iPentimento

Remembering Bremerton During World War II

Posted on September 6th, 2008 by webduck

: Victory Gardens and Barrage Balloons

I love reading memoirs, but I especially love reading them when they are about where I live. I just finished reading Frank Wetzel’s World War II memoirabout growing up in Bremerton, Washington before, during and after World War II. The book was published in 1995, and and contains WWII era, and before, photos of Frank and all of his friends. One of those friends was none other than Bill Gates. No, not the gazillionaire tycoon, but his father.

: Shirley Sinclair and Bill Gates

Take a look at this picture from page 111 in the book. You can sure see the resemblance between father and son, can’t you? Did you know that the Gates family had an association with Bremerton, WA? “In March of 1940, Bill Gates, Sr. (grandfather to the Microsoft Bill Gates) obtained a permit to build and lease out a new Ice Creamery on Sixth Street”. I haven’t looked into it in depth, but I suspect that Bill Gates’ family were some of Washington State’s pioneers.

The book was borrowed from friends who had found a hardbound signed copy of it during one of their antiquing forays this summer. The contents of the book written by Frank Wetzel give you a “behind the scenes” view of what it was like to be a teenager during war time in a town who’s largest employer was (and still is) the United States Navy. While the east coast of the U.S. was worried about the war in Europe, Bremertonians were scared silly after Pearl Harbor and the attack on Wake Island by the Japanese. The shipyard here was one of two on the west coast (Mare Island the other) and PSNY would have been a logical target on the mainland after Wake.

I hope you will consider reading this book if this kind of first hand history interests you. There is much more to the book than what I can explain here. The link above is an affiliate link, but I just included it in case you want to buy the book so that you can find it easily.

You might also enjoy...

Photo Links To The Revolutionary War

The Flickr and Library of Congress Experiment

They Rocked: Music Of My Teen Years

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

No Comments »
Filed under: Genealogy, History

Where In The World Is Your Surname?

Posted on September 2nd, 2008 by webduck

I saw this cool new tool over at Family History for Beginners called World Names Profiler, and being the sucker inquisitive person that I am for genealogy research, I gave it a whirl. The concept of the search for your surname is very well written about at Family History for Beginners, so I won’t belabor it here, but the short version is that if you want to know where in the world your surname is distributed, all you have to do is type it in on the World Names Profiler page.

In our family, we have avery unusual surname: Osgathorpe. It is the name of one of my ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, and I have proof of that because I have compiled a preponderance of evidence which includes photo-copies of Richard Osgathorpe’s RW pay vouchers. But, we have a problem with tracing his line back to England, where he reportedly originated. And, to confuse things further, after being in the continental US for a couple hundred years, the family members have changed the spelling of the name, and the pronunciation. Some go by Osgatharp; some by Osgathorp, and some by Osgathorpe. I believe the name originated as Osgathorpe, and became “Americanized” over time and through other regional accents being applied.

When I first began researching my family tree, a cousin had written in a book that the name was Oglethorpe. Wishful thinking on her part, and I had to send her lots of documentation to change her mind. Her reaction when I did so? She said, “that it was what her mother had always told her“. Hmmm….Lesson for today. Never go by hearsay.

Today, I put the name Osgathorpe into the World Names Profiler search and came up with these results. Some were surprising, some not so much. I knew that some of my Osgatharp cousins lived in Tennessee and Indiana, but it was surprising to me at how many live in New Zealand. All of this doesn’t bring me any closer to finding Richard Osgathorpe in any British records, but it did narrow it down to certain districts in the UK where the surname is found abundantly.

When I get rich, I will hire someone and have them track down all my dead ends. For now though, it’s fun to use tools like World Names Profiler. Try it, and let me know what you find! My results are below.