Robbie's Memories

Deep Ancestry                                                                                                               13 March 2019               About 10 or 12 years ago, before Ancestry.com and 23 and Me were doing DNA testing, I sent my DNA and my daughters’ to the National Geographic Society’s Genographic project.   This is a look into deep ancestry, 30 to 200 thous...

Memories of My Grandmother: the later years.                                                            Minnie (Wilhelmina) Elizabeth Kintz Rainey was my grandmother, born March 6, 1904, died March 12, 2003.   Her name had always been Minnie, until she applied for a passport at age 77 and had to get a birth certificate.   That was the first she found out that her given name was Wilhelmina.   She said her mother always told her she was named after her uncle Wilhelm, but until that moment she could never figure out what Wilhelm had to do with Minnie.   Now she knew.   She hated the name Minnie, mostly because of Minnie Mouse, but she hated the name Wilhelmina even more!               In 1998, when my mother was...

Who We Came From                                                                       5/8/2019               When my mother, Eleanor Burns, was in Germany, 1978 – 1983, she went to the Obermeister’s office (like the mayor’s office) at Oberndorf am Neckar, the town my grandmother said her mother came from.   Rosa Haaga was actually from Beffendorf, a suburb of Oberndorf.   The obermeister gave her the names of the family for two generations back, including a list of her brothers and sisters, and which ones stayed in Germany and who went to the US.   ...