Lost Colony Research Group

Ocracoke History Hunting Trip Tomorrow at 9:00 AM

2011-10-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

Time	Saturday, October 22 · 9:00am - 12:30pm

Location	Ocracoke Island, NC

Created By	Jennifer Farrow Creech, Dawn Taylor

For	Hatteras Island Genealogical and Preservation Society

More Info	Ocracoke History Hunting Trip Date: October 22, 2011 Where to meet: 8:30 a.m - Ferry terminal parking lot in Hatteras Village. We will be car pooling from there unless other prior arrangements are made. Please feel free to drive separately if desired. Ferry will be departing at 9 a.m Start of tour: 11 a.m until noon (give or take). Phillip Howard will be giving our group a guided tour of the the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum. He will be sharing some fascinating island history and discussing the museum and it's holdings. 12-ish - 1:30-ish p.m= Lunch @ the Flying Melon. 1:30 - 2:30 p.m: The walking tour of Howard Street and it's cemeteries will begin. Phillip will be sharing some spooktacular stories of the families of Ocracoke and their final resting places. Tour will end at the Village Craftsman. Please follow the below link for more info on Phillip Howard and The Village Craftsman After the tour, it will be up to the individual group members as to whether they stay on the island or head for the ferry. Please be sure if you are car pooling, to check w/ all who are riding with you as to their plans prior to leaving Hatteras that morning. It is a 14 mile drive from the south ferry dock to Ocracoke Village. NCDOT: Ferry Division - Ferry Schedule Fees: $12 for walking tour. Will be due on day of tour. The ride on the Hatteras/Ocracoke Ferry is free. No charge. Update: Due to Hurricane Irene, those who are planning to join us and do not live on Hatteras Island, may have to change their travel plans by taking the Swan Quarter/Cedar Island ferries to Ocracoke. Please follow the NCDOT's link below in order to keep up with the latest info on NC HWY 12's Recovery Project. http://www.ncdot.org/ Cost for touring the museum is a donation of your choice.

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Birth of a Colony

2011-10-25T18:41:00.000-05:00

As Thanksgiving approaches, we stop to honor those who went before without whom, our Nation would not have existed. Like all births this birth was not without pain. JC

Watch Birth of a Colony: North Carolina on PBS. See more from UNC-TV Presents.

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Beechland: Oral History versus Historical Records

2011-11-04T21:35:00.003-05:00

The Lost Colony Research Group
Genealogy ~ DNA ~ Archaeology

Newsletter

November 2011

Beechland: Oral History versus Historical Records

By Roberta Estes

The oral histories of the families that lived in and near Beechland in early Tyrrell (now Dare) county are indeed robust and involve four critical elements of content:

·        An oral history of Beechland being the first settlement in Dare County

·        An oral history of the inhabitants of Beechland being initially the Lost Colonists. Their descendants were reported to be “blue-eyed blonde-haired” Indians.

·        An oral history that the inhabitants of Beechland deserted the area in the 1840s, or between the 1830s and 1840s and that by 1850 only one family remained.

·        An oral history that the Beechland residents moved away before the census takers, the tax collectors or historians knew about them, which infers that they were therefore anonymous and unrecorded.

This paper will attempt to reconcile these various oral histories with census and other historical records.

Phil McMullan in his paper “A Search for the Lost Colony in Beechland” records the various oral histories that he has collected from various sources. His expertise garnered from his time spent with Prulean Farms and in particular his project with the U.S Corps of Engineers preparing an Environment Impact Statement for their proposed 22,000 acre farm on the Dare County mainland provides him with valuable insight. Many important historical and archaeological finds were discovered during that project and Phil collected various supporting information. An area known as Beechland that Phil described and mapped has been confirmed by archaeological survey and the local residents to be the location of a high piece of timbered land that at one time supported a number of families.

In an excerpt from his report, McMillan discusses the riven coffins accidentally excavated on Beechland Road in the 1950s. He quotes from “Legends of the Outer Banks and Tarheel Tidewater” by Judge Charles Whedbee written in 1966:

“Within the memory of men still living[1], there was at Beechlands (sic) a tribe of fair-skinned, blue-eyed Indians.
A few years ago when the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company was doing some excavating for timbering purposes, they had to dig into a rather large mound near Beechland. In this mound, in the heart of the wilderness, they found numerous Indian artifacts, arrowheads, works of pottery, and potsherds. They also found riven coffins that were made from solid cypress wood which is resistant to wood rotting fungi. They were in a form that can best be described as two canoes – one canoe being the top half of the coffin and the other canoe being the bottom half.
On top of each of these coffins was plainly and deeply chiseled a Roman or Latin cross, the type that has come to be universally and traditionally accepted as the cross of Christianity. Beneath each cross were the unmistakable letters I N R I. These are thought to represent the traditional “Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Judaeorum” or translated, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, the inscription which adorned the cross of Christ at the time of the crucifixion. It was common practice in Elizabethan times to write the letter I for the letter J. It was similar and was accepted by the literate people of that day. A riven coffin with English carving buried in the midst of a wilderness in an Indian burial ground – is that coincidence?”

McMIllan goes on to say, “Although there were several known 19^th century graveyards in the Beechland and Sandy Ridge vicinity, no one had ever before reported a graveyard near this site.”
McMullan quoting historian Mary Wood Long’s comments about the coffins, “The bottom section was carved so that a wooden pillow was provided for the headrest. The coffin was wider at the shoulder section, narrower toward the foot. Mr. Kemp [the machine operator] decided that 5 other coffins had been damaged and torn apart by his machine. There were no descriptive marks on the coffins other than the tool marks struck into the wood as the coffins were

[1] This was written in 1966. Within memory of men still living would be perhaps 80 years, so perhaps about 1886. This was definitely after 1850 when only one family was supposed to be left at Beechland.

built.[1]   If anything had remained within the coffin, it was washed out into the swamp water when the scoop cut through the top section. The cemetery was on a high knoll approximately 30 feet in diameter surrounded by swamp water and marsh at a dept of 5 feet. The men decided it was a family burial plot dating from the time of the first settlers of Beechland. Mr. Mann selected a site on high ground near the canal and reburied the portions of the old casket.

Another report from David Mann, a supervisor at the site said that high water prevented the observation of the coffin remnants reported to be protruding from the canal bank.” Others have stated that when the water level is low, one could see the ends of coffins protruding from the canal bank.

McMillan quotes Bill Sharp in his 1958 New Geography of North Carolina where he states that there was once a thriving community on Beechland on Mill Tail Creek where planters cultivated a 5000 acre tract on which corn, a wheat like grain and a variety of tobaccos were harvested. Shingles were cut from the forest and a canal dug by slave labor was used to move them to Alligator River from Beechland. Cattle roamed 25,000 acres of reed lands. Sharpe said the settlement disappeared before the Civil War. His sources believed that a cholera epidemic[2] caused its disappearance.

McMillan then discussed Victor Meekins, a journalist who interviewed Beechland descendant Marshal F. Twiford for a 1960 article printed in the Raleigh News and Observer. Twiford, born in 1876 told Meekins:

“Old people always told me that older people before them said that the Beechland settlement was founded by the English who ran away from Roanoke Island.[3] My grandfather who came over from Kitty Hawk much later lived there and married a full blooded Indian from Beechland. When I was a boy, there never seemed to be any mystery about this settlement, for the old folks took it for granted that everyone knew it. I used to go up there when I was a boy, and there were still several houses standing in Beechland. Most of the houses were log houses, and some had dirt floors. You reached it by paddling up Milltail Creek about 10 miles from the Alligator River.”

Twiford recalls Beechland families with names similar to the colonists such as Dutton, Sutton, Payne/Paine, White and Sanderlin.[4] He also remembered families of Sawyer, Edwards, Owens, Basnight and Ambrose. In the article, Meekins said that he has heard similar stories over the 50 years that he had been a reporter in Dare County. “It has been told by many people and a dozen old citizens of East Lake who would not be close to 100 years old have repeatedly told the story as Twiford tells it.”

Mary Wood Long says “on a high sandy ridge known as Beechland there once lived a large village of people numbering at one time 70 families or roughly 700[5]….All had English names, many found at East Lake today. Living with their white neighbors were Indians of the Croatoan or Machapungo tribe. During the 1840s all but one family left Beechland. Soon this family moved away and the forest covered the site of this once active village.” She goes on to report that the men routinely sailed in their large juniper log canoes to Barbados, the West Indies and Jamaica to barter their shingles for sugar, salt, flour, coffee, cloth and other items.

In the 1830s a preacher from Mann’s Harbor went to Beechland and discovered no evidence of a church, a Bible or of the Christian religion and told the people that if they didn’t build a church and turn to God that the devil would take them. Then a terrible plague called the Black Tongue plague appeared and the people were stricken and many died. When it was over the settlement was decimated and the people remembered the preacher and his warnings. People began moving away and by 1850 only Trimmergin Sanderlin’s family remained.

Several of the families moved northward onto the mainland onto the neck between East Lake and South Lakes. Some came back to Sandy Ridge and their descendants remained there until the purchase of the Blount survey by West Virginia Pulp in 1953. They built a church of the Disciple doctrine and a few years later in the 1880s the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Church was founded with a local man, Manley Twiford as its first preacher.

By fact of possession rather than deed Beechland was soon inherited by Trimmergin’s son Thomas who kept his cattle there. John Gray Blount obtained a patent to the entire peninsula after the American Revolution but his company never attempted to develop the interior. McMillan says that Blount’s surveyor reported people living on his land without a grant or deed. When John L. Roper laid claim to the Blount patent[6] after the Civil War the NC Attorney General had to intercede to secure the property rights of Thomas and his sister Polly Sanderlin.

Thomas Sanderlin was the great-grandfather of both Frank Cahoon and R.D. Sawyer Sr. who were important sources of Mary Wood Long’s oral history. Frank Cahoon, former sheriff of Dare County, was born in East Lake in 1907. He could trace his lineage back to a sister of Malocki Paine who was a son of Henry Paine, one of the blue-eyed, blond-haired Indians of early Beechlands. The word Malocki[7] is probably an Indian corruption of the Old Testament name of Malachi. It is said that both Malocki and his sister were blue-eyed and blonde-haired. Other descendants of the original Beechland settlers still live at East Lake, on Roanoke Island, and in the surrounding counties. The names of many are the same as those of the first settlers in the swampland.

James Mann who was maintenance director for WestVaCo when Mary Wood Long was researching her book said that he could still see ridges within the Old Field where corn was grown. Many ballast stones of unknown origin have been found in Milltail Creek beds where nature placed no stones. Ballast stones must were not used by Indians. Ballast stones were used in English 9and probably other European) ocean going ships, and they could have been brought to this location by small English ships (pinnaces perhaps) of shallow draft who were seeking trade of either sassafras or silk grass, two items of great interest to the English. Records indicates that they harvested sassafras and returned with it to England.

[1] This information is in conflict with the information from Whedbee regarding the cross and INRI inscription.
[2] Known cholera epidemics were reported in 1831-32, Asiatic cholera brought by English immigrants and in 1848-49, another outbreak of cholera. Local outbreaks may not have been reported or recorded. These reported outbreaks were larger in scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
[3] The only group that we know of that “ran away” from Roanoke were the Grenville 15 in 1586 who had been attacked by the Indians. One skeleton was found in 1587, and reports that between 2 and 4 were killed have surfaced, but the remaining individuals indeed “ran away” after the Indian attack and were last seen by the Croatoan at Port Fernando, apparently leaving the island. What became of them is unknown. The colonists of 1587 took the time to disassemble their houses and remove them inferring an orderly and planned departure, not a hasty retreat.
[4] Of these surnames, only Dutton, Payne and White are colonist surnames.
[5] Based on the 1786 reconstructed census, presented later in this paper, this number resembles the combined area of the Greater Alligator District and Gum Neck with possibly also Miltail the Lake included. In 1786, Miltail had 33 households and 258 people.
[6] Mary Wood Long in her book The Five Lost Colonies of Dare, p 69, states that “within the collection of Blount papers there is no mention of any village within the boundaries known as the Blount Survey other than the sections called Mashoes and Croatan.” She goes on to say that this is the area of Mann’s Harbor and the village of Mashoes today. These two areas on the coastline, not the interior. The Blount patent was apparently surveyed in 1796 as John Allen who was sent to survey the boundaries wrote to Blount that he had heard of a great forest of cypress in the wilderness but he himself had not seen it, inferring of course that he had not visited the interior. Blount’s patent was issued in Washington, NC in September of 1796.
[7] Spelling during this timeframe was not standardized and names were common spelled any number of ways. The conjecture that this was an Indian corruption of an English name is one of the ways that speculative information is introduced into family histories as fact. Future generations who repeat this speculation may repeat it as fact, not conjecture.

In the 1960 Virginia-Pilot article itself Twiford says, “I saw one of those coffins opened. It had been dug up accidentally by a bull dozer. The top and bottom had been fitted together and fastened with pegs. All I saw inside was a little ashes or dust. It ought to have been examined for buttons or other objects but it wasn’t. The men reburied it and the bulldozer crew circled around the graveyard.”[1]
Twiford recalls accompanying his father to the district as a small boy. Three families lived there then, Smith, Basnight and Stokes. After a few years those families disappeared too, Twiford said, I guess they just moved away. Marshal Twiford will be 84 next October 7^th. This information provides us with Marshall’s birth year as 1876, so his visits to the area as a small boy would have been in the 1880s.

The above information from various sources cumulatively provides us with a wealth of information that can be verified.
We know the names of Marshall Twiford, when he was born, his father’s name, Manley, and the fact that his grandfather reportedly came from Kitty Hawk and married a full blooded Indian from Beechlands.
He and others provide us with a plethora of other names as follows in summary format:
Names from Beechland:

Dutton                                     Sutton                                     Payne/Paine
White                                      Sanderlin/Sandlin                  Sawyer
Edwards                                 Crain/Crane                           Owens
Basnight                                 Ambrose

Timmergin Sanderlin reportedly refused to leave Beechland and he was the only one left in 1850[2]. Mary Wood Long says he was the last left by 1840. Quoting Long who references the 1790 census, “knowing that the Sanderlin and Twiford families were living at Beechland at this time, we examined the records carefully to see if these names were recorded. Sanderlin was not and there is also the absence of Dutton[3], known to have been a Beechland family at some time during its history. A section of woodland is still mapped as Duttons Field.[4]

A review of Tyrrell County records shows that the first appearance of John Sandlin (sic) is in the 1810 census where he appears among the Owens, Hookers, Twifords, Paines and others whose names are mentioned above.

John Grey Blount’s 5000 acre land grant is confirmed by the 1808 Strothers map[5], shown below, from McMillan’s paper.   Note the “J.G.B. 5000” in the lower right quadrant. This tract was surveyed in 1796 and sold in 1953 to the West Virginia Pulp Company. In between, it was apparently owned by the Sanderlin family. How did they come to own this tract and how much did they own?

Oral history says that Beechland families all left in the 1840s. Another source says before the Civil War. Mary Wood Long says that the average of all of the various dates she was told in the oral histories she collected is that the plague struck and the remaining families left sometime in the mid-1830s.

When Twiford was young (he was born in 1876, so between 1880 and 1896) and visiting with his father, he tells us that surnames at Beechland were:

Smith
Basnight
Stokes

The 1850 Tyrrell County census[6] shows is that Manly D. Twiford, the father of Marshall Twiford, is age 6, born 1844[7], living with his parents Wallis Twiford and wife, Nancy, who, if Marshall’s information is correct, would be the Indian woman from Beechland. Wallis, age 49 born in 1801 in NC is listed along with his two 17 year old sons as a

[1] Various sources indicate that bodies decay relatively rapidly, but that in a non-acidic environment bones can last for 100 years before turning to dust. With the relative wetness of the swamp and the rising and lowering water table, these bodies may have decayed much faster, but given that only ashes were left, in the best circumstances (aside from being buried in a peat bog which mummifies corpses), we can safely say that the burials may have occurred within the past 100 years of when they were excavated, but that assuredly if they occurred prior to the 1850s, they would have been fully deteriorated. I do have to question the "dust" comment, given that they pulled these coffins out of a wet marsh.
[2] Trimagin Sanderlin (listed in the census as Sandlin) was age 69 in 1850. His wife was Rodea age 39. Thomas was age 9. Polly (or Mary, a common nickname) as not listed in 1850. In 1860 Trimagin is listed as age 58, Rhoda is 52 and Thomas is 20. Still no Mary or Polly listed as a child, but in 1850 there is a Mary A. Sandlin, age 35, living with this family. If she is Trimagin’s daughter, it would be from an earlier marriage. In 1850 Trimagin also owns an 11 year old male black slave.
[3] The first Dutton is J.W. Dutton to appear in the 1840 census, so he apparently moved to Beechland between 1830/1840. He lives beside Truxton Twiford, very near the Sanderlin family. If these families had all moved by 1840, they all moved together and resettled as a group and Dutton was among them. However, if this occurred, how did the field at Beechland become known as Duttons Field? It appears that these families were still living as a group in the 1840 census. Dutton is not found in the 1850 census (Ancestry.com indexing and also manually searched 5 pages each direction from Truxton Twiford.) The families of the 1830 and 1840 census are still living as a group in 1850, in the same household order with some new households interspersed.
[4] Long goes on to say that it is known that the families of Sanderlin, Paine, Basnight, Twiford, Dutton and Crain lived at the knoll in the woodland and that later other families such as Sawyer, Pinter, Cahoon and others came to East Lake. Crain first appears in 1786 and resides among this group. However, Carroon/Cahoon is also found there very early, a neighbor of John Paine in 1786. Pinter is not found in the records to 1850, so perhaps this family arrived after that timeframe. So while she has the correct names, the timeframes of when they moved to Beechland or East Lake are disputed by the records.
[5] Map is available to view in high resolution at: http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/ncmaps&CISOPTR=520. Note the name Jackson to the right of Beechland, between the Beechland and Sandy Ridge dots.
[6] Ancestry.com, Tyrrell County 1850 census, page 51, house 389
[7] Manly was reported to have been born after the family moved from Beechland, but the 1830,1840 and 1850 census shows this family with the same group of neighbors, Trimagin Sanderlin, Edward Paine, Amos Owens, John Barnes and others.

Cont. here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~molcgdrg/nl/nl11-11b.htm

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Jamestown Church Believed Found

2011-11-13T23:05:00.001-06:00

Shannon Jensen for The New York Times

A visitor reading about the early colonists' burial ground inside the reconstructed palisades that mark the walls of James Fort.

By THEO EMERY

Published: November 13, 2011

JAMESTOWN — For more than a decade, the marshy island in Virginia where British colonists landed in 1607 has yielded uncounted surprises. And yet William M. Kelso’s voice still brims with excitement as he plants his feet atop a long-buried discovery at the settlement’s heart: what he believes are the nation’s oldest remains of a Protestant church.

Enlarge This Image

Shannon Jensen for The New York Times

William M. Kelso at the site of what he says was Jamestown's church.

The discovery has excited scholars and preservationists, and unearthed a long-hidden dimension of religious life in the first permanent colony.

It may prove to be an attraction for another reason: the church would have been the site of America’s first celebrity wedding, so to speak, where the Indian princess Pocahontas was baptized and married to the settler John Rolfe in 1614. The union temporarily halted warfare with the region’s tribal federation.

Last week Mr. Kelso, the chief archaeologist at the site, hopped into the excavated pit topped with sandbags and pointed to where Pocahontas would have stood at the altar rail. Orange flags marked the church’s perimeter. The pulpit would have been to the left and a baptismal font behind, with a door opening toward the river.

“I’m standing where Pocahontas stood,” Mr. Kelso said, gesturing to the earth at his feet. “I can almost guarantee you that.”

It would have been unthinkable for the intrepid settlers, as ambassadors of country, crown and church, not to erect a building for worship and conversion of Native Americans in their Virginia Company encampment.
Nor is it the nation’s oldest house of worship: Britain’s earlier “lost colony” in North Carolina may have had a church, and remnants of 16th-century Catholic churches and missions have been identified, according to Mr. Kelso. But the 2010 discovery and continuing excavation has generated excitement partly due to the size of the 1608 structure — at 64 feet by 24 feet, it was an architectural marvel for its time — and also because of how little has been understood about religion in Jamestown.

Some scholars lament that popular knowledge of colonial-era religion has been flattened into a view of the Virginians as greedy and indolent, while later colonists in Plymouth, Mass., were pious and devout.
The distinction is rooted in their origins. While Virginians were largely loyal to the Church of England, the pilgrims in Plymouth repudiated the church and came to America to escape it.

“Fundamentally, they’re different places,” said David D. Hall, a scholar of colonial religion at Harvard Divinity School.

Religion would still have been central to Jamestown, and theories abound as to why there has been scant attention. Histories tend to emphasize commercial pursuits of its colonists, and scholars also point to the Civil War: with the Union victory, the story of Northern colonial virtues — including piety — triumphed over those of the South. Another view is that Plymouth had a prolific printer and Jamestown did not.

“You have two very different Christian experiences; both of them can be equally rich and nuanced, but one tended to leave a much richer and more layered testimony about itself,” said Richard Pickering, deputy director of program innovation at Plimoth Plantation, the recreated colonial village in Plymouth that uses the historical spelling of the name.

There is also a practical reason: until recently, relics of early Jamestown were underground. For centuries, the fort was believed washed into the James River. But Mr. Kelso, unconvinced, began digging along the river’s banks in 1994.

By 1996, he was certain he had located James Fort’s perimeter. The site has since yielded about 1.4 million artifacts, many of them stored in a locked, fireproof laboratory nearby.

But the original church remained elusive. Then, last fall, the archaeologists located remnants of a new structure beneath Civil War earthworks.

Cont. here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/ruins-of-oldest-us-protestant-church-may-be-at-jamestown.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

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Who Said?

2011-11-16T09:28:00.001-06:00

Who said?

"The most challenging job in show business I ever had was: The Lost Colony, an outdoor drama in North Carolina. No matter how hot it got, we still painted our entire bodies like Native Americans and danced in sand. However, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything."

Give up?

Adam Perry.

http://www.thebroadwayblog.com/2011/11/16/3360-theater-buff-adam-perry-of-anything-goes-and-more

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Who Really Had the First Thanksgiving?

2011-11-16T16:44:00.000-06:00

by Janet Crain

The native indigenous people of the Americas had undoubtedly been celebrating Fall festivals of thanksgiving since time immemorial. And early Spanish settlers were known to have observed a Thanksgiving in what is now Texas.

But what of the English? The Lost Colonists of Roanoke may have very well been the first English settlers to observe Thanksgiving. But we will never know. The Jamestown settlers were highly religious and no doubt had some sort of observances. But Virginia historians say the first known Thanksgiving observed by the English according to record occurred in 1619.

In that year a group of English colonists landed in Virginia after ten weeks at sea, at the Berkeley Plantation. Virginia Historians claim that this is where the real first Thanksgiving took place. The plantation sits just a few miles from the original Jamestown settlement.

"The Virginia Company had directives given to the settlers and the directives were that upon landing, they were to give thanks and every year thereafter make it an annual celebration in thanks to the Lord for a safe passage," says Barbara Awad, president of the Virginia Thanksgiving Festival.
This was about seventeen months before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth. And while the Pilgrims celebrated with a feast, much like the traditional meal Americans eat on Thanksgiving, the settlers at Berkeley Plantation had a meager meal.

"It wasn't quite the abundant festival, the cornucopia that we usually see on Thanksgiving," says Awad.

Historians say their feast included bacon, peas, cornmeal cakes, and cinnamon water. But regardless of the menu, to these settlers, the first Thanksgiving was much more than turkey and pumpkin pie. It was all about prayer.

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Jamestown Well Yield's Centuries Old Artifacts

2011-11-23T12:43:00.000-06:00

The newly-discovered tobacco pipe found in the wellExcavations have concluded on a mid-17th-century well located in the southwest corner of James Fort's 1608 church. Several artifacts were found in the bottom of the well including a hoe blade stamped with a maker's mark, a pewter spoon also bearing a maker's mark, an axe head, a decorated pipe bowl, fragments of a leather shoe, and dozens of animal bones. These artifacts are in remarkable condition due to the fact that they've remained submerged below the water table for over 300 years. Though the well is located just inside the southwest corner of the church, its position is merely coincidental, as the church had been torn down decades before the construction of the well.

The hoe blade and axe headThe wells at Jamestown have yielded a remarkable array of artifacts, in large part due to the fact that they were used as trash dumps once they ceased to be used as a water source. The excavations of this well have turned up substantially fewer artifacts than those of previous wells. This may indicate a well that was in private rather than public use. Its small diameter and its mid-17th-century construction date may give credence to this theory. By this time, James Fort had expanded to become Jamestown, and its land was largely held in private hands. If this well was indeed a private one, there were probably less people using it while it was a water source and less people using it as a trash dump once the water turned sour (which probably didn't take too long given its proximity to the brackish James River). That being said, while there were less artifacts found overall, there were still a substantial number of artifacts found at all levels of the well excavation. Finds discovered above the water table include human teeth, beads, pipe fragments, and a portion of a crucible.

Cont.
http://www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/

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Native American Haplogroup X

2011-12-02T10:03:00.002-06:00

People are just thrilled to get their DNA results back when they discovered they have mitochondrial DNA haplogroup X. They e-mail me right away and tell me they are Native American.

But then, I have to ask the difficult question. I become that relative that no one wants to claim, the one who always is bursting the bubbles with ugly old reality.

So I ask, "What is your subgroup?"

And they reply, "Huh?"

So then I explain that haplogroup X isn't just Native American. In fact, it's found in Asia, all of Europe and in the New World Native Americans.

Most of the time, these exchanges are by e-mail, so I can't see their faces. It's probably just as well, all things considered.

At this point, people are firmly divided into two camps. Those are the "I want to believe" camp and the "I want to know" camp. The "I want to believe" camp is afraid to do further testing because they are concerned that deeper testing will reveal that they are NOT Native. So they never test and continue to claim Native descent. The "I want to know camp" is just the opposite, seeking the truth, and they order the full sequence test.

You can see the various subgroups on the haplogroup X project page at:

http://www.familytreedna.com/public/x

Haplogroup X is the "mother haplogroup." X2 is found throughout Eurasia and North America. Native American subgroups of haplogroup X2 are X2a, X2a1, X2a1a, X2a1b and X2a2 and they are determined by the following mutations in the various mitochondrial DNA regions.

Haplogroup	HVR1 Region	HVR2 Region	Full Sequence
X2a	16213A	200G	8913G, 12397G, 14502C
X2a1	16093G	143A	3552C
X2a1a			6113G
X2a1b			8422G
X2a2	16254C	225C

This means that if you take the HVR1 region test and you are noted as being haplogroup X, if you don't have the 16213A mutation, then you're likely NOT Native American. Ouch, you say. How can we be sure?

I encourage everyone to take the HVR2 and the full sequence level testing, especially if you think you MIGHT be Native. Why? Because we're still learning and I'd hate for anyone to determine they are NOT Native based on the 16213A mutation alone. There are such things as back mutations, and if you do have the HVR2 and full sequence mutations, then you may have experienced a back mutation or are maybe a haplogroup previously not found.

So, your determination as haplogroup X is really just the appetizer and an invitation to the entree and dessert....HVR2 and full sequence testing!!!

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18 nights of lights, seasonal and floral displays at The Elizabethan Gardens starts tomorrow!!

2011-12-02T22:13:00.002-06:00

Come experience Holiday lights and music transforming The Elizabethan Gardens into an illuminated winter wonderland complete with peacocks, butterflies, deer and other garden creatures created with flowers, seeds, natural elements, as well as traditional holiday decorations. Stroll through The Gardens on Roanoke Island and enjoy the spirit of the season. Festive trees grace the Gatehouse, Reception Hall and great Lawn.
Winter Lights is 18 nights of lights and floral displays at The Gardens!

Starts tomorrow December 3rd.

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How Do You Prove You’re an Indian?

2011-12-21T23:01:00.002-06:00

By DAVID TREUER

Published: December 20, 2011

AMERICA’S first blood quantum law was passed in Virginia in 1705 in order to determine who had a high enough degree of Indian blood to be classified an Indian — and whose rights could be restricted as a result. You’d think, after all these years, we’d finally manage to kick the concept. But recently, casino-rich Indian tribes in California have been using it themselves to cast out members whose tribal bloodlines, they say, are not pure enough to share in the profits.

What is surprising is not that more than 2,500 tribal members have been disenfranchised for apparently base reasons. (It’s human — and American — nature to want to concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible.) What is surprising is the extent to which Indian communities have continued using a system of blood membership that was imposed upon us in a violation of our sovereignty

Cont. Here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/opinion/for-indian-tribes-blood-shouldnt-be-everything.html?_r=1

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Hatteras Island 1704 Visitor

2011-12-31T18:37:00.003-06:00

December 2011

Hatteras Island 1704 Visitor

By Baylus Brooks

In the North Carolina Colonial and State Records, Volume 1, Page 603, in a letter written by John Blair, we discover that John Blair visited the early colony of North Carolina in 1704. Here's what he had to say:

"You may also consider the distance that the new colony of Pamlico is from the rest of the inhabitants of the country, for any man that has tried it would sooner undertake a voyage from this city to Holland than that, for beside a pond of five miles broad, and nothing to carry one over but a small perryauger, there are about fifty miles desert to pass through, without any human creature inhabiting in it. I think it likewise reasonable to give you an account of a great nation of Indians that live in that government, computed to be no less than 100,000, many of which live amongst the English, and all, as I can understand, a very civilized people.

I have often conversed with them, and have been frequently in their towns: those that can speak English among them seem to be very willing and fond of being Christians, and in my opinion there might be methods taken to bring over a great many of them. If there were no hopes of making them Christians, the advantage of having missionaries among them would redound to the advantage of the government, for if they should once be brought over to a French interest (as we have too much reason to believe there are some promoters amongst them for that end by their late actions), it would be, if not to the utter ruin, to the great prejudice of all the English plantations on the continent of America.

Cont. here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~molcgdrg/nl/nl12-11b.htm

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Lost Colony Research Group volunteers, grad students, and Outer Banks locals at an archaeological dig site on Hatteras Island

2012-01-02T15:41:00.000-06:00

Lost Colony Research Group volunteers, grad students, and Outer Banks locals at an archaeological dig site on Hatteras Island.

The legend of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has haunted American history for centuries. In July 1587, a British colonist named John White accompanied 117 people to settle a small island sheltered within the barrier islands of what would become North Carolina’s Outer Banks. When conditions proved harsher than anticipated, White agreed to sail back to Britain to shore up the settlement’s supplies—a trip that should have lasted a few months.

When White belatedly returned in 1590, the colonists had vanished—more than 100 men, women, and young children, their shelters and belongings, all gone. According to White’s writings, the only trace they left behind was a structure of tree trunks, with a single word carved into one post: CROATOAN.

The creepiness of the Lost Colonists’ disappearance didn’t discourage future American settlement. Nor has the lack of clues about their fate discouraged professional and amateur historians from trying to figure out what happened to them.

Archaeological digs, weather records, historical writings, genealogy—none have fully answered the question of what happened during White’s absence. But Roberta Estes, who owns DNAeXplain, a company that interprets the results of genetic heritage tests, is looking to DNA for help. Her hypothesis is that the Lost Colonists survived, and that evidence of their salvation is tucked away in the mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA of living descendants.

“They were stranded,” Estes says of the settlers. “They knew they couldn’t survive there on the island.” The colonists’ solution, in her estimation, was to go native.

“Croatoan,” Estes explains, was a message to White indicating that the colonists had gone to live with the Croatan Indians who lived on nearby Hatteras Island. Estes’s volunteer organization, the Lost Colony Research Group, is recruiting people from the area to submit DNA samples and family histories to test her theory.

Studying patterns of short tandem repeats (STRs) on the Y chromosomes of living men can determine whether they are likely to share a common ancestor that was a member of the Lost Colony. For example, Estes can compare the STR profile of a man whose family history suggests that his ancestors lived on Hatteras Island in the 17th century against genetic databases to see if he’s related to anyone with a Lost Colonist surname, such as Dare, Hewet, or Rufoote.

Additionally, it’s possible to scan that man’s mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA for evidence of Native American heritage, creating a clearer picture of what became of the vanished colonists. “It is true that with Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA you can assign them unequivocally to different ethnic groups,” says Ugo Perego, a senior researcher at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. But, he adds, it would be difficult to tell exactly when the European ancestry was introduced.

Estes has amassed early land-grant records detailing who lived in the Outer Banks area a few centuries ago. Some of the putative Native Americans living there are thought to have adopted the last names of their European neighbors, she says. If Estes can show that the descendents of these Native American families have DNA matching families with Lost Colony surnames, that would suggest that the colonists mixed with the Croatan Indians.

Cont. Here:
http://the-scientist.com/2012/01/01/lost-colony-dna/

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23andMe Beseiged with Complaints

2012-01-03T18:03:00.003-06:00

When 23andMe started selling the kits that included genealogy matching results, there was no subscription fee. You paid once and that was it. About 18 months ago, they started selling an "upgrade" and along with that upgrade came a monthly fee to continue receiving updates. At that time, they stated that if you stopped paying the fee after a year's commitment, you would not receive any new health updates nor matches, but the ones you had at the time you stopped paying would remain.

Dick Eastman covers this here:

http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2012/01/23andme-generates-controversy-with-new-subscription-policy.html

Now, they have reversed their position and before Christmas announced that they will no longer honor their committment. If you allow your monthly subscription to lapse, which has increased from $5 per month to $9 per month, you will no longer have access to your results at all. The genetic genealogy community has banded together to voice our displeasure with their intended failure to honor their initial commitment by creating a petition that we are signing.

The petition can be found at:

http://www.change.org/petitions/23andme-dont-take-away-our-relative-finder-matches?share_id=XAtIvbCRuA&

I encourage everyone to sign this petition. I have.

I am also voting with my money and I no longer encourage people to test at 23andMe. Family Tree DNA provides this same test for genealogists, without the health info obviously, and there is no subscription fee on top of the initial test price of $99. $9 per month is $108 per year and it has risen from $60 per year, a price jump of $56% in one fell swoop.

I feel that 23andMe is not being a good corporate citizen by changing their policies and then trying to pretend they were always that way.

Roberta Estes

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January 22, 2012 meeting of the Tyrrell County Genealogical and Historical Society

2012-01-03T20:15:00.000-06:00

Anne Poole and Roberta Estes

Jennifer Sheppard, a Professional Genealogist with the Lost Colony Research Group, Genealogy~DNA~ Archaeology will be the guest speaker at the January 22, 2012 meeting of the Tyrrell County Genealogical and Historical Society. Ms Sheppard will talk about the Lost Colony Research Group's ongoing search for descendants of the so called "Lost Colony". She will share information about the group's research, DNA testing and the archaeology digs taking place on Hatteras Island. A DVD of the April 2010 dig in Buxton will also be shown. In addition she will have conch shells (found in one of the middens) on display at the meeting.

The DVD includes interviews with Roberta Estes, Administrator for the Lost Colony Research Group showing the types of artifacts found during that particular dig. Also included is a spot with Anne Poole, Principal Researcher for the Group, explaining native middens, their content; and information on how the Indians would have used these items in their daily lives.

The TCGHS meets at 2:30 pm on the 4th Sunday of every month except November and December, at the Senior Citizen's Center in Columbia, NC. The physical address of the center is 406 Bridge Street, Columbia, NC 27925. All are welcome to attend.

Directions:
Take Route 64 to Columbia. At the stoplight, turn left onto Broad Street (if coming from the Outer Banks, you would turn right). Continue on past Main Street, to Bridge Street and turn right onto Bridge Street. (406 Bridge St., Columbia, NC 27925). Then turn left into the parking lot - this is the Columbia Medical Center Complex. Please Note: the parking lot is one-way.

If anyone has questions about the January meeting or the TCGHS in general, feel free to contact me directly at glroberts@cox.net

Cathy

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Family Tree DNA Changes in Your Personal Page

2012-01-04T16:19:00.001-06:00

The following applies to those who have been DNA tested at Family Tree DNA. It is very important.

New Family Tree DNA Software Version

Family Tree DNA has updated your "myFTDNA" results pages. Some of the changes are good, some are simply maintenance changes and there are some that, well, let me just say that the Feedback Form is there for a reason.

I would like all of you to do three things to help me and yourselves.

1) Login (https://www.familytreedna.com/login.aspx) to your account and look at the changes. Go through the built in tutorial. This is an important step!

2) Read the User Guide (http://www.familytreedna.com/faq/answers.aspx?id=45#1643) to learn about the pages.

3) Use the Feedback Form (http://www.familytreedna.com/feedback-form.aspx) to send your opinions, GOOD and BAD, about the new pages.

OK. Now let me tell you about one of the biggest changes. There are now restrictions on what a project administrator can change in your account. This has been a long time coming, and I think that it is mostly good. It protects both the administrator and the participant. Most administrators are wonderful people, but as they say, one apple....Ok, now you know why. Regardless, it does limit what I can do for you and how I can help you.

However, you do have options and you can determine what the project administrator can and cannot do to your account. This enables you to get the level of assistance you need.

I hate to bring this up, but it's now time for you to determine who can do what with your DNA after your death. Let's face it, no one gets out alive. Before the changes, this wasn't a problem, but it will be now. You can now designate what you want to happen, and with whom. I strongly suggest that you designate someone, if not your surname project administrator.

There is another major change, Family Tree DNA is going to a single GEDCOM/Family Tree upload file. They plan to purge [their word choice] mtDNA GEDCOMs and Y-DNA GEDCOMs in 2012. To address this, I would like all of your to upload a new copy of your GEDCOM that will be shown for all DNA Matches regardless of test type.

There are also new functionality and features such as advanced matching and what is hopefully a more intuitive user interface.

I know that change is difficult for everyone, but I think in the end you'll like the new interface and capabilities. Please take a look and provide Family Tree DNA with your feedback, both negative and positive. They do take your suggestions and concerns to heart. Customer feedback is the foundation for this new software version.

Roberta

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Hatteras Yielding Up Century Old Treasures

2012-01-06T14:16:00.005-06:00

Roanoke Revisited

Click on the image to view full frame:

Native American artifacts and British pottery shards, estimated
to be between 100 and 600 years old, collected by the Lost
Colony Research Group on Hatteras Island.
(photo credit: Roberta Estes)

By Kerry Grens | January 1, 2012

In July 1587, a British colonist named John White accompanied 117 people to settle a small island sheltered within the barrier islands of what would become North Carolina’s Outer Banks. When conditions proved harsher than anticipated, White agreed to sail back to Britain to shore up the settlement’s supplies—a trip that should have lasted a few months. When White belatedly returned in 1590, the colonists had vanished—more than 100 men, women, and young children, their shelters and belongings, all gone. Archaeological digs, weather records, historical writings, genealogy—none have fully answered the question of what happened during White’s absence. But Roberta Estes, who owns DNAeXplain, a company that interprets the results of genetic heritage tests, is looking to DNA for help. Her hypothesis is that the Lost Colonists survived, and that evidence of their salvation is tucked away in the mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA of living descendants.

Read the full story.

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Hatteras Dig Reveals Old and New World Artifacts

2012-01-06T23:10:00.002-06:00

These artifacts discovered last spring on Hatteras Island are very important because this midden contained European and Native American artifacts in close proximity to each other, proving there was contact between the two cultures at this time.

Anne Poole and Roberta Estes

Spear Point

Horse's Teeth

Hatteras Island

Carved Bone Knife Handle

Photos property of Roberta Estes ©

Cont. here: http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2012/01/hatteras-dig-reveals-old-and-new-world_07.html

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Hatteras Dig Reveals Old and New World Artifacts pt. 2

2012-01-07T16:27:00.002-06:00

Continued from yesterday: These artifacts discovered last spring on Hatteras Island are very important because this midden contained European and Native American artifacts in close proximity to each other, proving there was contact between the two cultures at this time. Imagine a midden in which not only were Indian artifacts found, but also a clay pipe and a thimble.

Photos property of Roberta Estes©

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Generational Surnames and Autosomal DNA Matching

2012-01-10T14:16:00.000-06:00

Generational Surnames and Autosomal DNA Matching

By Roberta Estes

My interest in this topic is due to the number of adoptees I work with. DNA testing for genetic genealogy often represents the best, if not the only hope to adoptees of finding their genetic families.

I'm working with a woman who has two possible surnames to work with. Both are possibilities and the answer could be that neither of these surname is the right one. However, I've managed to put together some genealogy on both lines and I wanted to know how often people are finding matches in the genealogy data bases at Family Tree DNA and at 23andMe for their surnames represented by their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents. For this exercise, I don't care how many matches to each surname they have, only IF they have any match to that surname.

For example, if your parents surnames are Smith and Jones, for example, and you have any matches that include the surnames Smith or Jones in their surnames listed as their ancestors, the answer is yes. If both Smith and Jones have matches, then you have 2 for 2 in the first generation.

The second generation, grandparents, includes 4 surnames, the 2 represented by your parents plus two more, your mother's mother's surname (Anderson) and your father's mother's surname (Ferverda), for a total of 4. If Smith and Jones are already represented, then we need to determine if Anderson and Ferverda have matches. Let's say neither do, so for this generation, you have 2 of 4 possible.

For the great-grandparents generation, we add 4 more ancestors, for a total of 8. Let's say that those surnames are Moore, Brown, Quincy and Scott and let's say that only Scott shows up in the list of surnames of your matches. So for this generation you have 3 of 8, your two parents, plus Scott.

The real question here is what is the likelihood that someone who is adopted will find their biological surnames in the surnames listed by their matches.

An ad hoc survey on both the ISOGG and the DNA-Genealogy lists in January 2012 received results for a total of 57 people who had been tested. A couple of people provided only partial information for a variety of reasons, so the totals in each group are slightly different.

Of the group who replied, for the first generation, their parents, the following was found:

20 people had no matches to their parents surnames
21 people had one match to their parents surnames
14 people had matches to both of their parents surnames

What this means to adoptees is there is a 38% likelihood that none or one of your parents surnames are represented in your matches. There is a 25% likelihood that both of your parents surnames are listed. Overall, there is a 64% likelihood that you will find at least one of your parents surnames listed in your matches. Of course, the question remains, which surnames are which.

Moving to the second, grandparents, generation we find the following.

16 people had zero matches to any of their 4 grandparents surnames
14 people had 1 match to their 4 grandparents surnames
11 people had 2 matches to their 4 grandparents surnames
7 people had 3 matches to their 4 grandparents surnames
6 people had matches to all 4 of their grandparents surnames

This means that there is a 30% chance that none of your parents or grandparents surnames are found among your matches. However, there is also a 70% chance that at least one of your grandparents surnames will be found among your matches. There is only a small chance, 7%, that all 4 of your grandparents surnames will be found among your matches.

Moving to the third generation, great-grandparents, we find the following:

11 people had zero matches to any of their 8 great-grandparents surnames
9 people had 1 match to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
6 people had 2 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
12 people had 3 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
7 people had 4 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
4 people had 5 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
2 people had 6 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
4 people had 7 matches to their 8 great-grandparents surnames
1 person had matches to all 8 of their great-grandparents surnames

There is a 20% likelihood that none of your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents surnames will be found among your matches. However, there is also an 80% likelihood that at least one of those 8 surnames will be found among your matches.

The results of the 3 generation, 8 surname survey, when plotted, take the shape of the traditional bell shaped curve, with a lump that would likely smooth out with more samples. Twenty one percent of the people will find 3 of their 8 grandparents surnames among their matches.

Most people told me where they tested, or I could easily discern the information due to the test name. Many of them also included their total number of matches. The total of matches at 23andMe was, as a rule, was between 4 and 5 times the number of matches at Family Tree DNA. However, the commentary was pretty uniformly that people were disappointed with the contacts, or lack thereof, at 23andMe, in general, and when contact was made, that many had either no interest in or little information on their genealogy, rendering the contact useless or nearly so. One person wondered why someone would test at Family Tree DNA if they weren't interested in genealogy, so the response problem is not unique to 23andMe clients.

Of the people who responded to the survey, 13 of them had tested at both 23andMe and Family Tree DNA. Those results are included separately. Of these at the 8 surname level, there were a total of 21 matches at Family Tree DNA and 34 matches at 23andMe, so testers are obtaining more surname matches at 23andMe, but only about one third more, not in proportion to the 400% to 500% more matches than at Family Tree DNA. This is likely a direct reflection of the number of people at 23andMe that are interested in the health information and not in the genealogical aspect. However, one would think that if they went to the trouble to enter their surnames, they would have some interest in family history.

Interesting aspects were that maybe half of the people had some complicating factor, such as a highly endogamous population or a patronymic population, both of which clearly affect the potential of finding matching surnames. Equally as interesting was the one man who had no matches for any of his 8 grandparents surnames but had relatively "vanilla" colonial American surnames.

As both data bases increase in size, I would expect the numbers and percentages of matches to rise as well. The message here is that today, in January of 2012, for adoptees, there is about a 38% chance that one of your parents surnames is found among your matches, a 64% chance that one or both of your parents surnames will be found, a 70% chance that one or more of your grandparents surnames will be found and 80% chance that one or more of your great-grandparents surnames will be found.

English Snaphance Guns

2012-01-11T00:13:00.002-06:00

The English Snaphance developed during the second half of the sixteenth century and was in production by the 1580s.

Several dated examples exist, the earliest known being the English snaphance engraved 1584, now in the Tojhusmuseet, Copenhagen. Another, dated 1588, is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and a third example, dated 1590, can be seen at the Royal Armouries, Leeds. These examples confirm that the lock was fully developed prior to 1580.

In the first two decades of the 17th century, snaphance guns were considered to be one of the leading technological innovations in England and they were included among gifts to the royalty of Europe. Much evidence survives to show that the snaphance remained popular in England until the 1640s, although comparatively few examples now exist.

For a detailed discussion of the English Snaphance Lock see: Brian C. Godwin, The English Snaphance Lock, London Park Lane Arms Fair catalogue, Spring 2006, pp.28.63

Cont. here: http://briangodwin.co.uk/snaphance.html

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23andMe Reconsiders Several Planned Actions

2012-01-12T08:13:00.000-06:00

Thanks to those who complained about 23andMe's plans to drop non-paying subscribers from their data base, 23andMe announced they have reconsidered their plans. When the kits were first sold there were no subscription fees, then about a year ago, the company began requiring a one year $9. a month commitment to get new info, but said after that time, customers could keep their access to medical information and genealogy matches, just get go new info if they dropped the subscription. Many were very upset by the December announcement that they would just simply be dropped. This move would have also deprived subscription paying customers of many of their matches, distant cousins with the potential to break down brick walls.

Company statement:
http://spittoon.23andme.com/2012/01/08/an-update-to-23andme-customers/

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Jamestown and Lost Colony Surnames

2012-01-15T11:24:00.001-06:00

What's in a Name??

Roberta Estes

Recently we were able to obtain the records of the Jamestown colonists who share surnames with the Lost Colonists thanks to a contribution from a benefactor.

The records have been extracted, by surname. Historic Jamestown has done a superb job of researching their colonists and what information is known about every known Jamestown colonist up through about 1625 is provided on their site for a nominal fee. You can see all of the biographies by surname at the site.

https://www.historicjamestowne.org/biographies/list.php?letter=A

The information has been incorporated on our website under the appropriate surname. To view the results, click on this link to go to our website, then click on "surname research", then on the surname you are interested in viewing. Then click on the Jamestown link.

The following Lost Colony surnames are also represented at Jamestown:

· Archer (Archard perhaps)

· Brooke(s)

· Brown(e)

· Cooper by variant spellings

· Ellis

· Flory/Flower

· Johnson

· Kendall

· Martin

· Nichols

· Powell

· Russell

· Scott

· Smith

· Stephens/Stevens

· Taverner

· White

· Wilkinson

· Williams

· Wotton

· Yonge/Young

Several of these names have several Jamestown colonists. There are 100 different records in total, so take a look and see if there is anything for one of your surnames.

Good News for Outer Banks Area!!!

2012-01-18T16:03:00.000-06:00

This just In!

National Park Service News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: DATE: January 18, 2012

CONTACT: Cyndy Holda, 252-473-2111, ext. 148

Bodie Island Lighthouse Restoration Will

Resume

Superintendent Mike Murray announced this week that a $1.89 million contract has been awarded to resume restoration of the famed Bodie Island Lighthouse located near Oregon Inlet. The National Park Service (NPS) Denver Service Center has issued a notice to proceed with the award of contract to the prime contractor, United Builders Group, LLC from New Bern, North Carolina.

The previous restoration project contract was terminated in Spring 2011 after significant new structural integrity issues were found in many of the main support beams under the balcony. The additional repairs needed were too costly to finish in the original restoration project and therefore work ceased. The contractor demobilized and was off-site by April 20, 2011.
NPS funding requests have since been approved to complete the restoration work in FY2012.

The new project is expected to begin in late February 2012 and be completed in October 2012. The work will include the following renovations:
Restore deteriorated metal
Restore components on the lantern level (support beams, masonry,
railing/ladder)
Replace galley cornice segments
Paint interior and exterior masonry
Replace windows and glass on lantern level
Repair the Oil house marble floor and roof, install new windows
Paint all newly installed metals/wood
Install fire suppression system and rehabilitate electrical power
Install stair strengtheners

Project update reports will be issued periodically. For more information, contact the Public Affairs Office at 252-473-2111 ext. 148.

-NPS-

NPS Photo

The Bodie Island Lighthouse is surrounded by scaffolding, and the lightroom and balcony are "wrapped" to protect the area during renovations.

Who Do You Think You Are? Live

2012-01-24T10:47:00.000-06:00

Photo-dating experts in the Photography Gallery | Who Do You Think You Are? Live

The biggest family history event in the world. Whether you’re new to tracing your family tree or a seasoned researcher, Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2012 is packed with industry-leading genealogy experts, informative workshops and celebrities from the TV show to help with your own family history...

http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.com/news/photo-dating-experts-photography-gallery

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Native Americans actually came from a tiny mountain region in Siberia, DNA research reveals

2012-01-26T15:35:00.000-06:00

Altai in southern Siberia sits right at the centre of Russia. But the tiny, mountainous republic has a claim to fame unknown until now - Native Americans can trace their origins to the remote region.

DNA research revealed that genetic markers linking people living in the Russian republic of Altai, southern Siberia, with indigenous populations in North America.

A study of the mutations indicated a lineage shift between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago - when people are thought to have walked across the ice from Russia to America.

Altai in Siberia: A study of genetic markers in DNA showed that the lineage of Native Americans changed around 13-14,000 years ago - when people are thought to have walked across the Bering Strait

This roughly coincides with the period when humans from Siberia are thought to have crossed what is now the Bering strait and entered America.

'Altai is a key area because it's a place where people have been coming and going for thousands and thousands of years,' said Dr Theodore Schurr, from the University of Pennsylvania in the US.

Among the people who may have emerged from the Altai region are the predecessors of the first Native Americans.

Roughly 20-25,000 years ago, these prehistoric humans carried their Asian genetic lineages up into the far reaches of Siberia and eventually across the then-exposed Bering land mass into the Americas.

'Our goal in working in this area was to better define what those founding lineages or sister lineages are to Native American populations,' Schurr said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2092258/Native-Americans-actually-came-tiny-mountain-region-Russia-DNA-research-reveals.html#ixzz1kbO2uDKL

To be continued tomorrow

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