Sunday, January 16, 2011

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ancestral Name List Roulette

1) How old is one of your grandfathers now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel"). Who is that person?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick a grandmother, or yourself, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!



I used my maternal grandfather for this exercise, his name is Thomas Thurman Rodgers (born in 1928). My whole number comes out (when rounded up) to 21 and my ancestor that fits that number is my 2nd-great-grandmother Josephine Domagalski.

A few years ago, I knew practically nothing about Josephine nor had ever seen a picture of her. Today, I have two.. maybe three.. pictures of her and I know much much more about her! :)

Fact 1: She is the only child (and the eldest) out of her eleven siblings to have been born in Medina, Orleans County, New York. The rest of her eleven siblings were born in Chicago.

Fact 2: According to the 1930 census, she was living with her family at 6019 S. Fairfield Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

Fact 3: She died in the now closed and supposedly haunted Manteno State Hospital in Kankakee County, Illinois.