Sunday, August 11, 2013

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Spin the Ancestor Roulette Wheel!

Yesterday Randy Seaver of Geneamusings.com posted an “Ahnentafel Roulette” challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun; the mission this week:
  1. What year was one of your great-grandmothers born?  Divide this number by 125 (use a calculator!) 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 to five 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 another great-grandmother, a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

I love playing Ahnentafel Roulette, so even though I’m a day late, here’s my submission:

My paternal great-grandmother Sarah Belle Forshee was born in 1856. Her birth year divided by 125 is 14.848, rounded up to 15.

On my pedigree chart, #15 is my maternal great-grandmother Ruth Franklin.
  • Ruth Franklin was born 12 March 1851 in Ohio, probably Union County, the eldest child of Joseph Franklin and Rhoda Cary, and died 28 August 1914, in Parsons, Labette County, Kansas. She married David A. Snider on 5 January 1871 in Union County, Ohio.
  • Ruth had eleven children—nine sons and two daughters. Her eldest daughter, Myrtle Arminta Snider, was my grandmother.
  • Ruth and David moved from Ohio to Kansas in 1880. They were enumerated in the census in Leesburg Township, Union County, Ohio, on 17 June 1880, but their fifth child Byron Lee was born in November 1880 in Kansas.
  • Ruth was the great-granddaughter of Luther Cary, a soldier in the Revolutionary War; it is through this line that I joined the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
  • Ruth (Franklin) Snider shared her mitochondrial DNA with her daughter Myrtle (Snider) Yawman (my grandmother), her granddaughter Beaulah (Yawman) Sherrell Spurlock (my mother), and me and my sisters, Deanna and Jennifer. I had only a son, but her mitochondrial DNA continues down to the daughters and granddaughters of Deanna and Jennifer.




© 2013 Denise Spurlock