Dick's Genealogy & History Corner

Census records have proven to be great for doing genealogical research. We are taking another federal census in 2010. You will be getting your form to fill out in the mail in March. The actual census day is April first (no fooling). That is the day when people are supposed to record those people living in the household. The form is rather short this time. You can view a preview of the form online. There will be many people that don’t send the census form back. They will be getting a visit from a census enumerator to get as much detail as possible.

The reason that we take the census is to determine the number of Representatives from each state for the House of Representatives. But the data is also used by the federal government to determine where federal money goes. Statistics from the census can even used to determine such mundane things as where the next MacDonalds will be built. But names and addresses are kept confidential for 72 years. I’ll remind you again when we get closer to Census Day.

Howdy Doody & friends

On 27 Dec. 1947 was the first episode of the the legendary kid’s TV show; Howdy Doody. The original title of the show  was Puppet Playhouse. It featured Buffalo Bob Smith, Clarabell the clown and the puppet Howdy Doody. Many other characters were added over the years; some human, some puppet. Always a part of the show was the “Peanut Gallery” of kids that were attending the show. From 1948 to 1956 it was on weekdays and then was moved to Saturday mornings. The final episode of the original series was in September 1960. There was an attempt to bring the show back in the mid 1970s but ratings were not that good and it was canceled after just 6 months.

There is a good collection for sale of 40 Howdy Doody episodes on DVD. (I make a very small commission if you buy from Amazon.) Follow this link to a full episode from 1952 that features many characters in the episode. Make sure you sing along with the theme song!

Born in Rochester on this day (25 Dec.) in 1907 was Cabell “Cab” Calloway III. Cab’s father was a lawyer and his mother was a teacher. Cab only lived in Rochester until about 1918 when his family moved to Baltimore. In Baltimore, Cab graduated from Frederick Douglass High School. He attended college but was much more interested in a music career. In 1931 he recorded his most famous song, “Minnie the Moocher” (video below). Also in the thirties, Cab and his band played as one of the house bands at the Cotton Club in New York City. His music career continued up until the 1980s. Cab was married three times and had 5 daughters. In May 1994, he suffered a stroke. Cab died six months later on 18 November  1994.

I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas.

The running joke keeps going. The US version of Who Do You Think You Are? when last heard from was supposedly slated to begin in January 2010. I just looked at the NBC schedule beginning in January and WDYTYA is not on the schedule. Another clue is the WDYTYA; companion book by Megan Smoleyak was originally coming out at the end of December. Now the release date on Amazon.com shows as March 18th. NBC has the Olympics on in February. March seems much more likely for a start date for WDYTYA.

Hanukkah begins today at sundown. Not knowing much about Hanukkah, I found some greatly informative  links on the Genealogy Insider Blog. Plus Diane also adds links for doing Jewish genealogical research in the same posting.

It snowed today. It is that time of the year when people talk about how nice it would be to have snow on Christmas. I have a snowy Christmas memory that makes me nervous, even today some 25 years later.

I was staying at my mother’s house for Christmas. On Christmas day, my brother and myself were going just 7 miles to pick up my grandmother and bring her to my mother’s house for Christmas dinner. It was snowing and the wind was blowing the snow hard across the road. About half way to my grandmother’s house the snow was building up so bad on the windshield wipers that we had to stop to be able to see. My brother pulled off the road as best he could. I was the passenger so I got out and knocked all the snow off as fast as I could. I hopped back in and guess what? The car was stuck! So, I got back out to push. As I was nearing the back of the car, a tractor trailer appeared out of the blowing snow and he missed me by no more than two feet. Once I got the car moving again, I was so shaken that I didn’t want to keep going. So we turned around. My grandmother had to have Christmas dinner by herself, that year.

The Rochester Public Library has some new digital books online that may be of interest of those researching in the area.

1. Blue book: Police Department of Rochester, New York, with complete biographical sketches of each member (1903). (Most the biographies in this book appear on this biography page but without the pictures of Police Officers.)
2. The Jews of Rochester: an historical summary of their progress and status as citizens of Rochester from early days to the year nineteen hundred and twelve (1912).
3. Directory of the Village of Batavia, New York (1880).
4. The Batavia Directory: city and town (1883/84).
5. Vick’s Standard Directory and reference book, Brockport, N.Y.: containing, besides an up-to-date house and business directory, much local and general information invaluable in the home or office (1907?).
6. Canandaigua City Directory (1906).
7. Canandaigua City Directory (1909).
8. Gazetteer and Business Directory of Ontario County, N.Y., for 1867-8.
9. (Rochester) Bell Telephone Directory, March 1, 1910.
10. Bell Telephone Directory, including subscriber’s lists in Rochester, Charlotte, Henrietta, Gates, Victor (1912).
11. The Wayne County directory for 1891-92, containing a general directory of the citizens of Clyde, Lyons, Newark, and Palmyra.

These are just the highlights of new books for a complete list go to the RPL Digitizing News page and click on “Fall 2009.”

There is blog called GeneaBloggers that suggests topics for us genealogy bloggers. They are having a kind of  “Advent Calender” for the Christmas season. The first suggestion asks if we had a real or artificial Christmas trees.  We had real trees and for a good reason. From the early 1950s to the mid 1960s my parents owned a fruit an vegetable business and at Christmas time we sold Christmas trees. We had hundreds of trees and people would shop for a long time before making a selection. In most cases that meant we have to hold the tree up for customers to look at while they looked at the tree from every angle. We had the trees tagged with color ribbons that coincided to the price. As well as I can remember, and my memory has proven to be full of holes, we never charged over $20 for a very large tree. That being around 15 foot. Most trees were in the $10 to $15 price range.

The trees were marked down extremely after Dec. 25th but we would still sell some after the 25th. The reason was that there was one neighborhood nearby that celebrated Russian Christmas which is on Jan 7th. They were smart to wait to get a tree after Dec. 25th to get a bargain.

Seeing as we had the pick of trees you would think that we had the best. The problem is that once the trees are taken inside the branches drop. Sometimes you end up with a large empty area that didn’t show up outside. Once or twice we had a tree that was so wide that it took up a good portion of our living room.

Then there were trees that dropped needles so fast that by Christmas there were more in the trash than on the tree. The best part of having a real tree is the wonderful pine smell.