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The Kitchen Table

Genealogy hunters......

16 years ago

Does anyone know what happened to GenForums?????

It won't come up on our computers...it just sits there humming :^)

Many thanks for any information.

J

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Comments (11)

Zipper_TX
16 years ago
I noticed that too, I don't have a clue what happened to it, but it won't come up here either.
trinitytx
16 years ago
Nothing here either....

Trin
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Comments (11)
.GOOSE SOWS BEAN SEEDS INTO HISTORY We all know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, in which a handful of magical beans grew overnight into a stalk that reached high above the clouds. But do you know about magical beans that were carried to Somerset County by a goose and are still growing more than 130 years later? And they?re still traveling. It was the fall of 1865 or 1866, when a flock of Canada geese on their flight south paused on the Stonycreek a couple miles west of Lambertsville. One got caught in the mill race that fed the water wheel that operated Joseph Mostoller?s sawmill. One of the Mostoller sons, John or David, shot the goose and took it to their mother to be cleaned and prepared for dinner. As Sarah Mostoller cleaned the goose, she felt that its craw was distended, opened it and found a handful of beans. Being a frugal person, Sarah placed the beans on the window sill to dry, and planted them the following spring. Members of the Mostoller family have been replanting the beans every year since, and so have others who acquired seed. The Mostoller Wild Goose Beans, as they have come to be known, are pole beans that grow rapidly to a height of 10 feet or more. The bean is white, pinkish buff around the eye and with splotches of reddish brown in varying amounts. They can be eaten as snap beans when green, and reportedly are excellent dried in baked beans or soup. May years after they were taken from the goose, the beans were identified by an expert in beanology (my work) as being a Seneca Indian bean. It is believed the goose gobbled the beans on the Cornplanter Indian Reservation on the upper Allegheny River, flew to the Somerset County area and was shot before the beans could deteriorate. Ralph Mostoller of Moxham got his Goose Bean seed from Willard and Pauline Constable, then residents of Riverside who had obtained them from another member of the Mostoller family. She wanted to know whether the Mostoller name could be used in connection with the beans, a sample of which had been sent to the US Department of Agriculture Experimental Station in Beltsville, MD. Dr JP Meiners, chief of applied plant pathology at Beltsville, wrote that he found the beans somewhat unique. He planted them and sent samples to a Dr. Dolan at Geneva, NY who he said, is very much interested in heirloom beans. The Wild Goose beans were getting around, but it didn?t stop there. Samples went to John E. Withee in Lynnfield, MA, who founded Wanigan Associates to preserve historic heirloom beans and seeds. The project outgrew Withee, who appealed to two other organizations for help. They were the Seed Savers Exchange, operated by Kent Whealy near Princeton, MO and the Organic Gardening and Farming Research Center in Kutztown. They also are grown in the heirloom seeds projects at the Somerset County Historical and Genealogical Society and the state owned Landis Valley Farm Museum north of Lancaster. The Landis Valley heirloom seed catalog lists the Mostoller Wild Goose Bean. It describes the bean as white, oval seed with reddish speckled orange-brown spot over the eye and says it has excellent flavor, vigorous grower with good production. They sell the seed for $3 a packet. Besides those sold, the Mostoller Wild Goose Bean has been given to interested people throughout the United State. It is listed in the Seed Savers Exchange annual catalog and has been exchanged over a wide area. That goose had no idea what it was starting when it began its ill-fated flight from Canada more than 130 years ago.
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OT.....genealogy and Berry Plain
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Comments (5)
Judy.....I'm even working on a family tree quilt to combine both hobbies....but, I've been putting if off, though, dreading putting on all those little white pieces of fabric with names and dates....but, I'm going to get back to it after the current top if finished, and that shouldn't be long. I'm also including appliqued family buildings....I've finished the Newlin Mill and a Quaker Meeting house, both from Chester Co, PA...haven't decided on both maternal bldgs yet. One will be Berry Plain, but I'm not sure about the other..., that's part of the fun, though....thinking and planning. All my families came to either PA or Virginia, the earliest a Capt Thomas Graves, was on the 1607 ship to Jamestown..the other Va folks came in the mid 1600s. My only NE emigrant was the Rev. Francis Doughty, who came to Taunton, Mass, but got the boot from the Puritans....they didn't agree with his 'take' on baptism. He then went to New Amsterdam, and later to MD and Va. My father's families were Quakers and came to PA with Penn....several on The Welcome with Penn (sort of like the Pa version of the Mayflower!!!) Fascinating stuff, I think....but, like chocolates....you can't eat just one....!
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What do you make of coincidences?
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Comments (26)
Jemdandy, I think we must be talking about two different Jacksons. After reading your post, I looked up General Jackson in Wikipedia. I was surprised to learn that he was only 39 when he died. I always envisioned the Civil War leaders as being so old. Although I guess when I first learned about the Civil War, I was so young that 39 was old. Thinking of KT discussions about old gravestones and the early deaths in the 1800s, I thought I'd share this small piece of Jackson's biography on Wikipedia: Thomas Jackson was the third child of Julia Beckwith (nÃ©e Neale) Jackson (1798 Â 1831) and Jonathan Jackson (1790 Â 1826), an attorney. Both of Jackson's parents were natives of Virginia. The family already had two young children and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West Virginia, when Thomas was born. He was named for his maternal grandfather. Thomas's sister Elizabeth (age six) died of typhoid fever on March 6, 1826, with two-year-old Thomas at her bedside. His father died of the same disease March 26. Jackson's mother gave birth to Thomas's sister Laura Ann the day after Jackson's father died.[7] Julia Jackson thus was widowed at 28 and was left with much debt and three young children (including the newborn). She sold the family's possessions to pay the debts. She declined family charity and moved into a small rented one-room house. Julia took in sewing and taught school to support herself and her three young children for about four years. In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson remarried. Her new husband, Blake Woodson[8], an attorney, did not like his stepchildren. There were continuing financial problems. The following year, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother, Julia died of complications, leaving her three older children orphaned.[9] Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in a homemade coffin in Westlake Cemetery along the James River and Kanawha Turnpike in Fayette County within the corporate limits of present-day Ansted, West Virginia.
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Couple more gravestones and cemetery pics
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Comments (45)
Since I'm registered as a contributor with FindAGrave, I get emails when a request is made for a photo in my area. The only problem is, FindAGrave must think "my area" is awfully big! I've gotten requests for cemeteries in New York, as well as parts of PA that I never visit. Maybe this is because when I attended my cousin Terry's funeral in NY two years ago, I impulsively took a picture of a gravestone that caught my attention--and it turned out to be one that someone had requested. So I filled a request in NY, and I guess that set me up to receive other requests in that area. The other thing I do with FindAGrave is just photograph gravestones at random, and upload them to that cemetery's listing on the website as needed. Sometimes the deceased is already mentioned (has a memorial) on the website, and someone else has taken the picture. That doesn't happen very often, but if it does, I just don't upload mine. Sometimes the deceased has a memorial but no picture, and in that case I add mine. Most often, no memorial exists, so I create one, uploading the photo along with information such as name, dates, and links to spouses or parents. I just checked my FindAGrave status. So far I've only filled 16 photo requests, but I've created 492 memorials and have added 689 photos. I'm also registered at raogk.com (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness), but don't hear from them very often.
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anne_ct
16 years ago
A thought...........

I am in the address book of an avid genealogist. Early Sunday morning I received an extremely odd email from this person in which was a URL for some site I'd never heard of. My anti-virus program...and other puter alerting systems...reported there was no virus involved with the email. However...it wouldn't allow anything involved with the URL to fully load.

I hadn't heard from this particular person in eons but was so annoyed with the behavior of the email that I wrote to the person requesting an explanation of the email.

It seems that there's something roaming around...originating at one or more genealogy sites...that's creating this problem. My friend's computer shut down and/or crashed early Sunday morning and at the mid evening point last night...it was still down. To make matters more mysterious...my friend had no recollection of ever creating and/or sending any email to me.

It looks like this unwanted visitor attaches itself to the recipients address book...then mailing a rather virulent piece of spam to the addresses listed therein.

Soooo...perhaps this is the reason you're unable to load the GenForums site. Perhaps there's a lot of cyber housekeeping going on today.

Anne
jannie
16 years ago
The only geneology type forum I ever used was the Social security Death Index. Couldn't find my own Grandparents-Grandpa died in 1928, Grandma in 1961. Neither one ever collected Social Security. Guess that's why ...My SIL uses Ancestry dot com.
jaybird
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks folks!! I hope they get their problems under control. We use that site a lot.
I appreciate your time to answer!
J
Lindsey_CA
16 years ago
"The only geneology type forum I ever used was the Social security Death Index. Couldn't find my own Grandparents-Grandpa died in 1928, Grandma in 1961. Neither one ever collected Social Security. Guess that's why ..."

Social Security didn't start until 1942. So, since your grandfather died in 1928 he never would have had an opportunity to pay into the system.

Even though your grandmother didn't pass away until 1961 (and would have had ample opportunity to have Social Security deductions from her pay), and even though you say she never collected Social Security benefits herself, that's not why her name wouldn't appear on the Social Security Death Index.

Folks only appear on that list if the decedent had been issued a Social Security Number AND their death has been reported to the Social Security Administration. And, basically, a death is considered "reported to" them when a claim is made for death benefits to be paid out -- the sum ($255) that's paid as a "one-time death benefit" or when survivors (spouse or children) file a claim for survivors' benefits.

So, your grandmother could have had a Social Security Number; could have been paying into the system on a regular basis; but if no claim for after-death benefits had been filed, her name would not appear on the Social Security Death Index.
jemdandy
16 years ago
I tried to access genforum around noon today and decided the site was either bogged down, under a 'denial of access' bombardmant, or the server(s) were sick. It behaved as though a full maintence procedure was being run.
grandmamary_ga
16 years ago
Seems to me some time ago I read somewhere that one of the genealogy sites was closing down. Could this be the one?
Mary
jaybird
Original Author
16 years ago
I tried this morning, with the same results as Jemdandy!
Mary, if it were closed down would it act as if it were trying to load, or would it give you a message that it was closed??? I don't have a clue as to the protocol of such a thing!
Thank you all for your help!
Cherryfizz
16 years ago
I just got on with no problem so it must be working again.

Anne
jaybird
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks Anne!!

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