Soldier Cousin - Wordless Wednesday

This photograph is labeled Juraj Pereksta and was mailed to my family in the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1959. My grandmother had two nephews named Juraj Pereksta. I believe this is the son of her brother, Pytor, rather than the son of her brother Vasil.

The photo is undated.  Should anyone have any input regarding the military uniform that might date this I'd be most grateful!

Juraj Pereksta Photograph; digital image, privately held by Susan Clark. 2006

1854 Medical School Graduation - Amanuensis Monday

Thanks to John at Transylvanian Dutch who originated the Amanuensis Monday meme, providing a framework (and nudge) for transcribing family records, news clippings and other treasures.

This is another transcription of a document from the papers of Maria Lee Palmer Smith (1844-1931), my husband's great-grandmother. It is a brief letter certifying the year of her late husband's graduation from medical school. Punctuation, format and spelling are retained from the original, though line breaks have been altered.

Jefferson Medical College

Office of the Dean                                 Aug 5 1909

Mrs. F F Smith

       Madame

       Dr. Francis F. Smith graduated in the year 1854

Yours etc

Ross V Patterson

Sub Dean

Notes: Jefferson Medical College was founded in 1824. It is now part of Thomas Jefferson University. According to the University's website "(a)n infirmary to treat the poor was opened in 1824, and by 1844, Jefferson was providing patient beds over a shop at 10th and Sansom Streets." In the years before Smith attended medical advances included the use of anesthesia (1846) and the hypodermic syringe (1851). Smith's class of 270 men was the largest graduated to that date. Speaking at their graduation was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Franklin Bache. 

While many of the men who graduated with Smith served in the Civil War, I have not found evidence that Smith was a military surgeon. However, he lived and practiced in Frederick, Maryland throughout the war and surely attended to soldiers wounded at the nearby battles - including Antietam. My mother-in-law speaks of her father (also a doctor) using his father's Civil War surgical tools to carve meat at their dining room table. 

Sources: 
Patterson, (Philadelphia, PA) to Maria L. Smith. Letter. 9 Aug 1909. Privately held. Frederick, MD. Published with permission. 


Frederick B. Wagner, Jr., MD and J. Woodrow Savacool, MD, editors, Thomas Jefferson University - A chronological history and alumni directory, 1824-1990 PDF, Jefferson Digital Commons (http:/www.jdc.jefferson.edu: accessed 13 Feb 2012), Part I: Jefferson Medical College 1846-1854 (pages 55-88).

Slaves Named in 1815 Will of John Turner - A Friend of Friends Friday

This is the part of a series of transcriptions and abstracts of records involving slaves that I copied at the Library of Virginia during the summer of 2011.  Nine slaves are bequeathed by name to the children of John Turner, who died in Fauquier County, VA between the 15th of May and the 26th of June, 1815. 

In the name of God Amen, the 16th day of May 1815. I John Turner of Fauquier County, being in perfect memory, praise be to Almighty God for the same, yet recalling to mind the uncertainty of this life and the certainty of death. I do make and appoint this my last will and testament in form following. I therefore commit my soul to Almighty God, which gave me it, and my body to the earth to be buried after a decent and christian like manner according to the discrition of my executors hereafter named and as touching my worldy estate which it hath pleased Almighty God to bless me with in this life. I give devise and dispose of them in manner and form following, Viz. I therefore order that all my just debts and burial charges be fully paid and Satisfied before any part thereof is taken out of the hands and possessions of my executors hereafter named. First I give and bequeath unto my beloved wife Elizabeth Turner all my real and personal Estate (after all) my just debts are paid during her natural life then to be divided in the manner and form following. I also give to my son Daniel Turner one negroe woman named Ruth. I also give to my Daughter Elizabeth Oliver, one negroe man named Jerry during her natural life then to belong to my grandson John Brown. I also give to my son John M. Turner one negroe named Lewis, one feather bed and one cow & Calf I also give to my Daughter Mary H. Turner one negroe woman named Mariah and ___ two children named Richard & Wilson and all the said Mariah's future increase and one feather bed one horse one Cow & Calf. I also give to my Daughter Hannah Smith, one negroe woman named Nancy & one named Susannah and there future increase to her during her natural life then to be equally divided among all her children. I also give to my Daughter Sally Brown one negroe Boy named Tom but to remain with my Daughter Mary H. Freeman until demanded and lastly all the residue of my real and personal Estate to be sold and the money equally divided among all my Children after all of my just debts are paid. I hereby appoint my friends Robert Green, Lewis Suddoth & Joseph Morgan my executors of this my last will and testament hereby revoking all other wills made by me. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the day and year above written in the thirty fifth line the words the residue was interlined before signed.

Signed, sealed, published }
and declared by the above }                 his
named John Turner to be }       John  X  Turner {seal}
his last will and testament }               mark
in the presence of us who have }
hereunto subscribed our names }
As witnesses in the presence of }
the testator.
 Joseph Boteler (sp?)
 John Suddoth
 Cosson B. May (sp?)

     At a Court held for Fauquier County the 26th day of June 1815 This will was proven by the oaths of Joseph Boteler, John Suddoth and Cosson B. Day witnesses thereto and ordered to be recorded and on the motion of Robt. Green Lewis Suddoth and Joseph Morgan the Executors therein named who together with John Suddoth, Geo Eastham Jr & Inman Horner their securities who entered into and acknowledged bond in the penalaty of four thousand dollars conditioned as the law directs a certificate is granted them for obtaining a probate thereof in due form.

              Teste Danl Withers CC

Notes: DNA tests suggest this Turner family is not related to the family of Edward Turner (d. 1805, Fauquier County), my 5th great-grandfather. This John Turner was also known as John Meridy Turner. For further information about this family see Gwen Boyer Bjorkman's The Descendants of John Meridy Turner (1747-1815) of Fauquier County, Virginia, (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995).

Source: Fauquier, Virginia, Will Books, 6: 123-4, John Turner; Library of Virginia, Fauquier Reel 33. 

Pining for a Pedigree Chart, Part 3 or What I Did

Using the strategy of "translating" the HTML code that I wrote about in my last post I was able to achieve my goal of a pedigree chart interface on my yet to be born website. This is what I did.

In Legacy I created pedigree style web pages for a family group.

I chose to view the pages in my browser and selected a page to transfer to my website, making note of the file title.

I found the file in the Legacy file on my hard drive and chose to "Open With" a text file editor (in this case Notebook).

The opened text file contained the HTML code for the web page. I copied all of the text.

I opened my web site in Google Sites and chose to create a new page. I used the same name as the file for the page name (later on I'll go back and change names if I wish) and selected the basic Web Page template.

I selected the "Edit HTML Source" option and pasted the copied HTML code from the Legacy generated file. After closing the HTML Editor I was able to edit the page using the WYSIWYG editor.

I edited the page - heavily - and customized the pedigree chart, tailoring it to reflect my use of family group pages rather than individual pages.

Then I saved the page as a template, allowing me to use the design on any new page I choose.

I was so pleased with the result that I designed a template for a modified family group page and saved it as well.

The templates based on the Legacy pages can now be used to create new pages. 

The process of creating the pages is still cumbersome. I can only do a page at a time and have to enter all the links myself, but I can do so on the pedigree chart or in the "Family" box giving me the graphic interface I wanted. It is surely not worth the effort if the goal is a site with a complete (though I know there's no such animal) family tree. In that case I would have to move to a different type of web site that allowed uploading of files or integration with a program like TNG. But for my purposes this works. 

Pining for a Pedigree Chart, Part 2 or I don't speak HTML

One of the benefits of using the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) sites like Blogger or Weebly is not needing to know HTML, the language used to format and create links on web pages. (Language is a key word here. We'll get back to it shortly.)

Conversely, these sites also limit what you can do. Generally each page must be created separately, links added individually. There are constraints regarding fonts and graphics. You cannot upload groups of linked pages created by a software program like Legacy. This hasn't created a problem for me as a blogger. I write an entry or two at a time. They're usually pretty free form and content driven.

The website I want to create, however, has many pages and a clear structure. There are pages with specific formats for individual biographies, for families, for locations, for events like the Civil War. Most of the information is coming from my genealogy software. The entire point of the site is the ability to easily move from page to page.

That's one of the reason's I got so fixated on the graphic pedigree chart at the top of the page. There are other reasons having to do with genetics and personality but that's another post.

Anyway, one of the key elements to my web design problem was that I don't "speak" HTML. It's a language, remember? But these sites do. And each of them has a built in translator. On Blogger there are two views when writing a post. "Compose" is the WYSIWYG editor. But if you select "HTML" you will see your post translated into HTML. On Google's Sites, which I'm using to build the website, the translator looks like this.

What this means for we non-speakers is that we have the ability to take something written in a language we don't understand (HTML) and translate it into something we can work with. I discovered this when I was entering data on WeRelate.org, the genealogy Wiki. I had trouble entering information (such a massive understatement) until I realized I could write what I wanted in Blogger and then copy and paste the HTML code from Blogger into WeRelate. HUGE timesaver. 

This time I did the reverse. I copied the HTML code from the web page created by Legacy into Google Sites and edited using their WYSIWYG editor. For those who are interested I'll lay out each step in the next post. 

There are many programs you can download that do the same thing and far more. If you Google "wysiwyg html editor" you'll get pages of links. This is a very low-tech, and pretty dumbed down approach. Just my speed. 

Photo credit Some rights reserved by Nikita Kashner