52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

         Instead of a photograph to talk about this week, I thought I would share a screen shot of my DNA genetic origins. This is me !   It is fascinating, and Ancestry is getting better with their analysis as more people test their DNA and broaden the base. My DNA origins map Basically I am about 50% English, but that percent is broken down into 4 different regions of the United Kingdom. The smallest % in this regions is Cornwall, which is on the southwestern tip of England. This is so interesting to me, since I am deep into the TV series Poldark, which is based in Cornwall in the last part of the 1700’s. I can just see myself riding a horse and galloping across the windswept edge of the seaside cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.   The chart below shows the breakdown of my ethnic origins and is color-coded to the screen shot. Note that the size of a color-coded region does not indicate how large my DNA origin is in that area. For example...

         Last week I wrote about my 2X great grandparents on my mother’s side, who were born in Ireland: John M. Reilly and his wife Matilda. They both immigrated to the US in the mid 1800’s, most likely separately, and they probably met in the US.   The main two questions I have been trying to answer for years is where did they come from in Ireland, and what was Matilda’s maiden name. I have made some baby steps progress, but I’m no where close to answering these two research questions.   Here are some new things I have learned: 1. John M. Reilly’s middle name was not Merryn, but it was Mervyn . The only sources I had for the middle name were written church record books of baptisms and burials, where he and Matilda were parents. The handwriting is over 160 years old, and the script was not clear at all.              But this past week I noticed that John’s son Robert also had the middle initial of “M” as d...

          I, like so many others, have been on a quest for the place, or places, where my Irish 2nd great grandparents came from in Ireland. They are John Merryn Reilly and his wife Matilda (maiden name unknown).   I revisit this quest from time to time, but have not had any luck so far. Every official document just states they were from Ireland.   Here are the folks in this post:    GG Grandfather: J ohn Merryn Reilly (Riley) abt 1831   - 1872    GG Grandmother: Matilda (maiden name not known) abt 1836 -   1903     their 4 children:          Elizabeth Reilly 1859 - 1941 (my g-grandmother) Matilda Emma Reilly - 1863 - 1870 (died at 9 yrs) Robert M. Reilly   1863 - 1931 (my great grand uncle) George Washington Reilly 1869 - 1870 (died at 1 yr)) S tarting 1870 Mary J. McDowell lived in the Reilly household 1821 - 1903 US 1860 census Cincinnati, Ohio, 13th Ward.  J...

         I have written about my dad’s WWII letters before, but this week’s topic seemed to call to me, and I wanted to share some of the things he wrote about while he was   halfway around the world from his wife of just one year. These one year’s worth of letters turned into a story that forever changed how I would think about my dad, and got to know him and think of him in a way that would not have been possible without them. My Dad, Roscoe Hinch - achieved the rank of Lt. Col. in Army Reserves These letters were written between November 1944 and November 1945, when Dad was sent overseas with the US Army Medical Corps, first to the European Theatre (France, Belgium and Germany, and then to the Pacific Theatre (Philippines and Japan). He wrote well over 100 letters, all multiple pages, to our mom. It took him one year to write them, and it took me about the same amount of time in 2019 - 2020 to scan, transcribe, print and share them with family. ...

          The " Cherry Wine Incident " occurred in May 1933 in Dayton, Tennessee, a small southern town that became famous in 1925 when it was the site of one of the most controversial court cases of the 20th century - The Scopes Monkey Trial, which pitted religion against science in the classroom regarding how evolution would be taught. This fact sets the stage for my story because William Jennings Bryan, a famous attorney and politician of that era was the attorney arguing for the biblical recount of evolution in this court case. For this story, it is important to know that Williams Jennings Bryan was also well known for his stance against   drinking alcohol, and wanted it banned entirely in this country. He died just one week after this trial ended, and in 1930 the William Jennings Bryan University was founded in is honor in the same town -   Dayton TN. My dad, Roscoe Hinch, lived just 17 miles north of Dayton, in Spring City, TN. He gradua...