Warren Loraine Griffin will soon be 100 years young and there will be at celebration at his house in Wicksburg, Alabama on August 21, 2010. If you can’t be there, he would love to receive a note or card. Click on the announcement to see all the details.
Gone Fishing
By the Spring of 2014 I will retire and move to another state. To insure the family tree stays alive and flourishes, I moved all the data to Ancestry.com. If you are a descendant of Lunsford Griffin, please contact me and I will send you a link to the tree. You will be required to set up an account with Ancestry.com, but there is absolutely no charge to participate.
Griffin Crest
A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames and actually they don’t belong to families, except maybe in Poland and France.
Coats of arms were granted to or assumed by individual men. In England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland they are granted by the specific heraldry authority for those countries. In some continental countries they are assumed by individuals.
There are numerous peddlers on the internet, at shopping malls, in airports, in magazines and recently I saw an ad on TV selling them like they belong to everyone with a particular surname and they don’t. There are no laws regarding heraldry in the U.S. Therefore you are free to display any coat of arms you wish, but to do so without documented proof that you are entitled to it is taking on another’s identity. If you have pride in yourself and your family, you wouldn’t want to do that.
Anytime you go into someone’s home and see one of those walnut plaques over their fireplace or on their den wall, you can pretty much be sure that it is one that belongs to someone with their surname and probably isn’t evey related.
What is so bad about these scam merchants that sell them is that a family history will usually come with them. That family history will not be the same family history for everyone with the same surname. A lot of people have been misled when starting their family history because of that.
The only thing you can do is to trace your father’s or your husband’s family male line ancestry to see if either are entitled to one. Another thing you can design and have your own made up.
The following DNA match from Ancestry.com is from a descendant of Aaron Griffin, born about 1812 in Burke County, Georgia. According to the calculations, a match this close indicates a common ancestor at around 150 years. Since Lunsford was born 209 years ago, Aaron must be a very very close relative of Lunsford’s, maybe a brother or first cousin. This is very exciting news and another piece of the puzzle.
Click on the image for a larger view.
I just upgraded the Family Tree software to PhpGedView 4.2.1 and have turned on a feature that allows mapping of events for individuals and families. When you bring up a person’s data, you will notice a new tab called “Map” which will show the location of births, deaths, marriages, etc. I spent the past week correcting errors in spelling and format and for the most part, when you display an individual’s map, the little flags will show up in the correct location. If you find an individual whose map is displaying incorrectly, let me know and I will correct the location coordinates.
Now that locations are going to be geocoded, it is very important to enter locations properly. The proper way to enter a location is: City, County, State, USA, for example, Troy, Pike County, Alabama, USA. Please spell out the word “County” or “Parish”. The location “Probably Alabama” or “Near Enterprise” is not a proper location. If you don’t know the location for an event, leave it blank and enter things like “Probably Alabama” in a Note. To find a County, a quick way is a Google search on the city. I’ve had good luck searching for terms like: “Macon GA wiki”. The first result is usually the Wikipedia page for that city and the first line in the article will usually tell you the County. If you know the City or Town, please find the County (unless it’s a city in Virginia for instance).
Remember, Louisiana has Parishes and Virginia cities are usually not located in Counties (something I learned recently).
Microsoft just launched a new file sharing service called “SkyDrive” which allows up to 25 Gigabytes of files to be shared with the public. I have uploaded every scanned image used on this web site except for birth certificates of living individuals. This will allow everyone to more efficiently browse and download images of interest. Check it out at: Griffin Family History Fileshare.
Durden Looper and crew of the Lonesome Lady
An excerpt from http://www.outsider.gol.com/magazine/septmber/hiroshima.html: (link now broken)
On July 28, 1945, thirty-three B24 Liberator bombers from Okinawa attacked and sank one of Japan’s last battleships, the Haruna, in the heavily defended anchorage at Kure, thirty miles from Hiroshima.
Two B24s, Taloa and Lonesome Lady, were shot down. The surviving crewmen were brought into Hiroshima where they were held, together with other captured American airmen, in the local Japanese military police headquarters by chance, less than eight hundred yards from where the Enola Gay’s atom bomb was soon to explode. All the prisoners and their guards were killed, or died soon after.
Lt. Durden William Looper was on board the B24 Liberator Lonesome Lady.
The other crew members were:
2nd. Lt. James M Ryan 2nd Lt. Ralph Neal Sgt. Hugh Atkinson Sgt. Buford Ellison Cpl. John Long
see: http://www.interment.net/data/us/mo/stlouis/jeffbarr/l/jeffbarr_l12.htm for burial information.
Hazzard Been
Hazzard BeenHazzard BEAN/BEEN was born in Franklin County, Tennessee on 04 December 1815. His parents were John Hogan BEAN and Jane McFARLAND.
At some point before 1830, Hazzard moved away from Tennessee with his family-of-origin and eventually arrived in Marion County, Alabama. Also, prior to 1830, Hazzard’s mother died. It is not clear whether the family had already settled in Marion County by the time Jane died, or whether they might have still been living elsewhere. At any rate, when Hazzard was fifteen years old or younger, his father remarried. By the new marriage, his father and step-mother had at least two more sons. Family stories suggest that when this marriage took place, the children from the first marriage–including Hazzard and his sister Jane–left home.
