What do most of us see when we look at this image? An orange 6 against a green background, right? Not so for colorblind folks. According to Ask Marilyn in the Sunday Parade magazine up to 8% of men and only 0.5% of women, depending on their ancestry, have some degree of color deficiency, usually caused by defective or absent photo-pigments in the retina. The most common types are inherited, so if a family member is known to have a color vision problem, it’s important to test all the children who may be unaware of their disorder. 

** Did you have an ancestor who was colorblind? Likely they never knew………… they did not have to match a necktie to a shirt. 

** Both Robert Redford and Prince William suffer from colorblindness. 

1983  —  Ancestry Publishing is founded, publishing over 40 family history magazines and genealogy reference books

1990 – Ancestry publications move to floppy disks

1996 – Ancestry.com is launched, paving the way for online family history

1997 – Ancestry offers family history on CDs (compilations of those who use Family Tree Maker)

2000 – Ancestry launches first census images; completes 1930 census in 2003

2001 – Ancestry reaches the 1,000,000,000 record milestone; Ancestry.co.uk debuts

2006 – Ancestry introduces Australian, Canadian and German sites/records

2006 – Ancestry adds new customer-centric innovations (shaky leaf hints and member trees)

2007 – Ancestry adds more international sites, inc. French, Italian, Swedish and Chinese

2009 – Ancestry reaches the 1,000,000 subscriber mark

2010 – Ancestry offers the first season of  Who Do You Think You Are?

2011 – Ancestry unveils the Ancestry app for iPad and iPhone

2012 – Ancestry hits the 2,000,000 subscriber mark

2012 – Ancestry DNA is launched

2013 – Ancestry announces exclusive agreement with FamilySearch to digitize one billion records

            from its Granita Mountain Vault

2015 – Ancestry releases exclusive collection of U.S. wills and probate records

2018 – Ancestry achieves 10,000,000 people tested via AncestryDNA; 15,000,000 in 2019

2020 – Ancestry reaches over 3.5 million subscribers and 27 billion records

2021 – AncestryDNA tests over 20,000,000 people

2022 – AncestryDNA becomes worldwide

** The above image shows Ancestry’s first magazine publication, 1985-2010. These early publications can be accessed via Google Books. 

John Cleves Symmes, 1742-1814, was the delegate from New Jersey to the Continental Congress. The following is a letter he wrote to his grandson, John Cleves Short, from Cincinnati and dated “March the 3rd, 1811.”

“My dear grandson, your letter of the 18th I received this day a week ago, and the day after I arrived in town. …….. I have now, my son, a Melancholy piece of intelligence to communicate. I left home in the morning of the 22nd of Feby and went first to Springfield, then crossed the country to Columbia, came to this place on Saturday the 23rd…went again to Springfield on the 27th and returned here on the 28th…

(In this letter I learned that )my house at Cleves with all its contents was reduced to a heap of ashes in the afternoon of the 1st instant….. the flames burst out and by three o’clock that valuable pile that 14 years ago cost me $8000 was in ashes. All my maps, deeds, mortgages, receipts, ledgers, day books, many of my bonds, and thousands of other important papers are lost. All my books, and yours, your clothes and mine, save what I have on my back, all my bedding, my years provisions, ten barrels of beef and pork of the first quality, 100 lbs of tallow, 100 lbs of old sugar, a stock of butter and cheese, all sorts of furniture…..not a cents worth has been saved that could not burn and what is not combustible is either melted, broken or in some way spoiled. $30,000 cannot repair my loss. But to all this I must submit and give up the idea of ever being able to keep house there again during my life. 

I have no appetite, my sleep is short, my thirst feverish. I hope however, my son, that it will not drive me mad. I know that I came naked into the world and I can but go naked out of it….. Man projects, but God frustrates the most sanguine prospects.” 

As I read this sad tale, I wondered how much paper-documentation-of-history has been lost through the years to fire????

War Bonds:  debt securities issued by a government to finance military operations and other expenditures in time of war.  

Chain:  a chain is a unit length measuring 66 feet, or 22 yards, or 100 links. There were/are 80 chains in one statute mile. The chain was used for several centuries in Britain and in some other countries influenced by British practice. (Can you imagine dragging this through the dense woods of the forests of Eastern America, up and down hill????)

Scurvy:  Our long-sea-voyage-seafaring ancestors often suffered from scurvy. After three months at sea, with no Vitamin C in their diet, the sailors would become irritable, lethargic and with bleeding gums leading to tooth loss. Once this was realized, captains would take jugs of vinegar on board for these long voyages. People in third-world countries still get scurvy today. 

Gretna Green:  A Gretna Green was a favored marriage place when a couple wanted to run away from home to get married…… a place with fewer marriage restrictions. Maybe they wanted to marry without parental consent, marry at a younger age, wanted to avoid paying a marriage bond, etc. The original Gretna Green is a town by that name just over the border in south Scotland. Most all U.S. states have a Gretna Green.