Mightier Acorns

Journeys through Genealogy and Family History

A parody of a family coat of arms designed with acorns as elements, with the motto "ex gladnis potentioribus" Latin for "from Mighty Acorns"
From Mighty Acorns

Category: Historical Events

Ancestors who were part of major historical events.

  • A Surfeit of Berlins

    An update on where we are with the Berlin family – tidying my ancestors and leaving clues for one or two other families.

  • The No Kings event last Saturday wasn’t just a demonstration of anger or outrage; it was a statement that, like our ancestors before us, we are not willing to have our power taken away by bullies.

  • The Absence of Evidence

    The infamous “Brick Wall” is not the end of the story, but sometimes it can take years for the clue you need to find its way to you.

  • The Morgan Raid – from War Poems

    John H. Callin, a Union artillery soldier, left behind a book of poems “written in the Army” when he died in 1913. One hundred years later, his words were transcribed and published online for the world to see!

  • Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Farming and Motherhood

    The last of four installments where we read the transcript of Grandma Merle’s Travelogue!

  • Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Back to Arizona (1913)

    Grandma Merle finally gets around to meeting Grandpa Dick in the recording of her memories.

  • Dangerous Times in Kentucky

    A Tale of Harassments and Murder Note: this piece was originally published on Projectkin in Feb 2024 in their Member’s Corner. It is being re-published here with permission. Kentucky was not the safest place to live in 1862. Several Southern states seceded from the Union after Fort Sumter, but Governor Beriah Magoffin declared Kentucky to…

  • Facing sex & religion in history and genealogy As I’ve been writing about the branches of my children’s ancestry this year, I’ve had to consider many points of view that are very different from my own. Most of those differences are due to the religions practiced by those ancestors. The history of America was driven…

  • The Milton Township Diaspora (part 3) When we last talked about Sarah (Montgomery) Davidson and her family, they set out from Fulton County, Indiana, and took to the Oregon Trail in 1852: Sarah and Henry Davidson took their four children and their adopted niece, Sarah Farrell, on the trip; we have only talked about Sarah…

  • Most of her story remains underground The Opp family is my mother’s maternal grandmother’s maternal side—and if that doesn’t emphasize “maternal” enough, I think of them as being on the Opp-osite side of the tree from my Callin family. (Opening with a Dad joke of that magnitude should rebalance things, don’t you think?) I’ve tried…