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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Play Ahnentafel Roulette: John H. Sullivan (No. 26)

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignments today. Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) What year was one of your 2nd great-grandparents born?  Divide this number by 70 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel" - your software will create this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook post, or as a comment on this blog post.

5) NOTE:  If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again - pick a great-grandmother, a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!  Or pick any ancestor!

We have played this game at least five times before, so I was careful to pick an ancestor that I have not written about. 

I used my daughter as the starting point and picked the oldest 2x-great-grandfather of hers, Amos Gorrell, born in 1837. Divided by 70 got me to 26.2428... So, 26 is my daughter’s Ahnentafel number, and that points to John H. Sullivan, her 2x-great-grandfather.

John H. Sullivan was born 20 June 1854, perhaps in County Cork, Ireland. No record of birth or baptism has been found. He married about 1882 in Davison County, Dakota Territory to Anna Marie Gleeson. The church book from the church where most likely they married has pages missing from the front.

Three Facts:

  • Both he and Anna each homesteaded in Dakota Territory and each purchased their land before the end of the five years.
  • John was an electrician and worked at the Anaconda Copper Mine in Montana. One city directory stated he was a dynamo tender.
  • His granddaughter stated he was difficult to understand because of his thick Irish brogue.

 

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

  1. Lisa, I've noticed the number 26 quite a lot, too! :) Irish brogues can be really difficult to understand. We were in Ireland and driving a car. I convinced my husband to stop and ask for directions. The gentleman who helped us was very nice, but neither of us could understand a word he said.

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