Big Football Game -- Sunday, January 2, 1910.

For most of my life I knew very little about my grandfather, Thomas Davis. My dad never spoke of his father's exploits as far as I remember. It wasn't until my mother died and I decided to take up where she left off with the family genealogy that I discovered that my namesake had been a football player. On the above date, Tom Davis took part in a football game between the teams of the Battleship Nebraska, on which he was a crewman, and the Battleship Missouri. The contest took place at American League Park in Washington, D.C., and involved the championship for the North Atlantic Fleet no less. It was a festive event with the bands from both ships providing the entertainment. I gleaned this information from the New York Times archives which provided me with the names of many of the U.S.S. Nebraska's crew. The clipping also said something very interesting. It said that, "Thomas Davis, J.B. Brine, and many others well known in the athletic world were...present." Now that's interesting! Was my grandfather really a well-known sports figure in his younger days? Obviously, more research is needed.

U.S. 1890 Census where are you?

When I first started tracing my dad's ancestors back in time from him, I repeatedly came up against a problem when I wanted 1890 census data. There's a good reason I had trouble. On January 10, 1921, a fire in the Commerce Department building, Washington, DC, resulted in the destruction of most of the 1890 census, to the woe of researchers ever since. For more detailed information, see Kellee Blake, "'First in the Path of the Firemen:' The Fate of the 1890 Population Census," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 64-81 (Spring 1996), Part 1 and Part 2.

How do you pronouce "Rhydderch?"

I found a site on the web crafted by John Ball of Breconshire, Wales, that provides the pronunciation for those many consonant-rich Welsh town names. You can find his web site here.

I asked John if he would help me pronounce the name of my Breconshire ancestors, the Rhydderchs. John says Rhydderch is pronouced like "RUTHERCH."

"where:
'ruther' is pronounced as in the word 'brother';
the emphasis is on the first syllable (as in 'brother');
the final consonant 'ch' is pronounced as in the Scottish word 'loch'.

The name RODERICK is an English form of the Welsh Rhydderch."

Well, now that John has helped me with the pronunciation, it's easy to see why census workers butchered up the Rhydderch name decade after decade. Here's a few links to John's various web pages:

John's Homepage: here
Images of Wales: here
Welsh Family History Archive: here