Your Family and the Neighbors

This is the second weekend that has been absolutely beautiful in my part of the world and I spent it putting in my fall garden. Yesterday, our new neighbors, who actually aren't new, inquired as to what we were growing.  They plan on putting a raised bed garden in next weekend along our shared fence line.

So, how is a "new" neighbor not new?  Well, they lived one house north of their present location for two years and moved one house south in May when the former owner decided to move into a condo after his wife died the previous year.  The condo he moved into is next door to his deceased wife's first husband.  They all remained good friends.  

The house that the "new" neighbors moved from was purchased by someone they knew from the New England state they formally lived in.  This new to me neighbor is their old friend.

Same thing happened to the house on the corner of our block - the person who built it decided to buy some property on a lake a few miles north where he could retire.  He sold it to a Midwest family.  They lived their for two years and decided to move to a home not far away with more amenities.  They sold the "old" house to a relative.

One of my adults kids bought a home two years ago that's only 4 minutes from me (if I miss the light).  The insurance agent we recommended is the brother of someone who I used to eat lunch in high school with and who was a good friend of my husbands.  That high school is 1500 miles from where we all currently reside.

My own family flipped houses, too.  I have a nice brick bbq grill my husband and son built based on a memory of one of the house flips.  My grandparents decided their first home had become too large so they had a smaller house built a few miles away from the original home in Indiana in the early 1960's.  One of the "extras" they selected was a brick bbq in the backyard.  Looking back on it now I find the choice amusing because they had no experience with outside grilling.  They used the grill only once, a Memorial Day weekend, when I was 5.  I distinctly remember it because the house their original home they sold to my uncle and his family the year before.  Being small, I have no memory of the family's real estate transaction.  I do have some memories of visiting their prior home for holidays and regular visits.  I distinctly remember playing hide and seek with my cousins in the new house as I climbed into a window seat and fell asleep.  That caused the adults to hysterically run around looking for me.  The window seat became off limits to us after that. But back to the bbq grill...

The reason I remember the grill is because on that particular Memorial Day weekend my grandparents were giving a going away party to my uncle, recently divorced, who was going to move to Florida.  They had bought their old home back from him and this was the last family get together in their "new" home.  He was the only one in the family that knew how to light charcoal.  The problem was there was a downpour shortly after he lit the briquettes and they were quickly extinguished.  We ran into the house and since we were a large family in a small home, the women went to the kitchen to prepare the food on the stove and the rest of us were sent to the basement, which was pretty much empty.  The adults brought down some folding chairs and the kids sat on the bare concrete to eat our hot dogs.  

I share this story because 60 years ago my family, much like my neighbors, played musical households - selling to a family or friend and in our case, returning to the original home.  

Sure, family, friends and neighbors traveled in wagon trains, passenger ships and on barges to emigrate to a new community.  I hadn't really thought much about that being a common custom continuing today until my back yard chat with those "new" "old" neighbors yesterday.  

In this ever changing world that requires almost daily adaptions, it's nice to think that we still seek the comfort of our loved ones to rely on in our neighbors for support.

DNA Ethnicity Surprises

 

Ancestry.com has again updated their DNA Results Summary.  Sure, it's only as accurate as the number of people who have tested.  What my latest results tell me is that Ancestry has had a whole lot more Swedish, German and Slavs testing and not many Balkans.

I know this because the updated results show I am 42% Eastern European and Russian and 41% Germanic Europe.  

In Ancestry's last update, I was considered French; today I am of German ancestry. 

My paternal line would not have thought much of that finding; with a name like Leininger they would have accepted the Germanic Europe as fact.  The truth is more complex - the ancestors that were forgotten most likely would have been livid with the designation as they considered themselves French. My two times great grandmother was christened as Marie Marguerite not the Germanic Maria Margarette.  Her spouse was christened Jean Leininger and not Johan.  They resided in the Palatinate, the region that flipped several time between what is now Germany and France. They wisely spoke both French and German. Funny that the land has stopped switching but the ethnicity indicators haven't.  Ancestry would be smart to have a Palatine region noted instead of moving ethnicity results every update.

Interestingly, the results do include 5% of an ethnicity estimate as French and the region is the Riviera, where my Lamphere's (Landfairs) did reside in the 1600's prior to fleeing France for London and then Ireland and then Virginia.  It appears they intermarried with relatives and others who fled with them and that is somewhat supported in that I now have no Irish identified.  Well, that's not quite true, either...

My Irish is encompassed under my Scottish designation.  

I also find it interesting that I have Welsh separated from England (which encompasses Northwestern Europe now).  I am most definitely Welsh with my people moving to Cheshire for a time.  That is shown in the map, along with the northwest section of France.  That is also correct as I have some William the Conqueror folks originating in that French region.  

My maternal line, though, would have my grandmother in requesting her money back.

Family stories shared by my grandmother say her side moved to the what is now the outskirts of Zagreb, Croatia around the time of Christ because of overpopulation on the island to the south where they once resided.  That would most likely have been Kos Island, part of Greece today.  The now defunct National Geographic project did route my ancestry on that trail.  Grandma said my grandfather's people had already been in the Zagreb region when her people arrived and they had been Gypsies. National Geographic's results showed that, too.  Using records, I can show that my maternal line was in the Zagreb region as far back as the 1600's.  Based on a title the family was awarded, I can show some were in the region as early as the 1100's.  For 900 years, they resided in a small area in what is now known as Croatia.  According to Ancestry, I'm 3% Balkan.  

Explaining to my grandmother how Ancestry obtains their results would have been maddening.  I'm sure some of you are going to have to try with an older relative.  I send you good thoughts in doing that!

I am quite impressed, though, with Ancestry and their Swedish results.  Look above as I have shown how Southern Sweden is shown by region.  I have worked very hard to get most of my husband's Swedish lines identified and they are from the area Ancestry identified.  I'm looking forward to someday seeing a trend like this for my other ethnicities.

Ancestry has also released a section called StoryScout.  It's housed under DNA and includes information that you may have provided in a tree.  I didn't spend much time on this but I did take a look and it reminded me of something that is important to do and I honestly fail at it.

The section is based on census and military records from the 20th century.  Sure, I've saved those records to my ancestors 20 plus years ago.  I know where they lived, who they lived with, blah blah blah.  What gave me pause, however, was that it correctly showed my maternal grandfather and noted that his income was nearly twice that of an average man at the time.  He made $1400.00 per year when the average was in the mid $700.00's.  Wow.  This explained to me why my immigrant family could afford a car in the 1920's, a phone in the 1930's, travel to California in the 1940's and to Europe in the '60's.  Now I understand why grandma, when babysitting me, would drag me to the nice stores and dress shops and had her hair done each week.  Duh!  They never flaunted their wealth and dutifully shipped supplies several times a year back to the old country.  Thanks, Ancestry, for taking one small data point in the census and giving me an insight I hadn't he thought about.  Try it, it might work for you, too.

More Tech Safety Suggestion

Last week I blogged about my Evernote account being hacked.  I reached out to some tech savvy colleagues for advice and wanted to share something with you that might be helpful.  

An IT engineer recommended that I check my email accounts for hacks by visiting https://haveibeenpwned.com

That's not a typo - it is pwned and not owned!

Enter your email address on the page and click pwned?

I have several email accounts and I entered all of them to check.  I was surprised to find that one had been breached.  It was a government site from last summer that I use for genealogy research.  I changed the password on that site and just to be more secure, changed my email password.  

While changing my password I had another "Aha!" moment; I never took the time to really check out my email Security settings.  The devices I have connected to the email are shown but I had to pause at the Third-party apps with account access.  My bad for not reading the small print and clicking "I accept" when visiting an organization's website!  I had given permission unknowingly to two retail organizations to have access to my calendar and contacts.  It was quite easy to disable that!  I've begun my holiday shopping so after I'm done, I plan on rechecking my email account to see if I somehow give permission for access that is unwarranted.  

Just like covid, behind the scene activity to your tech tools can maliciously effect you!  Take a few minutes to check it out and stay safe!

Evernote Info to Keep Your Info Safe

I haven't used Evernote in awhile, so imagine my surprise this morning to receive an email that someone with a Mac in India signed on to my account 7 hours earlier.  Definitely wasn't me or anyone I know!

Being somewhat paranoid, I tend to not click on links sent to me in emails.  Instead, I used my current Kindle to go directly to Evernote online as I haven't downloaded the ap to that Kindle.  

Another surprise - I was unable to disable the device as my account was accessible only from the Kindle that I had the ap downloaded to.  I'm really not understanding that since the hacker didn't have the Kindle with the ap on it!  Unfortunately, I'm not tech savy enough to figure out how to access my account on a different device so I then spent time on a Kindle hunt to find the device with the ap.

Took me a few minutes to figure out where the old Kindle was and to fire it up.  After getting through the ad to purchase more Evernote services, I clicked on Settings and Devices.  Sure enough, there was the hacker's device.  Clicking "disable" hopefully blocked the hacker from having some afternoon fun with my account.  

The hacker didn't find anything useful as after taking notes, I transfer them to whatever computer I'm using as soon as I'm done with a meeting or archive visit.  I keep nothing on Evernote.  That practice wasn't established because I didn't trust Evernote to keep my documents safe; it was my process to use Evernote in settings that aren't conducive to paper and pens/pencils, such as in a library stack or outside at a cemetery with the wind blowing.  Now I'm glad that was how I used the ap!

I decided it would be wise to change my password.  I'm a little miffed with Evernote as you cannot easily do that.  The directions online say to go to Account Settings and click Security Summary.  I don't have that, possibly because I never purchased an updgrade package.  My only option to update a password is to email them and then they send me an email and then I go back to their site and change the password.  All this for a device I don't even use any longer.

So, adieu, Evernote.  I've uninstalled the ap on the old Kindle after clearing the cache and signing out of the account.  I won't be downloading it to my new one, either.  When the pandemics over I'll be using the note ap on my cell instead.