her whole life in Arkansas, specifically Pope County.

Just as an aside: You should check out FamilySearch.org. It is a genealogy site ran the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons. But do not let that throw you, it is a well regarded site. I am concurrently watching an online course on genealogy, and the professor, definitively not a Mormon, frequently refers to it. AND IT IS FREE.

It differs from Ancestry.com and a lot of the for profit sites as it is a single, collaborative (crowd sourced) family tree, as opposed to everyone building their own trees.

Give it a shot. You might surprised by what you find. I know I was which is why I have started referring to myself as Sir David of Snottingham.

July 6, 2022USS Samuel B. Roberts

Samuel B Roberts: The Destroyer Escort That Fought Like a Battleship

June 26, 2022USS Paul H. Carr, USS Samuel B. Roberts

Video Reveals Wreck of USS Samuel B Roberts Found! WW2 Destroyer Escort DE-413

A video of the “Sammy B” 4 miles down and a bit of the story of the discovery

June 26, 2022Paul H. Carr, USS Paul H. Carr, USS Samuel B. Roberts

Graphic video reenactment of the USS Samuel B Roberts last battle

June 26, 2022September 18, 2024USS Paul H. Carr, USS Samuel B. Roberts

USS Samuel B. Roberts shipwreck found

This is a huge deal for my family. As readers of my blog may know this is the ship, USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413), that my Uncle Paul died on during WW II. He was the gunnery captain on aft 5 inch gun that blew up after the ship lost power and they were firing and loading manually. For his bravery in this action he received the Silver Star and for 30 years there was a missile frigate, the USS Paul Henry Carr (FFG-52) floating around the seas on various naval missions. Quite an honor for my uncle and for our family.