Unknown but remembered

I had the good fortune this past month to be in London. On a visit to Westminster Abbey, this bell caught my eye, hanging near the grave of the unknown warrior. “HMS Verdun” brought to mind an inherited piece of jewelry, a gold cross that came to me on the death of my father’s cousin’s wife, May Patterson.

“It’s a cross made from the wedding rings of her first marriage,” Dad said. “He died in WWI.”

The cross is heavy — solid gold, it would seem — and bears the inscription Verdun, France, 1918. At first, I wondered if he’d died at sea somehow? Had the HMS Verdun sunk? Back home, I dug deeper. No, the HMS Verdun didn’t sink, it was chosen to carry the remains of the unknown British warrior from France across the English Channel to his final resting place at Westminster Abbey. According to Wikipedia, here’s why:

Verdun was selected to carry the Unknown Warrior across the English Channel because her name would be a tribute to the French people and the endurance of their armies at Verdun in 1916.

1916? Then how had May’s first husband died at Verdun in 1918? On Wikipedia, I clicked on Battle of Verdun, a terrible siege from February 21 to December 18, 1916 the longest battle of the war. Two years later, in the fall of 1918, the tide turned. The American First Army troops had entered the war and joined the French Fourth Army in attacking the Germans “on a front from Moronvilliers to the Meuse on 26 September 1918.” The offensive put the German army in retreat, the beginning of the end.

From previous research, I’d learned May’s full name: Ada May Bowden Herner Patterson. Now I searched for a male Herner married to a female Bowden in Ohio on Family Search, where I discovered a marriage certificate: Leslie Herner married May Bowden on the 23rd of April, 1918. Five days later, he entered into service as an Infantryman in the U.S. Army. So sad. They had just five days together as husband and wife. A search for — “Leslie Ray Herner” 1918 obituary — on Google turned up the rest:


from Roster of Cuyahoga County Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Wounded in Action, Killed in Action, Died of Wounds [or] Gassed.

Leslie was 29 years old at the time of his death. May turned 29 a month later. Thirteen years later, she married again but remain childless. She outlived her first husband by 58 years. Leslie Ray Herner is not an “unknown warrior.” His cross stands in the graveyard of the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial. Still, it feels important to remember, albeit 105 years later, their sacrifice and loss, like that of so many other unsung heroes.

What horror

While writing about Scotland in the mid-1700s, I’m always on the lookout for primary sources, that is, accounts written on or near the time an event took place. This morning I was browsing for one “gallant Scotus” who died at the Battle of Culloden. I found him: Donald 4th MacDonell of Scotus 1705-1746. Not much else, yet.

Just below him on the queue was Creator: MacDonald, Donald, d.1746 “A genuine account of the behaviour, confession, and dying words, of the three Scots Rebels, viz. Donald MacDonald, James Nicholson; and Walter Ogilvie. (all officers in the Young Pretender’s service) who were executed the 22d day of August 1746 for high treason”

In it there are various points of view about the 1745 rising, motivations for joining, who is responsible for war atrocities, as well as loyalties and regrets over its failure. I try not to take sides, but this one got me riled.

What horror. The men named above were accused of treason for following the “popish Pretender” Prince Charles Edward Stuart, which they did, but also accused of a list of heinous crimes — “a black Train of Murders, Slaughters, Rapes, and Villainies of All Sorts to the innocent and peaceable,” which numerous historical accounts record did not happen. Just the opposite. While there may have been rare exceptions, the rebel army soldiers of the 1745 Jacobite rising went out their way to be respectful to all citizens and behave with dignity.

The sentence carried out on three of the four men:

That you must be drawn to the Place of Execution, where you must be hanged by your Necks, but not until you are dead; for you must be cut down alive, your Heads must be severed from your Bodies, your Bowels must be taken out and burnt before your Faces. And your Body must be divided in four Quarters; and these must be at the King’s Disposal.

Oh, “And God Almighty be merciful to your souls.” Since the King most certainly isn’t.

Genealogy tip: Google Alerts

Do you know about the Google Alerts feature in your Google account? I first learned about it when blogging for genealogy research. I mentioned Johann Rapparlie in a post, and someone researching the Rapparlie surname contacted me. She and I had a beneficial exchange. I shared Rapparlie’s letter translations with her, and she shared a ton of Rapparlie surname research with me.

What exactly is Google Alerts? Follow these instructions on this Family Search blog to get started. Once you enter your keyword(s), Google will alert you via email when new content on that keyword appears.

One of my Google Alerts is the title of my historical novel, The Last of the Blacksmiths. (My publisher recommended I do this.) A couple of times a month, I receive an email about websites where those key words are found. In this way, “last blacksmiths” scroll through my inbox queue regularly. A few recent examples:

November 29, 2022: Robert Kelly Remembers His Grandfather Dick Bulmer, the last traditional blacksmith in Victoria County.

November 10, 2022: Meet One of the Last Blacksmiths in Israel. Walied Khoury is one of only eight traditional blacksmiths in all of Israel.

August 28, 2022: Blacksmiths Pinning Hopes on Eid-ul-Azha Sales. Afghanistan blacksmiths see in increase in sales of butchery knives at the time of Eid-ul-Azha, a Muslim Holy Festival.

August 2, 2022: The Last Titans: Kashmir’s Once Famous Master Blacksmiths Are On Their Way Out.

Of course, other “last blacksmith”-related emails arrive too: blacksmith characters that appear in Evil Dead and other multiplayer games, Blacksmiths Lacrosse, a team out of Luxembourg, Lego blacksmith village sets on sale for Black Friday, etc. Those are equally of interest. They cause me to reflect on blacksmith mythology, how the grit and sweat of the ancient craft is gradually being subsumed.

As a book title, The Last of the Blacksmiths receives pushback from blacksmiths still engaged in the craft today. My intent is not to dismiss their impressive work. In fact, around the world there is increased interest in blacksmithing. That said, traditional blacksmithing has almost completely died out.

Once upon a time, blacksmiths were the underpinnings of society for just about everything, from farm tools to wagons to knives to nails. They were society’s troubleshooters before the age of machines and technology set in. When remembering his grandfather Dick Bulmer, Robert Kelly explains:

[Grandfather] made his living fabricating whatever people needed. Many of his older customers wanted parts for old farm equipment—threshing machines, combines, hay rakes, and so on. They would come in and bring or describe what they needed, and Dick would sketch a picture on the back of an old envelope. Once they figured it out together, he would get to work at the forge.

I recommend a look at the entire article about Dick Bulmer. It gives a flavor of traditional blacksmithing and the vital role blacksmiths played in communities of old.

Are Irish Palatines really a thing?

I’m currently studying Highland Gaels due to a branch of my family ancestry, and also as the subject of my next historical novel. In the process, I’ve happened upon the Hidden Glen Folk School, established by Dr. Michael Newton, Ph.D. to recover the best of Highland Gaelic tradition through Gaelic histories, songs, stories, poems, language, and practices. The school has been a breakthrough for me as I endeavor to sort through distinctions between Highland Scots, Lowland Scots, and the Scots-Irish.

Through a Hidden Glen classmate, I’ve learned something not on my radar — the “Irish Palatines.” Seriously? Irish Germans? Is that really a thing? Yes, it is.

The term Palatines, or people of the Palatinate (German Pfalz), refers to people living in a region of southwest Germany. According to Britannica,

The Rhenish Palatinate included lands on both sides of the middle Rhine River between its Main and Neckar tributaries. Its capital until the 18th century was Heidelberg. … The boundaries of the Palatinate varied with the political and dynastic fortunes of the counts palatine.

Did they ever. This Sunday, April 3, I’ll be presenting a webinar on the topic Explore the Rhineland-Palatinate for the Irish Palatine Special Interest group of the Ontario Genealogical Society and will give an overview of those “political and dynastic fortunes,” wars, religious persecutions, and more. (Click here for more info and to register.)

Now for the Irish part. In the early 1700s in the Palatinate, after devastating scorched-earth wars, famine, and religious persecution, many Palatines had grown desperate. Enter Protestant Queen Anne of England (1702-1714) who viewed the Protestant Palatines as victims of religious persecution, and also sought to increase the number of Protestant subjects then in Ireland. Meanwhile, due to reports that a better life awaited in North America, the thoughts of the Palatine peasants “were turned toward America [in part] through what seemed like an invitation from Queen Anne of England to settle in her transatlantic colonies.” [from Don Heinrich Tolzmann’s book, The German American Experience, p. 57] By October of 1709 about 15,000 Palatines had voyaged to London with hopes of settling in British America. They became known by the English as the “poor Palatines.” Never mind that fewer than half were Palatines.

No more than half of the so-called German Palatines originated in the namesake Electoral Palatinate, with others coming from the surrounding imperial states of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and Nassau-Saarbrücken, the Margraviate of Baden, the Hessian Landgraviates of Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Homburg, Hesse-Kassel, the Archbishoprics of Trier and Mainz, and various minor counties of Nassau, Sayn, Solms, Wied, and Isenburg. [From German Palatines, on Wikipedia]

Also never mind that they weren’t all Protestants. Apparently some 2,000 were Catholics (from Wikipedia “German Palatines,” see link above). In any event,

Over 800 families, comprising more than 3000 people, were sent on to Ireland between September 1709 and January 1710. Most left again within a few years, for England or America, but 150 families settled in Rathkeale, County Limerick and thrived in the production of hemp, flax and cattle. A second successful settlement of Palatine families took hold near Gorey in Co. Wexford around the same period. [from Goethe Institute’s “Irish Palatines”]

These persons were among the first wave of Palatine emigrants. Surnames of the persons sent to Ireland in this era can be found at the Library Ireland website.

Scotswomen and whisky

These days, it’s my understanding that men are primarily behind the distilling of whisky (Scottish spelling). I believed it had always been so until a few years back when I attended a storytelling session presented by the Seattle Scots Gaelic Society. The story (told to us by the seanchaichd (bard) in Gaelic, then repeated in English) went something like this:

There once was an old woman well-known for the fine quality of her whisky. She had just completed a small home batch when she happened to glance out the window and saw the village baillie and the excise man coming down the lane. Snatching up the bottle of whisky, she swaddled it in a baby tartan. When the men knocked on her door, she answered it cradling the “bairn.”

“Oh,” the baillie said, “I heard you’ve just become a grandmother. Congratulations. Let’s have a look at the wee bairn.”

“Shush, she’s sleeping, you mustn’t wake her,” the old woman said.

She invited the men in, but managed to distract them from their search by singing and cooing a sweet lullaby to the bairn in her arms. (Here the storyteller sang a song in Gaelic, about the bairn’s golden hair and warm, sweet qualities.)
The men left none the wiser, the old woman’s fine whisky spared.

At the end, we all enjoyed a good chuckle. The story also gave me pause. How odd, I thought. A woman distilling whisky in her home? Can that be right? Didn’t men build illicit stills in hidden nooks and crannies of the hills? This idea came from a visit to the Abriachan Forest in the Highlands, to a former illicit still dug into a hillside, neatly hidden from excise-collectors’ eyes.

Entrance to the hidden whisky still in the Abriachan forest

Recently, I happened upon a thesis by Sandra White titled “Smugglers and Excisemen: The History of Whisky in Scotland, 1644 to 1823.” Color me surprised, the story of the old woman was not odd in the least. It turns out whisky making in the Highlands used to be the woman’s job. “Uisge-beatha” or “water of life” is the Scots Gaelic term for whisky. Whisky was considered good for the health, especially in cold, damp climates. It was offered to visitors as a sign of hospitality. It was used as medicine, and in the making of herbal tonics. It was also an important source of income. “Housewives could sell excess whisky for cash, and whisky was also used to pay rents to landowners, to trade for other essential items, or to buy new farm equipment or animals.” Women took their whisky distilling responsibility seriously. Sandra White writes:

A woman was judged by her ability to produce enough whisky to keep her family and guests supplied throughout the year. When a marriage occurred in a community, the women were expected to provide enough whisky to flow throughout the evening. … Whisky was not intended to be consumed for inebriation. However, during social occasions, large quantities of whisky could be consumed in celebration to the point of drunkenness. And if there was not enough whisky for the entire evening, the women of the community were considered poor wives because it was part of their household chores to produce enough good quality whisky for all occasions.

This information does not seem to be widely known, another instance of the disappearance of the roles women have played in history. But not entirely lost. Check out this article about two women of the Cumming family who were instrumental in the success of Scotland’s Cardhu Distillery. Per Cumming family history, this account of one of Helen Cumming’s encounters with excisemen is not-so-weirdly similar to the old woman’s story recounted above.

‘On one occasion, when brewing, [Helen] was warned that [excisemen] were approaching. There was just enough time to hide the distilling apparatus, to substitute the materials of bread-making, and to smear her arms and hands with flour. When the knock came at the door, she opened it with a welcoming smile and the words: “Come awa’ ben, I’m just baking.’
[excerpted from an article by Richard Woodard found at Scotchwhiskey.com’s “Whiskey Heroes” section]

Helen’s ruse strikes me as especially clever — baking in the house would offer a plausible excuse for the steady smoke rising from her chimney. (Whisky making requires a constant heat source so the appearance of excess smoke was often a giveaway for the location of illicit stills in the Highlands.)

For more on women and distilling, there’s a book titled Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey about the influence of women in brewing and distilling from ancient (Mesopotamian) times to the present.

Happy New Year and cheers! Slàinte mhath!

What a find! One million Scottish records online

Back in 2015 I visited the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness where I was fortunate to get a glimpse of kirk (church) session mid-18th century minutes from Inverness-shire. Sad fact: I had only one afternoon to research. I was slavishly grateful to the librarian who made .pdfs of a few pages from the 1740 Croy Parish minutes.

Six years later, with many diversions along the way, I’m returning to work on the book about the Scots Gaelic migrants to Ohio. A lot can happen on the internet in six years. A lot can happen in six months! Yesterday I browsed again for information on 18th century kirk sessions, and found this news article in the March 17, 2021 issue of The Scotsman.

The stories of those who faced the wrath of the church in Scotland – from those drunk on the Sabbath to parents of children born out of wedlock – are being brought to life after hundreds of years.

More than one million pages of minutes from the Kirk Session of the Church of Scotland have gone online as a major project by National Records of Scotland comes to fruition.

They show how the ‘morality police’ punished ungodly behaviour as well as how the Church was involved in supporting the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.

Where?! Where online?! One million + records are now up and running at ScotlandsPeople. A search for kirk session minutes in the Moy and Dalacrossie Parish are there. I honed in on 1745-1746, the time of the Jacobite rising (right, the one portrayed in “Outlander”), but they stop in 1745. In 1748, there’s a note that the minutes of 1746-1747 were lost due to the “Troubles.” Sigh. Another casualty of that sad time in Highland history.

Yonder in the pawpaw patch

NEWS FLASH: It’s pawpaw season.

Huh?! If you’re anything like me, you may never have heard of the pawpaw. Growing up in Ohio, I may have been around pawpaw trees plenty of times but not recognized them for what they were. The existence of pawpaw trees, and the late summer season when they bear edible fruit, only blipped onto my radar in 2018 during my history research of the Northeastern states.

At the time, I was planning a bicycle trip on the C&O Canal Trail and Great Allegheny Passage Trail. (My blog posts about that trip start here.)

A section of the C&O Trail in Maryland passes through the Paw Paw Tunnel. What a strange name, I thought. Reading up on it on Wikipedia, I learned the following:

The Paw Paw Tunnel is a 3,118-foot-long (950 m) canal tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) in Allegany County, Maryland. Located near Paw Paw, West Virginia, it was built to bypass the Paw Paw Bends, a six-mile (9.7 km) stretch of the Potomac River containing five horseshoe-shaped bends. The town, the bends, and the tunnel take their name from the pawpaw trees that grow prolifically along nearby ridges.

Pawpaw trees? I was curious enough that, while bicycling through the region, I asked a local bicyclist what she knew about pawpaw trees, although with little success. (She had next to nothing to say on that subject, but was quite garrulous regarding Christ her savior.)

I’ve since learned the pawpaw tree bears an edible fruit in the end of summer and early autumn. By happenstance, right about now. It’s good timing, therefore, that Belt Publishing has just released The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook by Sarah Bir. From the website:

What’s a pawpaw you ask? It’s a fruit, and also a challenge, locus of folklore and desire. A variant of the “custard apple” family, pawpaws exude a tropical air but grow wild north of Florida, east of the Mississippi, and south of Canada … They are fleshy and awkward to to eat, sweetly fragrant, and do not travel well at all. They are beloved by foragers, keepers of regional food traditions, and anyone seeking relief from the industrial food chain.

Shortly after my copy of the book arrived, I flew off on a short visit to southern Ohio for a couple of days of research and time with family. I read the book cover to cover on the plane. It’s a delight. And in a mysterious synchronicity, while in Ohio I managed to finally see a pawpaw tree with the fruit ripening on its branches. FYI, if you happen to be yonder in the pawpaw patch, the 23rd Annual Pawpaw Festival is happening September 17-19 in Albany, Ohio, where you can apparently enjoy all things pawpaw.

Pikemen and oar-wielders

So many family histories are written by and about men, so we often miss out on good stories about our female ancestors.

Sadly, I’m not finding much info on my great grandmother, “Salome Anna Elizabeth Line Lindsey,” a woman my mother always referred to as “Annie Line.” (Was it originally Anna E. Line? Seems like a game of telephone, right?) Her lineage, though, is fascinating–to my surprise she was of Swiss German descent through and through.

What I’ve found so far goes back to the 1600s, to her 4x great grandfather Heinrich Zimmerman of the Canton of Bern, who once served in King Louis XIV’s French army as a pikeman. Pikeman? That’s right. Swiss pikemen were mercenary soldiers. Heinrich belonged to an elite guard skilled at wielding a 16’4″ spear, or pike.

Annie Line’s 4x great-grandmother, Salome Rufener, wasn’t half bad herself.

In 1706 Heinrich Zimmerman joined in a struggle against the [ruling class of the] Canton of Bern. This, as usual, miscarried, and he and his wife and two children had … to seek safety in flight. … They stole off in the night, … making for the border. By the next daylight they were near the Lake of Thun, where Heinrich had secured a boat. … [Two hussars were in pursuit.] His wife and the [two] children were in the boat, but just as [Heinrich] reached the boat, [a Hussar] caught him by the skirt of his coat. Salome rose to the occasion, and by a well-directed blow with an oar, laid him sprawling. Heinrich sprang aboard. She pushed off, and they were safe.*

Hurray for Salome!

Heinrich’s struggle against the government of the Canton of Bern led me to a deep dive into his possible motives. At the time there was a good deal of persecution against the Mennonites in Bern. Then too, Heinrich may have objected to unfair treatment of regular citizens by the ruling oligarchy. Whatever the case, he and Salome made good their escape and they and their two young sons arrived in Germantown, Pennsylvania circa 1706.

I’ve digested enough history about the Central Alps and Swiss Germans to Pennsylvania that I’ve designed another talk, From Pikeman to Pennsylvania: Swiss Ancestral Origins. Click on the link for the full description of this talk and others.

*Excerpted from Edmund Sawyer Walker, A.M., “Genealogical Notes of the Carpenter Family Including the Autobiography, and Personal Reminiscences of Dr. Seymour D. Carpenter” (1907; Springfield, Illinois: Illinois State Journal Co.) This family history narrative, and many others of Zimmerman / Carpenter descent, is available here.

Coming this summer – two worthy international conferences

Historical Novel Society North America 2021 conference

I’ll be presenting at the June 21-27 Historical Novel Society North America Conference, a full week of online activities where attendees can learn, share, connect, and inspire. Over 80 panels, presentations, and cozy chats, plus master classes, author spotlights, book clubs, conversation rooms, and social events. You can also sign up for agent pitches, query critiques, and the Blue Pencil Cafe. My topic is “All Is Not Lost: Making the Most of your Research.” Click here for the full program of events and offerings. Registration is now open.

2021 International German Genealogy Conference

Coming in July: International German Genealogy Partnership (IGGP) conference. I be presenting two talks: one on “Explore the Rhineland Palatinate,” the other — “Following the Trail: Emigrant letters of the 19th Century” with my German colleague Angela Weber. Held online in real time July 17-24, presentations will also be available to watch at home at your convenience for the next six months, through December. This conference is the third one offered by the IGGP. They’re well organized and have a great line up of offerings. Don’t miss out! Registration deadline May 1.

18th century Highland weddings and recipes

In researching my Highland Scots ancestors, I was excited to see this map again. This “Scotland of Old” map is cropped from a photo I took when visiting the Pacific Northwest Highland Games at Enumclaw back in 2016. (The event will be virtual this year. Check out info here.) 

When I was growing up, this map hung at the end of our bedroom hallway (as a child, it scared me — it looked like a witch flying through the air on a broom, her cape flying out behind her). My dad hung it in our hall because of his Patterson ancestry. His surname stemmed back through his paternal line to Highland Scots, Patterson being a sept of Clan Chattan, which also encompassed Mackintoshes, McPhersons, Nobles, and others in our ancestry too. Dad was descended of Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots who immigrated to Columbiana County, Ohio circa 1804.

I’ve been working for some time now on a deep dive into the 18th century world of these Highland Gaels in order to write a historical novel about their lives. As I attempt to re-create what life was like in those times, the tiniest of details hang me up, sometimes for hours. A simple wedding scene, for instance, becomes complex on many levels.

First, because the Scottish Highlands are not one cohesive culture. The designation of “Highlands” refers to the north and west on the map above, where the larger, spacious clan boundaries are found. (The denser areas to the south and east indicate the Scottish Lowlands, more commercially connected with England to the south, and much earlier to shift to English as the predominant language.) The Highlands topography to the north and west is rife with deep glens, lakes, and snow-capped mountains, so when it comes to weddings, superstitions, and lore, the remoteness of populations led to a variety of customs. So there’s no one right answer, other than, “it depends.”

It is my good fortune that Aeneas Mackintosh of Moy wrote an 18th century account of wedding traditions in the Strathdearn valley where my book is partially set. On the morning of the wedding, Mackintosh wrote, the celebrants leave for the church,

being dressed, the Bridegroom first (preceded by a Bag pipe) having a young man on each side of him, next comes the bride with her two Maids, proceed for church; when the ceremony is over, and the partys come out, pistols and guns are fired over their heads by their acquaintances who then join, and a Cake broke over the Brides head, when a great Struggle is made for a piece of it.

Glorious, right? Gunshots and a riotous melee? The scene is exuberant and what one might expect of the Highlands. But the mention of a Cake made me wonder. What kind of Cake? Certainly, the author did not mean the elaborate tiered cakes standard at weddings of today. The quest to learn more led me to a delightful find. At archive.org, I came across a recipe book — “Cookery and Pastry” — written in 1783 by Mrs. MacIver “Teacher of those arts in Edinburgh,” wherein I found a slew of 18th century Scottish recipes — for hare soup, for broiling pigeons whole, and yes, for a yeast shortbread cake that might even come close to the mark.