Roger’s Ramblings » Family

Rochester Rendezvous

Roger — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:04:15 +0000

On our way to Bar Harbor, Maine, we stopped in Rochester, New York, to visit my cousin Martin Lineham and his family.

Rochester is about 9 hours drive – 560 miles (900 km)- from Grand Rapids when travelling via Cleveland, so we left a bit after 0830 and got to Rochester about 1730 (5:30 PM). We had a very enjoyable evening with Martin, his wife Nancy and their daughter Grace, and Nancy’s Mum Mary. Roger grilled chicken, hot dogs and shrimps, then we looked over a bunch of family photos, showed Grace some of her genealogy, and eventually to bed. Monday morning more of the same, then down to check out Martin and Nancy’s offices, then the drive to Hartford, Connecticut this (Memorial Day Monday) afternoon – 336 miles (540 km).

Out in the Cooper-Lineham back yard for pre-dinner appetisers while Roger cooked dinner on the Grill. Mary Cooper, Lisa Christensen, Nancy Cooper, Grace Lineham, Martin Lineham, Roger Moffat

More pictures below…

Swim Meet 12 February 2010

Roger — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:18:20 +0000

12 February 2010 was the West Michigan Swim League “A” Meet for 11 and over, held at Byron Center High School on the Friday evening. Kyle was in a relay and 2 individual races. He came second in both his races, beating his personal best both times.

The YouTube videos are below.

Kyle 50 Yards Butterfly. Kyle in Lane 5 (4th from the bottom) finishes a close second in a personal best time of 29.04 seconds

Kyle 100 Yards Freestyle. Kyle in Lane 5 gets a slow start, but fights hard to catch up and finishes second, taking nearly 5 seconds off his time, AND the first time under 1 minute for this event. Pay Up Dad!!!!!

And here’s half of the cheering gallery – my arm wasn’t long enough to hold the camera far enough away to include me, and Bev and George who were seated to my right.

Part of Kyle's Fan Club - Lisa, Kurt and Ann

Swim Meet 23 Jan 2010

Roger — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:22:25 +0000

23 January 2010 was another Age Group Swim Meet for Kyle and Zoe. This time it was at Rockford, Michigan. Kyle and Zoe both swam. The YouTube videos are below.

Zoe 50 Yards Backstroke. Zoe, 3rd from bottom in Lane 4 (the gap in the video is Uncle Roger pressing the wrong button on the camera at the wrong time). Zoe wins her Heat in 47.09 seconds.

Kyle 50 Yards Butterfly. Kyle is in Lane 4, diving in over the orange cap of the swimmer from the previous race. Kyle wins this heat in 30.94 seconds – not quite up to his 30.18 from 2 weeks ago – a better turn would have helped.

Zoe 50 Yards Breaststroke. Zoe is in Lane 2 at the bottom of the picture. She won this heat, but less time looking across the pool would have given her a bit faster time . 1:01.82 – hey it’s still waaaaaay better than I could even think of doing!!!!

Kyle 50 Yards Backstroke. Kyle is at the bottom in Lane 2 – a great start and then an easy swim sees Kyle winning this Heat in a good time of 35.11 seconds- more than 5 seconds ahead of anyone else.

Great Job Kids!!!!!!!!! See you next weekend

Yet Another Olde Photo

Roger — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:08:29 +0000

This one is perhaps the most difficult one so far. It starts out as a tiny 2 ½ x 3 ¼ print, so there’s not a lot to work with getting started…

Before and After showing progess of Restoration

Still quite a bit of work to do yet on this one.

Swim Meet 9 Jan

Roger — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:13:31 +0000

Saturday 9 January was the Quad Swim Meet for Byron Center, Zeeland, Rockford and a team called “Heat”, although I don’t remember what school they were. This is part of the West Michigan Swim League.

Zoe wasn’t swimming today – she was a Church Camp, but Kyle competed in a Relay and 2 Individual events.

50 Yards Butterfly…

Kyle finished a close second in this one.

100 Yards Freestyle

Kyle won this race very easily, but his time was second overall – the winner of the first race was 7 seconds faster.

A couple of other shots here, including an “action” diving shot.

Another Olde Photo

Roger — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:30:01 +0000

This one took a LOT of work. Not helped by a very inopportune Photoshop crash

Before and After of Olde Photo

A lot of work with Adobe Photoshop CS4 to get the left version to the right version – all from an original that is 3 ¼ x 2 ½ inches.

Fixing Olde Photographs

Roger — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:22:36 +0000

Here are a couple of before and after shots of some olde photos I’ve fixed up for a friend.

Young Pat Smith

Young Pat Smith's Sister

After scanning the photos it was lots of time with the tools available in Photoshop to Clone, Heal and Patch the damage. The second photo had been torn nearly through and then “fixed” with sellotape at some stage in the long ago past – what a mess!!! It kind of reminded me of watching the curators work on the Dead Sea Scrolls some years ago when we saw them at the Field Museum in Chicago – gently scraping away the decades olde tape that had been put on them.

Halloween 2009

Roger — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:25:57 +0000

Halloween 2009 was at Kurt and Ann’s house again. Everybody got into the spirit, and a great time was had by all. Even Balto the Brittany reluctantly got into his costume – a glow in the dark set of ribs and skull cap.

As usual there was lots of good food, and even the pavlova I made got into it by having black (or very dark purple) filling and orange whipped cream on it. It looked a bit odd, but tasted just like it should.

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Zoe with her "parents"." rel="lightbox[set_15]" >

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An Ancestor Honoured…

Roger — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:43:09 +0000

Yesterday in my partial stupor of fever and other side effects induced by an insect bite, that looks likely it was a deer tick bite with the ensuing Lyme Disease I watched “Gods and Generals” – the first of the 3 epic parts of the book series by Jeffrey Shaara and his father Michael Shaara that covers the Civil War. Some years ago I had seen Gettysburg which was from the book by his father. Gods and Generals was written as a prequel to this.

The last major battle portrayed in Gods and Generals is The Battle of Chancellorsville which Lisa’s great great grandfather Frederick Heinrich Tönsing took part in as a Private in Company B of the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry – an all German outfit, with initially at least all German Officers that was raised in Cleveland during the Summer of 1862. Later in the War the German (speaking) Officers were replaced with English (speaking) Officers.

The Flying Dutchmen

Frederick Heinrich Tönsing was born in Germany in 1841 and emigrated to the United States in 1857 arriving at Baltimore, and then moving to Cleveland. He enlisted for the Civil War in August of 1862. He was injured by a sabre cut to his hand at the Battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863. He moved with his unit to Gettysburg and took part in the Battle of Gettysburg on the first day – July 1st 1863 – and was shot in the upper thigh by a minnie ball which required amputation of his right leg very near the top of the leg.

The overall impression from his Civil War Pension file was that he spent the rest of his life until 1918 arguing with the Veterans Adminstration that his pension was insufficient, and that the artificial legs they provided were of no use because the stump was too short for him to be able to wear the legs.

Frederick Heinrich Tönsing’s page on Lisa’s genealogy can be found here.

In 2006, while on a trip to Richmond, Virginia for the Clan Moffat Society AGM we visited the site of the Battle of Chancellorsville for a morning on our way back home, touring the area, and visiting the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park Visitor Center at Chancellorsville.

Lisa reading a Descriptive Sign

Apart from an eery sense (but likely VERY far from the reality) of what must have happened there 143 years earlier, we came home with 2 acorns picked up under a giant oak tree which we’ve “hatched” and now have 2 small oak trees here on our place in Caledonia.

The Mighty Oak at Chancellorsville

Perhaps Frederick had seen this same oak tree when he was there.

What event or person inspired you to start your genealogy research?

Roger — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:49:40 +0000

Randy Seaver at GeneaMusings asks:

“What event or person inspired you to start your genealogy research?”

For me it was in early 1989, a few months after I’d bought my first Macintosh computer in November 1988. I attended a Moffat family Reunion in Balclutha, New Zealand arranged by an Uncle. One of my father’s cousins had prepared what I now know to be a Register Report that started at the first of our Moffats to immigrate to New Zealand – my great grandfather William Moffat (1829 – 1895)

Moffat Descendants Easter 1989

The report was 16 pages long, and it was created on a typewriter. The first thing that happened during the Reunion was that people looked at this report and starting writing additions and corrections on almost every page, which meant that to recreate it, it would ALL have to be retyped.

So me with my new computer got to thinking “there has to be a way to get a computer to do that”. I eventually found a couple of software programmes – Family Roots which I bought through Jan Gow of Beehive Books which worked, but was VERY un-Macintosh like, and MacGene which was quite Macintosh like, but didn’t last long.

During a 2 year stint at a weather station on Campbell Island in New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic I entered all that was on the typewritten register report, then added other information from a booklet I had about the Houliston family, and wrote to everyone who was listed on the Register Report I could find an address for.

Once this was done, the obvious progression was to try and find out more – a quest I’ve been on for the last 18 years

Once I left Campbell Island I headed to Europe for 5 months, including 3 days at New Register House in Edinburgh where the brickwalls were pushed back some more generations.

In 1992 I headed to Antarctica for a year at Scott Base and took Macintosh with me, as well as my newly acquired Reunion for Macintosh to make the move from Family Roots to Reunion, and to work on all I’d gathered up until then.

The internet has revolutionised how this all works, and since putting my genealogy online I’ve “met” any number of distant relatives – some of whom I knew existed, and many of whom I never knew existed, and in more recent years I’ve travelled twice to Scotland and actually met 3 of them Jean and Nettie Fleming of Roxburghshire, Scotland and Sandy Bain of Dundee, Scotland.

Over the years my genealogy file has grown from the few hundreds on that initial Register Report to over 18,000 – 6,250 of whom I have a blood relationship to (8,590 including spouses), and 15,000 who are linked to me somehow.