Blog
WWII Dog Tag Finally Returns to Family: Orphaned Heirloom Rescue
A 22-year year old man with a metal detector in France has brought a lot of joy to an 89-year widow in the U.S.
As reported in TheBlaze.com, Francois Blaizot found an American’s World War II dog tag in Normandy last year. Instead of keeping or selling it, he decided to try to reunite it with the soldier’s family. It took help from a local veteran’s affairs office for Francois to connect with the soldier’s widow, Catherine Wallace of Indianapolis, Indiana, US.
Francois sent a letter along with the dog tag to express his appreciation for U.S. military assistance to his country during World War II. As it turns out, the soldier did survive the war and continued home to serve his community as a firefighter. He passed away in 1997.
I don’t usually read the comments section of news article posts, but there are some nice responses to this article. I particularly like this one: “Man, talk about heart warming. We need more stories like this. And more metal detectors. LOL.”
Watch the story:
Did you know that there’s someone in our genealogy community who has made dog tag rescues her special priority? Lorine McGinnes Schulze of The Olive Tree Genealogy Blog coordinates efforts with volunteers who read her site postings and help her reunite these military artifacts with families. Click on the link to her blog to see a list of SOLVED cases along with OPEN cases that you could maybe help solve!
We hear about orphaned heirloom rescues from time to time and I never get tired of them! Read more stories like this one by going to the Genealogy Gems home page and searching (on the lower left) under the category “heirloom.” If you’ve found an heirloom from someone else’s family, check out this post with advice on how to track down living relatives.
WDYTYA 2015 Doesn’t Disappoint!
Did you catch the opening episode of Who Do You Think You Are? on Sunday evening? I screened it along with several of this season’s episodes that were shared with us here at Genealogy Gems. WDYTYA 2015 doesn’t disappoint!
Julie Chen’s episode marked the first trip of WDYTYA to China. We followed her as she unraveled the riches-to-rags-to-riches story of her grandfather and great-grandfather, which ended at her great-grandfather’s tomb high on a hillside in rural China. (Click here to watch some clips posted by TLC, including one on the feng shui principles behind his grave site selection.)
This coming Sunday at 10pm EST, we go with Josh Groban into even deeper ancestral history: 1600s Germany. He follows the trail of an immigrant ancestor who died en route to bringing his family to Philadelphia.
As TLC explains, Josh “discovers a brilliant man who was not only a deacon, but also a music and singing teacher and well-known astronomer. But Josh finds that his ancestor’s predictions of cataclysmic doom put him in the crosshairs of the church and the fate of his family on the line.” We get to live our genealogy travel dreams vicariously through him, as he tours several beautiful historic places his ancestor lives and handles original documents about his family that are hundreds of years old.
There’s so much more to come with this season of WDYTYA! On March 22, an ancestor of Angie Harmon (Law & Order) will take us into a little-known rebellion by Revolutionary War troops who served faithfully under George Washington at Valley Forge. On March 29, Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) learns about a pattern of family loss and dysfunction that reverberates back several generations. And there’s more to come: Tony Goldwyn, America Ferrera, Bill Paxton and Melissa Etheridge will all appear in April! Watch a WDYTYA spring season teaser below:
Try FindMyPast for FREE This Weekend!
Beginning today, try FindMyPast for FREE –all weekend long!
Over 2 billion historical records will be available to search beginning Friday, March 6 and ending Monday, March 9 (start and finish at midday London time (GMT)). Local subscribers will have World access during this time and World subscribers get an extra three days tacked onto their subscriptions.
What kinds of records are we talking about? According to FindMyPast:
- “Over 900 million census records from across the UK, USA and Ireland;
- Passenger lists for ships sailing to and from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA;
- Birth, marriage and death records dating back to the 18th century, and the largest online collection of UK parish records;
- The most comprehensive collection of UK military records anywhere online;
- The largest collection of Irish family history records available online;
- Historical newspapers from across the world, including more than 10 million British newspaper pages from as long ago as 1710;
- An easy to use online family tree builder which allows you to import and export your tree if you’ve built it elsewhere;
- Our automatic Hints feature, which automatically searches our records for you and suggests potential matches to the people you add to your family tree.”
You may also find these resources helpful:
Webinar on Finding Female Ancestors. To celebrate International Women’s Day, at 7am EST on Sunday 8th March, Findmypast will host a webinar on searching for women in historical records. Women are usually tougher to find than men in old records because a) they were mentioned much less frequently and b) their names changed with their marital status.
Getting Started Video. Findmypast has created a new Getting Started video which will be available to view beginning this weekend.
Find out more at Findmypast’s dedicated Free Weekend page.
