Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the
Mission Impossible music, please!):
1) What year was one of your great-grandfathers born? Divide this number by 75 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" - your software will create
this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that
person, and what are his/her vital information?
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 status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.
5) NOTE: If you do
not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then
"spin" the wheel again - pick a great-grandmother, a grandfather, a
parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children! Or pick any ancestor!
Here's mine:
1)
I chose my paternal-line great-grandfather, Alex
Hillinger. He was born in 1883, which divided by 75 was about 25.
2)
I used the Roots Web Narrative Report, which
told me that person #25 in my ancestral line was my great-great grandmother,
Leonharde Marie Bordewich, aka Harde Bordewick.
3)
My facts about Harde:
¨
Leonharde was her father's 14th
child, and his first legitimate child with his second wife. Her elder siblings,
all but two of whom had been born to her father's first wife, did not wish for
their father to remarry. The first time he had a child with another woman, they
insisted he send her and the child away, and he did so. The second time, he did
not marry the woman, but he also did not send her away. When she became
pregnant a second time, he put his foot down and married her. They were married
5 months before Harde was born.
¨
As one of many children (her parents had two
more after her), most of the people she knew were related to her. When she fell
in love, it was with one of her elder half-brothers' sons. He was only a year
younger than her.
¨
Harde moved with her husband and their children as
well as a few nieces halfway across the planet. First to Belgium, then England,
near to where her only full brother went to live. Then the family moved to
Canada just before their eldest son was due to take his tests to get into
Cambridge. They lived in Vancouver, BC, Canada until their deaths.
I couldn't resist doing this one when I saw who it was.
Almost makes me want to do it again with my other great-grandfathers.