Katy Perry describes herself as a “singer-songwriter masquerading as a pop star.” As one of the best-selling artists of all time with sold-out world tours, she’s nailing that charade, but the story of Hannah Mulhare, one of Katy's Irish immigrant ancestors, makes it clear that Katy is not the first in the family to pull off such a convincing deception.
In this week's Roundup: Angel Island Immigration Station is "a reminder of the difficult journey many immigrants have endured in the last century in America," Reclaim the Records news, saving music for the future, and more.
This quarter, I awarded a grant to the Westside Cemetery Preservation Association to support their work of restoring and cleaning up the gravesites of enslaved African Americans and their descendants, found in cemeteries that have become overgrown and are largely hidden in secluded woods near sugar cane fields in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Click through to the post for more details and to see how you can join me in supporting the work the WCPA is doing.
This week, Dale Earnhardt shared some thoughts after learning his family's immigration story; the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors; play with a fun tool to see how the world has changed in your lifetime, and more.
This week: explore DNA travel, the George Peabody Library, a fun history mystery book, the story of the researcher who discovered and mapped out more than 3,000 burials of black people in nearly 30 cemeteries, most hidden in secluded woods near sugar cane fields, and more.
This week, explore Pitcairn Island, a new online index to Oklahoma births and deaths, slang, Barack Obama Plaza, and a project to mark the 100th anniversary in 2016 of the start of the first Great Migration.
In this week's Roundup: See how librarians came to the rescue of books and records damaged in a fire started by a 19 year-old Naval Reservist who feared being sent to war in Korea and thought that “a little fire” would gain him probationary status, check out how the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is commemorating the upcoming 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I, discover a unique museum in Venice, and more . . .
In this week's Roundup: dream over Russian window art (stunning!), read the stories of some Missouri adoptees who were able to learn their biological parents' identities thanks to passage of a recent law, check out the world's tallest cemetery, and much more.
I recently took a peek into the family tree of Tim Kaine in a piece that combined a big-picture perspective with a mini-saga of the Kaine branch. During the course of my research, though, I came across other random tidbits of interest, so thought I’d share them clustered by branch of the family tree.
No sooner had Hillary Clinton announced Tim Kaine as her running mate than articles on his roots began to appear – mostly about his inherent Irishness. But what else was there to learn?
