(Map of Virginia in 1600 from Alamy)

Once upon a time, all of North America between Florida and Nova Scotia was known as Virginia for a number of years ………. did you know that? The area was named by Queen Elizabeth (ruled 1558 to 1603) after herself as “the Virgin Queen.” She charmed by Sir Walter Raleigh’s, her favorite sea captain,  accounts of the coasts of the Carolinas in 1585 that she favored him by taking his suggestion for a name of this new land. 

True or false? I found this bit in a book, The History of Orange County Virginia, by William W. Scott, published in 1907.

I spent a bit of time digging into this recent reprint looking for information on my Orange County ancestors. Like with many checked-into sources, I found no real answers but several clues. (Isn’t that what real research is all about???)

I did find these rather amusing names:

Prettyman Merry, “a prominent citizen during the Revolution”

Mourning Pegg,  found on the 1782 census

Peachy Bledsoe, in 1792 a Regiment

Oceanus is the publication of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I quite enjoy the issues of Oceanus and learn from the WHOI website and frequent free educational webinars. 

Living in Washington, with the whale-waters of Puget Sound, Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean, we’re very aware of ferries and their potential negative impact on whales. (This article’s information applies to all ocean-going big vessels.)

“Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has come into worldwide use and in many ways we’d never have imagined.” The Spring 2021 issue of Oceanus explained……

“Vessel strikes are one of the biggest threats to the survival of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (and I would add, ALL whales). Restrictions on shipping speeds and routes have reduced the number of vessel strikes, but at least sixteen North Atlantic Right Whales were killed by ship strikes between 2003 and 2018. Only about 360 of these endangered animals remain.

“Various methods or remedial action have been utilized but up to now, nothing has really “done the trick.” A WHOI team is developing a new detection system, Thermal Imagine Scanners (cameras!) to be used to scan the water’s surface for whale blows. The cameras are linked to AI that the team has trained to ignore waves, birds and boats and to only sound alerts of a thermal signature…. ie, whale detection.

“Mounted on ships, the system can alert captains to the presence of a whale several kilometers away within seconds…..enough time for the vessel to slow down or change course.”

Don’t we all mourn when we read a news story of a dead whale on a beach with clear propeller slashes on its body?? Let’s hope our Washington ferries also get this technology to better protect our Orcas. I want my great-grandchildren to see leaping Orcas in our Washington waters!!

Way up on a Washington bluff overlooking the Columbia River, a huge stone castle pokes in and out of view as you zoom along I-82 in Oregon. “What the Sam Hill?” You’ve heard that expression, haven’t you? 

There is no population center for miles and yet here’s this castle, Sam Hill’s mansion. Hill was an “inspired lunatic”  and the son-in-law of railroad baron, James J. Hill. Sam bought 7000 acres of scrubland on a high bluff overlooking the mighty Columbia River in 1907. He intended to erect a glorious home for his wife, Mary. 

“No way!” she must have said when told about her proposed new home. She never left Europe to come see “her” castle home. 

After 20 years, the mansion/castle was till unfinished. Over the years, the place remained unoccupied and unfinished. People wandering through the deserts of Washington and Oregon would look up to see this enormous abandoned building and say “What the Sam Hill?” 

Or so the story is told. 

Today the mansion is part of Maryhill State Park and there is lots to see and do at the park. Do stop on your next trip to Portland. While you’re there, on the Washington side, take a snap of time to visit Stonehenge just three miles east of Maryhill….

Also built by Sam Hill, this replica of England’s famous Stonehenge was begun in 1918 to honor the heroism of Klickitat County’s soldiers in that Great War. Finished in 1929, it’s both a monument to heroic dead but a monument dedicated to peace. 

There is no need to put your genealogy on hold during the summer months! Mixed in with outdoors and family fun, here are some suggestions for summertime genealogy things to do:

• Start writing those stories…. yours or those of your ancestors.
• Zero in on a dead-end line using all the new tips and tricks you’ve learned.
• View How-To videos: Ancestry Academy, YouTube, plus dozens mor.
• Catch up on your genealogy book/magazine reading (take down that stack!)
• Identify the folks in the photos in that old box of musty photos.
• Take a grandchild to a cemetery.
• Take a grandchild to lunch to “celebrate” an ancestor’s birthday.
• Use Google to find places important in your ancestors’ lives: homes, church, work.
• Work a bit harder to understand your DNA matches (there are plenty of helps!).
• Clean up your email back log and email address list. 
• Read a good historical fiction novel or genealogy mystery (like the Deserter’s Tale).
• Take a whole day and spend 30″ studying the advantages to your research of what’s available from the Big Four: FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast.
• Take a second day to explore Fold3 and Cyndi’sList and any other genealogy websites that you’ve been wanting to explore.

Summer sometimes means lazy, slow, down days. Great. When you’ve finished your drink and watched the sun come up, plan a genealogy to-do day!!

Fans of Morton Farrier, the English forensic genealogist created by author Nathan Dylan Goodwin, rejoice! Goodwin’s newest book is here!! This is the tenth in the Morton Farrier genealogical crime mystery series and they just keep getting better and better.  In this book, Morton journeys to Salt Lake City to give presentations at RootsTech and while he’s “in the neighborhood,” does some research in Las Vegas on his wife’s great-grandfather…….. who deserted his English family after WWI and ended up leading quite a colorful life in Las Vegas. And of course, Morton’s RootsTech presentations figure into the plot. 

This is The Perfect summer read; the book is available from Amazon. I do 1000% recommend it to you……….. I could not put it down and read it in two days!!

Now for a truly funny tombstone story:

“While writing the history o his village some years ago, the Vicar of the Parish of Eye in England decided to include thumbnail sketches on the “pillars of society” over the centuries…. parishioners who had been “famous” in either the church or community. 

The Rev. Philip Randall was particularly impressed by a tombstone just inside St. Matthew’s Church which bore the initials, “HWP.” Because of its prominent position, he concluded that this  must be the grave of some extremely important local dignitary. 

He poured over old, dusty parish records for nine long years in the hope of finding a Henry Wimbourne Potter, or a Herbert Wattle Pittstock, or even a Happy Washwater O’Pudding. Almost a decade of research yielded not one prominent person with those initials. He was about ready to give up but had the idea of one last try by placing a final appeal for information in the parish newsletter.

Two days later, a parishioner telephones to say that he remembered the story of how his father had helped to lay the the stone that marked the Hot Water Pipe.”

True story? I have no idea. Provenance? I cannot remember how long ago I came upon this bit nor where I found it. Just read it, enjoy and laugh. 

An arson-set fire in the summer of 2023 at the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple near the Chinatown International District in Seattle destroyed historical archives going back more than 120 years.

This is a disaster which should affect all genealogists  and not just Buddhists. 

The article in our Spokane paper was from Greg Kim of the Seattle Times. Kim wrote: “Just outside the room where the fire began were the temple’s physical archives dating back to 1901 when the temple was founded by first-generation Japanese Americans. The current location was built during World War II in 1943. The destroyed archives contained documents from when temple members were detained in incarceration camps.”

Alex Sakamoto, a temple board member, said “By losing this, we’re losing knowledge and history. Even if people in the community don’t belong to our church, or even if they’re not Buddhist, this has really been a gathering spot in the community…because it has stayed in the same place and remained unchanged for so long.” 

Could a similar disaster happen to “your” archives…… the place where historical records pertaining to your ancestors’ lives are housed? Yes, it surely could. 

 I’d bet a nickel that there is a museum to just about anything you can name. I’d also bet that you’ve visited a good many museums for that’s a “genealogy thing.” But I’d bet that you’ve never heard of these three museums that I just discovered.

Wikipedia tells us that there are some 4500 species of crab scattered in the world’s oceans. In Margate, England, is the Crab Museum where inside is a diorama featuring all things “crab,” real and fanciful. The museum aims to teach visitors about crab anatomy, mating habits and their importance to marine ecosystems, including environmental threats. Their website is both fun and informative and you can sign up for their newsletter for free. 

The Museum of Failure first began in Sweden as a traveling exhibit and now is located in Malaga, Spain. This museum highlights digital disasters, medical mishaps, bad taste things, Failure in Motion, Failure to Innovate, “What WERE they thinking,” and “So Close But Yet So Far….”  The museum has over 200 new items and artifacts added every year because “innovation needs failure. All progress, not only technological progress, is built on learning from past failures and mistakes.” 

Last of all, a museum in Reykjavik, Iceland: The Iceland Phallogical Museum. This eclectic museum purposes to “collect, study and preserve some 200 phalluses of land and sea mammals (including man).” I visited this most unusual museum and to be honest found it to be most interesting. The gift shop offerings were definitely “something else.” 

Cowboy Clark Stanley was down on his luck when he heard a tale that the Chinese (back in China) made a medicine or treatment from snakes. Immediately a get-rich-scheme formed in his mind.

At the 1893 Columbian Expedition in Chicago, Stanley came onstage with a live rattlesnake. He slit open the snake and dropped it into a pot of boiling water. Skimming off the fat from the surface, he told his eager audience that this was the “gen-u-ine” cure for what ailed them. People believed and his Snake Oil Liniment was sold for 24 years. 

So called “snake oil medicine” wasn’t only the “medicine of the west.” Similar schemes abounded in the 19th century. Wikipedia defines this as “any worthless concoction sold as medicine.” 

A bit published in the Georgia Gazette on 29 Jun 1774 proclaimed a “Miracle Medical Cure!”  Some 46 men signed their names as testimony that the stuff worked:

“We the under named subscriber of St. George’s and St. Matthew’s parishes, think it our duty to publish the following CURES perfected by Dr. John Patrick Dillon, for the good of the poor afflicted with the same, they they may know where they may expect remedy, as we have had, and affirm the same subscribing jointly that we have been CURED by him of: cancers of all kinds, fistulas, hysteric afflictions, rheumatisms, consumptions, fluxes, dysenteries, convulsions, epilepsies, apoplexies, hypochondrias, caries*, malignant ulcers, pleurisies and gravels**.” 

( Caries is tooth decay/cavities. Gravels is kidney stones.)

QUESTION: Are “snake oil” cures still being passed off today as worthwhile medicines? 

Did you realize that rhubarb is classified as a vegetable? 

And while we eat the stalks the leaves are quite toxic?

 Did you know that Washington State has 175 acres of rhubarb cultivation? Some 92% of those acres are in Pierce County. Sumner boasts to be the Rhubarb Capital of the World. 

Who remembers sitting on the back stoop eating a stalk of fresh rhubarb dipped in sugar or honey? I surely do, as do my children. 

The Chinese called rhubarb “the great yellow” and have used it for medicinal purposes for nearly 2000 years. Yes, this hardy plant has been around for a long time. Bet you have a patch growing in a corner of your yard.

Rhubarb was used medicinally as a laxative. Back in the day, purging one’s system was a common component of many treatments…. riding the body of ill humors it was thought.

Rhubarb was harvested in Scotland in 1786 and came to America in the 1820s through New England. Rhubarb grows best where there is a few months of cold weather. 

Whether your favorite is rhubarb sauce or rhubarb pie, my guess is that rhubarb has a love-hate relationship with most people.

There are dozens of YouTube videos, and several websites, teaching how to grow, harvest, cook and prepare those delicious red stalks.