** Did your ancestors meet via a newspaper ad?
** Max Rockover: Is He In Your Tree?
**Runes: Germanic/Viking alphabet
Dear sir or madam,
I am writing to ask whether any of the members of your genealogical society might be able to help me with some research.
I am a historian writing a book for a major U.S. publisher about the history of personal ads in America. To this end, I am trying to track down couples who met each other via a personal ad in a newspaper any time between about 1850 and 1950.
Perhaps you know someone whose grandparents or ancestors met their husband or wife via a personal ad? Or perhaps there was a story in your town that one of the neighbors once found love in this way?
If so, I’d be very interested to hear from you. I can be contacted by email at francescabeauman@gmail.com. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence.
Many thanks. Francesca Beauman.
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Jim Kershner’s This Day In History, is a daily column in our Spokane paper. On September 11th, he wrote this story. Seems one Max Rockower, age 26, a deck hand on the steamer Rapid Transit, got into a fight in Seattle and was hit over the head causing severe amnesia. Doctors tried everything, including trepanning of his skull, but nothing worked. He was sent to the U.S. Marine Hospital in Port Townsend. He did not recognize his mother who came down from Calgary, Alberta, to see him. She took Max to a movie show which happened to depict a man being struck on the head with a hammer. Max immediately placed his hand on his head and exclaimed, “Somebody hit me!” His memory of before the accident returned and doctors proclaimed “that he was showing every indication that the cloud which had obscured his mind had vanished.” Is Max Rockower, born about 1890, in your family tree?? I did not find him in the U.S. census for 1920.
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Having been blessed to visit Norway last September, I bought home several little books to read. One was A Little Book About The Runes. Runes were a very stick-figure-like simplistic few-characters alphabet used by the Vikings. According to the book, “Wherever the Vikings went, the runes were part of their luggage.” Poems or riddles were used to teach runes. For instance this riddle: “(what) is the sitter’s joy, a swift journey, and the steed’s toil?” The answer is the run reid meaning riding. The rune for this looks like a capital letter R. Runes were an every day skill, as show by this little message stick which I photographed in a Bergen museum:
The message on this stick says “Gyda says go home.” The museum explanation said, “One dark evening more than 750 years ago, Gyda probably had enough of her husband once again staying too long at the tavern. Maybe she hurriedly cared these signs onto a wooden stick and sent one of the children with the message.” Humm, did hubby come come?
Why might runes be of interest to you? The Viking age was from about 800 to 1100 AD. And there were Norse, or Northmen, in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Denmark before and after that bracket of years. Did a Scandinavian ancestor of yours write in runes???
