Private Charles G. Atkins (1842 - )
Enlisted from Mt. Morris, NY on 9 April 1863. He was 21 years old, married and working as a boatman.
Mustered out on 20 August 1865.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Private Charles G. Atkins of Company G, Massachusetts 54th Voluntary Infantry
Enlisted from Mt. Morris, NY on 9 April 1863. He was 21 years old, married and working as a boatman.
Mustered out on 20 August 1865.
Private Lewis Anderson of Company G, Massachusetts 54th Voluntary Infantry
Private Lewis Anderson of Kentucky (1833 - 7 August 1863)
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| Private Lewis Anderson's grave at Beautfort National Cemetery https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2946974/lewis-anderson |
Enlisted from Kentucky on 14 April 1863. He was 30, single and working as a farmer.
Wounded on 18 July 1863 at Fort Wagner.
Died of his wounds 7 August 1863 at the General Hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina.
His grave is in Beaufort National Cemetery, Beaufort, South Carolina.
Private John Anderson of Company G, Massachusetts 54th Voluntary Infantry
Private John Anderson (1845 - )
Enlisted from Carlisle, PA on 18 April 1863. He was 18, single and working as a baker.
Mustered out 20 August 1865.
Private James Anderson of Company G, Massachusetts 54th Voluntary Infantry
Private James Anderson (1830 - )
Enlisted from Chester County, PA on 12 April 1863. He was 33, married and working as a laborer.
Wounded on 18 July 1863 at Fort Wagner.
Mustered out 20 August 1865.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Parallels between Ramesses II and Donald Trump
Point of Curiosity: How much do these two empire builders have in common?
| Ramesses II | Donald Trump | |
|---|---|---|
| Fair-skinned Redhead | ✔ | ✔ |
| Enemy of Syria |
|
"Lastly, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place. My opponent has called for a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country under President Obama. She proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from." Verbatim from Trump's acceptance speech. |
| Multiple Wives |
|
While it was intended as a joke, it is nonetheless reminescent of Trump's infamous quote, "I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." |
| Opportunistic Grandfathers | Ramesses I From a non-royal noble military family, rose to Pharaoh. |
Frederick Trump From a poor German family, became a successful American businessman. |
| Prolific Namesake Monuments |
|
This list is almost hilariously non-exhaustive. |
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
An Ancestral Highway in 18th century Vermont
I am in the good fortune of having an extraordinary book of my family's genealogy from my dad's aunt, my great Aunt Dot. I was re-reading it recently as an adult - the last time I did a complete read I was only 10! - and, of course, reading through it made me curious about several new things with adult eyes and a far more profoundly useful internet at my fingertips than what was available in 1987.
One point of curiosity was: my earliest patrilineal confirmed descendant, John Ramer, bought some land to build a highway in the forests of Vermont. My aunt found the land record, which recorded the following scintillating details in 1798:
But also, something useful: the land in question is largely within the boundaries of the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. In very little time, I'd even found a web form to email the rangers who work on the ground there. We live in the future, y'all.
Thus, this Sunday, I wrote with only a little hope of getting a response (if the web form miraculously worked, which it did! Go Forest Service!):
First was the gentleman who received the initial email, Jeff, who re-routed my inquiry:
Tim responded in quick order and as with the first, this new email and correspondent made me smile. I imagine these are the kind of gentlemen I could happily listen to the 99% Invisible podcast with and expect lively conversation about it afterwards.
One point of curiosity was: my earliest patrilineal confirmed descendant, John Ramer, bought some land to build a highway in the forests of Vermont. My aunt found the land record, which recorded the following scintillating details in 1798:
John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane.Curious, I wandered over to Google Maps to see if there was any evidence of a highway or even a road from this intended endeavour. Nothing but green, baby.
 |
| Sunderland to Stratton, VT |
Thus, this Sunday, I wrote with only a little hope of getting a response (if the web form miraculously worked, which it did! Go Forest Service!):
I was reading an old genealogy book on my family and encountered this description of a land record from 1798: "John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane." I was curious and looked up the area on Google maps but didn't see any evidence of a modern descendant of this road. Is there any remaining evidence that a road was built with this path? I figured if anyone knows, it's the forest rangers :)To my great delight, I had not one by two replies in my email this morning!
First was the gentleman who received the initial email, Jeff, who re-routed my inquiry:
Good morning, Tim:There are Forest Archaeologists? Guys, my world is a better place. How cool is that? I want to be a Forest Archaeologist when I grow up. And I bet we have them where I live in Washington state. New goals!
I had the cheek to label this "high importance, " simply because it seems to me one of those historical things that we ought to be able to tell people, and I am hoping that as Forest Archaeologist you will suppose that an abandoned road is in your province (no pun intended). If you tell me to turn elsewhere for information on this issue, then the person inquiring will know that there may be longer to wait or that the riddle may go unsolved. Thank you in advance for your response, either way.
Tim responded in quick order and as with the first, this new email and correspondent made me smile. I imagine these are the kind of gentlemen I could happily listen to the 99% Invisible podcast with and expect lively conversation about it afterwards.
Greetings and salutations!So, next stop: an excuse to look at some very old maps! (Yes, Europeans, I know you think we Americans are cute with out "19th century is old" business. Just smile, nod and pat us on our proverbial little heads, heh.)
This is of "high importance" in my book! 1798, hmm. This would be "too new" to be portrayed on the Whitelaw's map of 1796. Maybe try looking at some of the later maps. There is a map by McClellan from 1856 and the 1869 Beers Atlas for that area. There is a good chance that the road was still in use by the locals in the 1860's. I only have the overview versions of these maps, there are more detailed ones out there. You could most definitely try your local library or the historical society to have a look at what they have, that's where I would start. I would also check the roads records from Sunderland, this could help a bit. Good luck!
Monday, August 22, 2016
Self-inflicted harm as a response to Stress
Point of Curiosity: In an extreme stress situation, is banging one's head against a wall / floor / etc. a common response and if so, why (biologically speaking)?
As a chronic sufferer of PMS (one ovary gives me horrific PMS, while the other one is almost totally symptom-free), I think about Endocrinology a lot. And I'm no longer a teenager; I've been through the experience enough to know that my mood-related symptoms due to PMS feel normal at the time because it's a lot like boiling a frog. The frog's normal evolves with the rising temperature of the water, and my normal evolves with the rising hormones of the over-zealous ovary. I spent years being convinced, at the time it happened, that I was completely justified in reacting to small infractions, only to be ashamed in hindsight. Sure, whatever the thing was, it did bother me, but at a completely different magnitude than PMS would have me believe. Chemicals fundamental to my perception of reality told me I was mad.
Recently, I've been thinking about our stress response a lot. My favourite framing of this comes from Ash Beckham in her outstanding TEDxBoulder Talk "Coming Out of the Closet" who notes:
When you encounter a perceived threat - key word 'perceived' - your hypothalamus sounds the alarm and adrenaline and cortisol start coursing through your veins. [...] this is a totally normal reaction. And, comes from a time when that threat was being chased by a wooly mammoth. The problem is, your hypothalamus has no idea if you're being chased by a wooly mammoth, or if your computer just crashed, of if your in-laws just showed up on your doorstep, or if you're about to jump out of a plane, or if you need to tell someone you love that you have a brain tumor.I was also struck by parallels between Ta-Nehisi Coates' teenage experience in crack-era Washington D.C. as described in his autobiography The Beautiful Struggle and my teenage experience in a significantly safer suburban neighborhood in eastern Kansas. I was bewildered to find a lot of common ground in the hyper-vigilance we developed in our respective environments, and only the cluelessness of the hypothalamus in stress stimulus could possibly account for it. Our experiences were so wildly different.
To the point of curiosity at hand: I witnessed a self-inflicted head injury - literally banging one's head against a wall - due to a stress response that kept escalating. Warning signs prior to this included full-body shaking and an inability to speak.
And it made me wonder, is this a thing? Does the head-banging have a purpose, one that potentially has some kind of benefit? Could it, for instance, disrupt an escalating stress response in the endocrine system? Is it an instinct to become unconscious, or something else?
My Google Fu isn't always the best, but I quickly found a 2011 article that confirmed my hypothesis wasn't entirely without merit, that this head-banging may have an actual "positive" (for a specific and relative definition of "positive", admittedly) impact on the endocrine system. The journal Psychoneuroendocrinology has an article, "Alterations in the neuroendocrinological stress response to acute psychosocial stress in adolescents engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury", which concluded from a very small trial (28 participants) that women who engage in Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) experience reduced cortisol confirmed by a saliva test.
Which, of course, immediately caused me a follow-up question:
What is an HPA Axis?
The HPA Axis is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Both the organs and their influence and interactions on and with each other make up this axis. This immediately lead me to a model called the General Adaptation Syndrome (yes, GAS) developed by Hans Selye which explains an organism's response to a stressor, real or imagined.
There are three core stages defined in the syndrome: Alarm, Resistance and Exhaustion.
During the Alarm stage, we get the familiar adrenaline rush and our body starts releasing cortisol. Shock happens during the Alarm stage.
During the Resistance stage, the cortisol really ramps up. All kinds of resources get thrown into the bloodstream to help us resist or deal with the stressor.
There's different ways to exit via the Exhaustion stage: either the stressor is eliminated and we enter a Recovery stage, or the stressor remains and eventually our body's resources are depleted.
For another time, my follow-up question from that is, could self-harm be an attempt to abort the Resistance stage before hitting the Exhaustion stage?
I have so much more I want to learn about all of this, but for the moment, my lazy no-libraries-only-internet starter answer is: I don't know if the head-banging is a common response but there's a maybe to it having a potentially cortisol-reducing effect if we can assume self-inflicted head injury is similar to other kinds of NSSI like cutting.
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