Hmmmm..... very interesting!

While I have been waiting for my Ancestry.com DNA test results, I have been thinking about my first cousins. How alike we are in stature, and somewhat in our facial features; and yet we each have a different "stamp" on us from the non-Stoddard parent in the family. I think our most notable likeness is our toes. When got together during the summer a couple of years ago I noticed, since we were all wearing sandals at the time, that our toes were very similar.

I'm not sure, genetically speaking, what this means other than we are related and this toe shape is a dominant theme, but I would say our feet came from the same mold. Years ago, I thought my toes made me a freak of nature- everyone else I knew had toes that were shoe-shaped. I was pretty upset that my feet were not shoe-shaped; at least not in the then current fashion mode. Fifty odd years later, I look at my sister's feet, and my two girl cousin's feet and realized I wasn't all that unique. At some point over the past twenty years I did discover that my foot shape had a name and it is called Saxon. I have known all along that we came from Scotland and England, so the discovery was not a momentous one, but a nice confirming one.

So, you can imagine that I could hardly wait to open Ancestry.com email yesterday announcing the DNA test results were ready. Frankly, I wasn't expecting any big surprises, since I already had a pretty good idea where my ancestral families come from. So, the 92% British Isles ethnicity was not earth-shattering news to me. 

I did not expect this though - the other 8% was Persian/Turkish/Caucasus. 

Huh? 

I would have bet the farm on European, Other or Unknown; but not Persian/Turkish/Caucasus. I immediately thought about the Mehlman family, who fled "Germany" in 1752 - perhaps the family did some traveling before they left Germany?

Then I noticed that I had one match from that 8% ethnic group. Whoopie!

I have to say I was really excited - at last, some confirmation of speculation!!! But no. The match was from my Stoddard family. We have a new 5th cousin once removed!- we share Samson Stoddard, my 4th great grandfather! We also share some other families, understandably; Atwood, Cooke, Nettleton, Richards and Turner. It turns out that my match person and I also have British Isle shared ethnicity, and it would make sense, since Anthony Stoddard came from England. 

So, why did the match came up under the Persian/Turkish/Caucasus ethnicity and not the British Isle ethnicity? Granted my research only go back to the 1500's in England. I wonder how soon someone will publish a book on how to figure out which family actually comes from a DNA derived ethnicity. I suppose it is time to hit the history books again.

I did get a lot of Ancestry.com "matches" from the British Isles ethnicity, but I have only been able to find two with closely related surnames that are in the same geographical location. Surprising to me, they are not "Mayflower" people as I expected. Rather they are from the Stoddard line. Ives, Russell, Clark and Tirrell. As I understand it, the more people take the DNA test, the better mapped we will be. So, are the Stoddard surname people out there getting tested and other surname families not so much?

Well, there sure is a lot to ponder.

Curiouser and curiouser!

I'm on a roll this week.

Through the grace of another blogger, The Costumer's Closet, we now have access to Harper Bazaar magazine's treasure trove of past issues. And I mean past issues as in from 1867 to 1900. Digitized. The back issues are from the Cornell University's Mann Library collection. The website is called the Home Economics Archives.  Hearth - a collection devoted to "preserving the Core historical literature of home economics before 1950. The digitization was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2001-2003. You can see them here:

http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/browse/title/4732809.html#1867

So, I immediately thought of my great grandmother Minnie Mailman Mack, whom I really only know by name and date and a few records. Once again, I really wish that I a) found my passion for genealogy much earlier in my life; b) had been more interested in history when I was in school; c) paid closer attention to my surroundings when I did have a chance to visit her hometown in Nova Scotia; and finally, d) got to know my Mack family relatives that were still living when I was younger. Luckily, I can make the most of what is available now and trust that in the future more resources will be available.

For now I have to imagine what Minnie was like. And today I received a wonderful gift in my blog reader in the form of Harper's Bazaar digitized magazines. I know that Minnie arrived with my grandfather and his siblings in Boston on May 6th, 1896 on the steamship "Boston".

I know that Harper's Bazaar, being a magazine for fashion and fashionableness (yes, well, it should be a word) was probably not the real world that Minnie and her children were stepped off the boat and onto firm ground into. It probably had some gems of value though, so I looked at the May 2, 1896 issue. Imagine - looking at the pages of a magazine that was published the very week that my great-grandmother arrived!

[Well the whole process has a lot of magic in it, but let's ignore the machinations for a bit].

I'm pretty confident that Minnie was not wearing the same kind of clothing that is on the cover. All the same, probably trying to make a good impression on her new host country, she was probably wearing her good outfit. I didn't stop to read the articles - a very bad habit of mine - but did go straight to the advertising pages to see what the masses were being lured into purchasing to make their skin soft, and to look fashionable.

Ivory soap! And a host of other "beauty" products. And bicycles. Big hats are in. Black is the new black. Extract of beef, Eye Water and Vin Mariani for the health. Waltham watches to keep time with. Van Camp's Boston Baked Pork and Beans made in Indianapolis, Indiana, for heaven's sake. Breakfast Cocoa from Walter Baker and Co. from Dorchester, Mass.

I'm thinking I will be spending a lot of time with Harper's Bazaar trying to construct the world as Minnie knew it. Do you know any other periodical that was published around this time in Boston?

I'd love to know about it.