My Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Redux

I posted Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Ahnentafel Roulette on Saturday after hurriedly reading my email and blogs at an Internet Cafe in beautiful downtown Felton, CA while on a time deadline ... and botched my own response.

DianaR commented that "Hey Randy - 97 divided by 4 is 24.25....I think you need to spin the wheel again ;-)" Thank you, Diana! Very gentle! William R sent me an email to kindly tell me that I erred also - thank you William! Only two of my over 800 readers caught the error and told me about it...c'mon folks, I do this intentionally just to see if you are reading carefully (um, actually, not...).

There have been over 40 blog posts on this subject - Thomas MacEntee has the list at Geneabloggers in SNGF – Ahnentafel Roulette. Thomas recently posted The Value of Play about SNGF - thank you, Thomas. Genealogists just wanna have fun, at least occasionally!

Anyway, as DianaR pointed out, my Ahnentafel Roulette number was really 24, not 19. Where did I get 19? I guess I thought that my father would have been 77 years old, not 97. I didn't use a calculator or my fingers...and came up with 19! So, as you can see, I erred, and I need to make it right!

Here's #24, one of my second great-grandfathers:

David Jackson/D.J. Carringer was born 04 November 1828 in Greenville, Mercer County, PA; he died 20 January 1902 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA. He was the son of 48. Heinrich/Henry Carringer and 49. Sarah Feather. He married 25. Rebecca Spangler 16 October 1851 in Mercer County, PA. They had children Harvey Edgar Carringer (1852-1946), Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946) and Effie Carringer (1858-1874).

Three facts:

* David Jackson Carringer was the migrant in my Carringer line (my maternal line), growing up in Mercer County PA, migrating to Louisa and Washington Counties, Iowa in the late 1850s, to Boulder County, Colorado in 1873, and to San Diego County, California before 1900, where he (and wife Rebecca) died. How I wish I had stories from these travels!

* David Jackson Carringer was listed as a carpenter in the 1860 US Census (Louisa County IA), as a farmer in the 1870 US Census (in Washington county IA), as a joiner and a carpenter in the 1880 census (Boulder County CO) and with no occupation in the 1900 census (in San Diego County CA), although he is listed as owning his home with no mortgage.

* It is evident that D.J. and Rebecca really respected education and were literate - the Carringer/Seaver family library had many books inscribed by one of these family members, including schoolbooks of each of the children. There are also many letters from D.J., Rebecca and Edgar to the Henry Austin Carringer family in San Diego that describe their life in Caribou, Colorado. An 1862 Bible contains several generations of births, marriages and deaths of the family. The books have been distributed to family members, and I have the letters and the family Bible pages.

There is my #24...

I am back from Santa Cruz (and had emails and blogs to read from Friday morning on...) and need to go read my snail mail and newspapers tonight, then tackle my long to-do list for the next eight weeks. I have two ProGen reports to complete, two columns to write, four Beginning Computer Genealogy lessons to teach, three genealogy programs to prepare and present, and one library lecture to prepare and present. More on most of these in due time! Now - I need a nap!