It’s Saturday night and time for some genealogy fun thanks to Randy Seaver over at Geneamusings. Tonight’s mission is ahnentafel roulette:
1) How old is your great-grandfather now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 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 ahnentafel (ancestor name list). Who is that person?
3) Tell us three facts about that person with the “roulette number.”
4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook or Google Plus note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.
5) If you do not have a person’s name for your “roulette number” then spin the wheel again – pick a grandparent, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!
I chose the eldest of my great-grandfathers, Hugh Hunter. Hugh was born in 1863, which would make him 148 years old today. Divided by 4, one gets a “roulette number” of 37.
Number 37 in my ahnentafel is my great-great-great grandmother Melissa Haight.
- Melissa Haight was the daughter of Harrison Haight and Agnes Doan. She was born in 1819 and died on February 27, 1873.
- Melissa and her husband Reuben Thomas had 11 children: Agnes, Nicholas, Harrison (my great-great grandfather), Philander, Sophronia, Silas, William, Jane, Mary, Cynthia and Eva.
- Just recently, I discovered that Melissa and Reuben are buried with three of their children (John, William and Agnes) in the Zion United Church Cemetery in Darlington Township, Ontario.
I really don’t have a great deal of information on Melissa. I have gradually been turning up facts on her and Reuben, but it has been slow going. Family lore says that Reuben and Melissa met and married soon after Reuben’s arrival in Canada from Cornwall, England. My great-grandmother said that, “Grandfather fell in love with Grandmother at first sight. He was going over the field near Mariposa, Ontario, and was climbing a fence and sat on it for a rest and from there he saw Grandmother in the garden picking berries.” I have always quite liked that story and hope that it is true!
