Murdered on the Ferry

[TedH]

My oldest sister has been very deep in working with Ancestry and researching our family history, building trees, etc. We had known our great grandfather came here from Germany during the Civil War, along with some of his siblings, and extended family. Quite a few of these other relatives were found and documented too.
One of the most interesting was a 2x great uncle named Solomon Iman. He operated a ferry across the Missouri River near St Joseph, MO. In 1880 he was approached by a fellow that stuck a pistol in his face and forced Soloman to take him across the river. Once they reached the Kansas side, this old boy just up and shot my uncle dead.
Turned out to be just one of many folks to be murdered by Jesse James.

[Grizz]

That's . . . . pathetic.

But interesting too.

I hope to be able to see the entire background all the way to Adam and Noah, when I get home.

[jeepnik]

You mean Jesse and Frank weren't choir boys as depicted in quite a few movies?

[Bill in Oregon]

Ted, the murder of a close relative hurts, even 140-170 years later. My great-great grandfather was murdered along the Colorado River between Burnet and San Saba, TX, in August of 1855. Comanches might have done it. He was likely buried on or near the spot when his remains were found. The exact location is lost to my family. Might be within the boundaries of this lovely Texas state park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Bend_State_Park

[Ysabel Kid]

That's . . . . pathetic.

But interesting too.

I hope to be able to see the entire background all the way to Adam and Noah, when I get home.

+ 1 on all three counts!

[Ysabel Kid]

I try to go through all the hints with at least one person each day. Sometimes there are few hints and I can cover a nuclear family unit. Other times it is just the one. I'm up to over 5,000 in my family tree, with almost 1,700 photos and over 12,000 records. I feel close to my Dad every evening when I am in Ancestry, as he started my passion back when "Roots" hit TV in the 70's.

[TedH]

I try to go through all the hints with at least one person each day. Sometimes there are few hints and I can cover a nuclear family unit. Other times it is just the one. I'm up to over 5,000 in my family tree, with almost 1,700 photos and over 12,000 records. I feel close to my Dad every evening when I am in Ancestry, as he started my passion back when "Roots" hit TV in the 70's.

I haven't invested the time necessary, but my sister has countless hours, days, weeks, months, and years. She even had a book made for our extended family with everything she found condensed in an easy to read format with tons of photos.

[JBowen]

YK, that is something. I belonged to Ancestry for a year and built up a pretty good tree for about 6 or 7 generations. I had a big
framed posture made up. I need to re-join and extend it further, but it seems every time you turn around looking for records they want money.

Ted-- I hate that your family member had to pay with his life to be part of history. It seems that the world has always been rotten with
evil.

JBowen

[Streetstar]

You mean Jesse and Frank weren't choir boys as depicted in quite a few movies?

So instead of being pure murderous scum, they also ran a chihuahua rescue ranch, a soup kitchen and tutored developmentally challenged young people in their off time?

No? Just murdering scum then.

[765x53]

German = Federal Militia. They held Missouri for the union.
Sectarian hatred lasts forever.

[TedH]

German = Federal Militia. They held Missouri for the union.
Sectarian hatred lasts forever.

That is very likely.

[Ysabel Kid]

YK, that is something. I belonged to Ancestry for a year and built up a pretty good tree for about 6 or 7 generations. I had a big
framed posture made up. I need to re-join and extend it further, but it seems every time you turn around looking for records they want money.
JBowen

They do rope you in. The Christmas before COVID I asked the family for a DNA kit from them. Wanted to see how closely it matched what I knew about my family tree, which went back about 5 generations on my Dad's side. As part of that it allowed you to build a basic family tree. Then the hints started flowing in, but with a basic membership, I could see about one in every twenty of them, and the rest were behind their "premium membership" firewall.

Well, I got tired of that so the next year I asked for the premium membership for Christmas. Perfect timing, as I wasn't traveling on business due to the pandemic. The floodgates opened, and I got access to all the hints (though I also had to add a subscription to "newspapers.com"; it's all a racket). I've now gone back 14 generations on many family lines! It is not cheap, but when I prorate it to my daily usage, it's less than a couple bucks a ton and I get a lot of joy out of it. There are worse addictions!

[Ysabel Kid]

I haven't invested the time necessary, but my sister has countless hours, days, weeks, months, and years. She even had a book made for our extended family with everything she found condensed in an easy to read format with tons of photos.

I've always been the genealogy guy in the family, after my Dad passed. I used various kinds of software back in the 1990's - all very primitive and none with any hints or data - just whatever I could build. I find that spending 10-15 minutes on it a day, at night when I'm watching TV with my wife, is very relaxing and fulfilling. I usually go to it right after... logging on here!

[AJMD429]

.
Sad, but definitely an interesting bit of family history.

[Scott Tschirhart]

That is a terrible story and I don’t think I’ll ever understand that kind of barbarism.

That being said, I’ll never voluntarily submit to one of these DNA based ancestry experiments.

My two nephews did it and these brothers from the same parents got such different results about ancestry that we know is impossible. Impossible because they could not have a different origin and be from the same parents. Impossible because we can trace our ancestry back to the 1500s without this technology.

I personally think that this is an operation to collect data by the government by having people actually pay to submit their DNA.

[barbarossa]

I remember reading an article awhile ago stating that a lot of these old west outlaws were psychopaths and in Jesses’ case given his experience when young riding with pro Conferderate guerrillas I can see where that could easily be the case.To see and be part of that type of action would definitely warp the mind of any individual young or old.Some of the things done during the war by fanatical guerrillas on both sides of the war were unspeakable and would leave scars on the strongest of minds.To some killing another person is as easy as stepping on a bug as they no longer value human life

[Scott Tschirhart]

I remember reading an article awhile ago stating that a lot of these old west outlaws were psychopaths and in Jesses’ case given his experience when young riding with pro Conferderate guerrillas I can see where that could easily be the case.To see and be part of that type of action would definitely warp the mind of any individual young or old.Some of the things done during the war by fanatical guerrillas on both sides of the war were unspeakable and would leave scars on the strongest of minds.To some killing another person is as easy as stepping on a bug as they no longer value human life

I think we are developing the same kinds of people today.

[TedH]

I remember reading an article awhile ago stating that a lot of these old west outlaws were psychopaths and in Jesses’ case given his experience when young riding with pro Conferderate guerrillas I can see where that could easily be the case.To see and be part of that type of action would definitely warp the mind of any individual young or old.Some of the things done during the war by fanatical guerrillas on both sides of the war were unspeakable and would leave scars on the strongest of minds.To some killing another person is as easy as stepping on a bug as they no longer value human life

Very true. Young Jesse was with the Bushwackers at the Centralia, MO massacre of over 100 Union troops. They stopped the train in Centralia and pulled off 20 some Union troops and murdered the unarmed soldiers that were on leave, headed home to their families. When word got back, another bunch of Union soldiers got on the bushwackers trail and walked right into an ambush a few miles out of town. Over 100 Union troops perished in that battle, with confederate loss of just 6 men.
That battlefield is about 5 miles as the Crow flies from my house.

[Ysabel Kid]

And just like today, there are those who glorify/romanticize animals...

[barbarossa]

We have a problem today where society is creating similar psychopaths as some parents are bringing up spoiled ,lazy ,antisocial punks who care for nothing but themselves and don t concern themselves about what pain they cause anyone else.

[Grizz]

"psychology" is "artificial intelligence". sin is bred into the entire human race, the one and only race of humans, and "the human heart is desperately wicked", sinners sin, and we are almost infinitely clever at grooming one over another, and murder goes all the way back to the beginning of the beginning.
.
.
There is ONLY ONE ANTIDOTE, and it is not under human jurisprudence or dominion.

[FLINT]

My two nephews did it and these brothers from the same parents got such different results about ancestry that we know is impossible. Impossible because they could not have a different origin and be from the same parents.
I personally think that this is an operation to collect data by the government by having people actually pay to submit their DNA.

Actually, it's not impossible. I think this is a pretty common misconception about 'ancestry' DNA testing. The DNA test does NOT tell you what your origin is or what percentage of your ancestors came from the various respective countries. The DNA test tells you what percentage of the genes (alleles) that you happened to have inherited are most common in which countries, which is a very different thing. Because which alleles you inherit from either parent are totally random, unless you are an identical twin, you can definitely have different ancestry percentages than a sibling.
Just because you know for certain that say 30% of your ancestors were Irish (or whatever), definitely does not mean that 30% of your alleles are going to be irish. In fact, the most likely scenario is that you will have percentages either higher or lower than 30%, just due to the random inheritance of alleles from each and every generation. and those random chances can compound themselves pretty quickly over just a couple generations.

I personally think that this is an operation to collect data by the government by having people actually pay to submit their DNA.

Having said what I did above, I don't necessarily disagree with your last statement there. I did my DNA test before 2020, so having now had my eyes opened a little bit, I sometimes do now wonder if I'll ever regret doing it.

[JBowen]

My two nephews did it and these brothers from the same parents got such different results about ancestry that we know is impossible. Impossible because they could not have a different origin and be from the same parents.
I personally think that this is an operation to collect data by the government by having people actually pay to submit their DNA.

Actually, it's not impossible. I think this is a pretty common misconception about 'ancestry' DNA testing. The DNA test does NOT tell you what your origin is or what percentage of your ancestors came from the various respective countries. The DNA test tells you what percentage of the genes (alleles) that you happened to have inherited are most common in which countries, which is a very different thing. Because which alleles you inherit from either parent are totally random, unless you are an identical twin, you can definitely have different ancestry percentages than a sibling.
Just because you know for certain that say 30% of your ancestors were Irish (or whatever), definitely does not mean that 30% of your alleles are going to be irish. In fact, the most likely scenario is that you will have percentages either higher or lower than 30%, just due to the random inheritance of alleles from each and every generation. and those random chances can compound themselves pretty quickly over just a couple generations.

I personally think that this is an operation to collect data by the government by having people actually pay to submit their DNA.

Having said what I did above, I don't necessarily disagree with your last statement there. I did my DNA test before 2020, so having now had my eyes opened a little bit, I sometimes do now wonder if I'll ever regret doing it.

I too have shied away getting the DNA thing done. I feel like the Government or someone will use it against us in some evil way.

JBowen

[Ray]

If DNA results seem wonky and unlikely due to differences in immediate families, then also consider the so-called "non-paternal" events that crop-up from time to time in old fashioned analog record search genealogy. There was a lot more hanky-panky in times past than is acknowledged. When comparing collaterals from one census to the next or previous you find a sibling to your ancestor from out of left field. This could actually be a surprise sibling born in the mom's near middle-age or it could be an adoptive orphaned cousin or a foundling being fostered.

A more common scenario is an elder daughter finds herself knocked. She is exiled to relatives out of state. Mom announces (lies) to everyone that she herself is miraculously expecting at 48 then rides the train to join her daughter and they eventually return with the rosy bairn. If this little one is your ancestor then you have been duped.....pa ain't the pa and sis is actually the ma. It is these events, secret & imperceptible, that makes traditional records based genealogy entertaining but absolutely false.

Another commonality is a presumed barren woman is actually fertile but it is your assumed male antecedent who is impotent due to childhood fever(s). The poor lady carries the stigma and onus of her barreness but lies with a convenient rake or rounder and no one is the wiser. Everyone rejoices that she has finally conceived. Problem is that there is an absolute break in your roots and it happened alot more often than we like to admit/accept.

Somehow we tend to think that we have stemmed from a long, uninterrupted line of ward & june cleavers.

[Grizz]

Somehow we tend to think that we have stemmed from a long, uninterrupted line of ward & june cleavers.

A sidebar to this is that there is a new forensic analysis of dna that is solving cold murder cases by finding everyone related to victims and constructing a family tree that eventually leads to the missing person. A significant number of cold cases have been solved this way.

Another angle to this is that wrongly imprisoned people are being released by the new dna strategies that can make use of old dna evidence. A significant number or wronged humans have been freed from wrongful verdicts.

Another angle to this is that it's all gonna wash out in the end . . .

[Gunstore Commando]

There's a old university urban legend...

Supposedly, decades before DNA, some scientist was doing research on blood typing for some reason. And came to find out that, just based on blood type (i.e., ABO) alone, some shockingly high percentage of the people he studied could not possibly have been the biological child of their supposed parents.

Different versions of the legend have different numbers for the percentage, but they all have two digits...

[piller]

I did DNA testing. One of the companies told me that I lacked some genes that were necessary. Another has refused my swab because they say it is not human. The one that accepted me told me that my ancestry was English, Scottish, Welsh, Hungarian, Jewish, and Italian. That does not fit at all with family verbal history. I am missing the genes for half of the function of a human liver. I had my DNA tested by a lab about 20 years ago on a prescription from a Doctor who had an advanced degree in genetic medicine. He had to show one of his professors. That Prof had told them that they would never see someone like me because we were one in 50 million. Since then, the CDC has been following me. They want to know how someone with only 22 base pairs could survive. They check in on me annually now. I have to be careful when choosing a Doctor. Those who went to Baylor are not capable of understanding that they are dealing with an anomaly.

[Grizz]

I did DNA testing. One of the companies told me that I lacked some genes that were necessary. Another has refused my swab because they say it is not human. The one that accepted me told me that my ancestry was English, Scottish, Welsh, Hungarian, Jewish, and Italian. That does not fit at all with family verbal history. I am missing the genes for half of the function of a human liver. I had my DNA tested by a lab about 20 years ago on a prescription from a Doctor who had an advanced degree in genetic medicine. He had to show one of his professors. That Prof had told them that they would never see someone like me because we were one in 50 million. Since then, the CDC has been following me. They want to know how someone with only 22 base pairs could survive. They check in on me annually now. I have to be careful when choosing a Doctor. Those who went to Baylor are not capable of understanding that they are dealing with an anomaly.

It's a testament to Jesus, isn't it? I didn't get it when you told me, and I still don't actually have my mind wrapped around this, and I didn't even go to Baylor! I hope you are writing a book in your spare moments. You have all the elements of the best novel of the century. Or the best side-bar on human mis-understandings. . . .I hope all is well with you'all.