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St. Joseph Marello Parish plans annual smoker

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Northern Ireland’s lake lands: Rain, history and the Mellons

<p>We genealogists know that life was a lot different for our ancestors.</p><p>And so, apparently, was death.</p><p>Accidental drug overdoses (155) and suicide (64) were the major causes of non-natural death in Luzerne County for 2017, The Times Leader recently reported. A century ago, according to the Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, those causes didn&#8217;t even merit their own categories.</p><p>Note that the modern figures are county-wide and include only cases investigated by the coroner&#8217;s office. The old Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac lists cause of all deaths, but only for the city of Wilkes-Barre, with a reporting period of Dec. 1 of one year to Nov. 30 of the next. So, comparisons are approximate at best, but still illustrative of the way our ancestors lived (and passed on).</p><p>So, what did kill our ancestors? Let&#8217;s go back a century to 1917. The biggest listed cause of our local ancestors&#8217; death was something we seldom think about today &#8211; pneumonia (156 people). I say &#8220;biggest listed&#8221; because by that time the almanac &#8211; for some reason &#8211; had stopped listing deaths due to coal mining, with tolls in previous years of sometimes 150 or more.</p><p>Stillborn children were the second biggest 1917 Wilkes-Barre group at 153, with heart disease third at 126 and accidents fourth at 111. Typical accidents were children falling into tubs of scalding wash water and people dying of infection from injuries. Railroads, a separate county-wide category, accounted for 45 deaths that year.</p><p><strong>DNA Testing:</strong> Did you have a &#8220;omigosh&#8221; moment when you spotted &#8220;Neanderthal&#8221; in your DNA test results? That&#8217;s really nothing to be shocked by, scientists say. Lots of people are finding tiny amounts of this ancient DNA in their personal mixes.</p><p>Neanderthals, humanoids who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago in Europe and Asia, are closely related to homo sapiens, our more direct ancestors, who eventually came to dominate.</p><p>So how did you get your trace amount (a fraction of a percent)? The two groups apparently interbred before the Neanderthals, as a separate group, died out, according to researchers.</p><p>They must have had an artistic bent or felt compelled to document their activities, because many cave paintings depicting hunting and other activities have been attributed to Neanderthals.</p><p><strong>Genealogical Society News:</strong> Congratulations to the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society for nearing a milestone. As of this writing, the society&#8217;s Facebook group had reached 999 members, according to a recent release.</p><p>The Genealogical Society was founded more than 20 years ago, expanding first from private homes to a small building in Kingston Township. It&#8217;s now in the caretaker building on the grounds of the Hanover Green Cemetery, Main Road, Hanover Township.</p><p>Go to its Facebook page for membership information and its days and hours of operation.</p><p><strong>News Notes:</strong> Rootsweb, the online data provider, has begun to restore material it removed following a data breach last year, according to one of its most recent (Jan. 23) announcements. However, as of this writing, material on the Luzerne County Genweb &#8211; chiefly the Wilkes-Barre Record Almanacs &#8211; is still missing. Rootsweb says it is securing its operation against further breaches.</p><p>The 1,700 boxes of Luzerne County paper records damaged by water during a fire last year will be salvaged, the Times Leader reported recently. A salvage company&#8217;s bill will be covered by the county&#8217;s insurance carrier. The county had been using a former produce warehouse in downtown Wilkes-Barre, and the damage occurred when the sprinkler system kicked in. Records have since been moved to a new building in Hanover Township.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/web1_TOM_MOONEY.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out On a Limb: NEPA ancestors lived and died quite differently