Kiss Me, I'm Irish ...

So tomorrow, is St. Patrick’s Day.  And here I am having given up alcohol for lent.  Someone didn’t think this thing all the way through.  I mean, who hell would put both my birthday AND St. Patrick’s Day right in the middle of lent?  That’s some stupid planning if you ask me. 

Speaking of Ireland, as you guys probably know, way back in the day I sent out a plea into cyberland asking for information about my ancestors.  And, as you know, it was answered.  I got an email from someone who is a cousin (not sure how distant, these things confuse me) with some really cool information about the Loy family. 

Loy family being my great great grandfather George Loy who was born in County Armagh Ireland.  We found out a few things like his father, Thomas Loy and several brothers and his many, many kids that he fathered. Also, interesting tidbits about George like a newspaper account of his doing time for assaulting someone.  Apparently I come from a pretty rowdy bunch.  Shocking, huh?

I also shared with you this picture….


At the time we thought this was Thomas Loy, George’s brother.  Well, turns out it probably isn’t Thomas.

How do we know this?  Cause I got another email from another cousin with EVEN MORE information about my family!  How cool is that? 

He has provided us with scans of all kinds of great stuff.  Baptismals, death notices, marriage certificates (mostly in Latin), census entries and even immigration entries.  All of it adds up to help create a great timeline and fill in some of the pieces of their lives.

Oh, and the guy in the pic?  We now believe it is John Loy, another brother of George Loy.  He was an army reservist in the 1st Regiment of Foot, aka The Royal Scots. 

Tragically John died of drowning while bathing in the river Tees.  My newly found cousin sent the death certificate. 

My newfound cousin even sent us information on my mother’s grandfather Edward Wilson.  We knew he was born in Belfast, but really had nothing at all.  My cousin was able to dig up information about Edward moving to England and when he immigrated to the US and all kinds of great stuff. 

How cool is that?  Yeah, pretty damn cool. 

Well, that’s it.  I just wanted to update you on the family search cause I know you were wondering how that was going.

Also…

Old Pics, JLH, Itching and HST ...

So, the other day I posted about my fourth cousin getting in touch with us and finding out more about my family tree. Well, she emailed us a picture of my great great uncle Thomas Loy from sometime in the late 1800's. Check it out ....


(clickr for biggr in Flickr)

The people she got the pic from said that they believed he is wearing his Irish Guards uniform in this pic. But, some think it might be a Scottish Regimental uniform too. I have no idea. Do you?

Anyway, it's a cool pic.

Also, she sent us a couple of stuff from when my great great grandfather and great great uncle made the local paper The Northern Echo (which is still in bidness today) ...

"1895 Thomas Loy, army reserve man fined 15 sh or 10 days jail for being drunk & riotous in Stockton st mbro."

"1876 oct 31 Disgraceful kicking case in Mbro. George Loy
given 1 months hard labour for bodily harm, repeatedly kicking another man in Newport rd Mbro"

How freaking cool is that? They were a rambunctious bunch, weren't they? “Mbro” is Middlesbrough, England.

Also, you might notice that this is George’s brother Thomas, no his father Thomas. One of the problems we’ve been running into is that they weren’t all that creative when it came to naming kids back in the day. They basically all used the same names. People tended to name the first daughter the same name as the mother. Then the rest would be the father’s or mother’s sisters. The son’s would get the father or mother’s brothers names. So there are bunches of Peter’s, Thomas’s, Patrick’s, George’s etc etc.

I swear, I would have killed for a Shiloh Moon-Unit Apple Dweezle Loy, just so there would be ONE that I could keep track of easier.

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Jay Leno has finished his tenure as host of the tonight show. I like Leno alright, but have always been more of a David Letterman fan. When I was growing up my mother would let me stay up long enough to see Johnny Carson's monologue because I was a HUGE fan of his. But, when Leno took over I didn't like some of the changes he made and, well, he just wasn't Johnny.

But, he totally redeemed himself for anything he did wrong over the years right here at the end by having Jennifer Love Hewitt on and reminding her of her promise to show him how good she was at doing push-ups.


Well, played Jay. Well played.

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Okay, so I thought I would bring this up cause I thought it was a little weird.

Yesterday, when I was, uh .. sitting on my throne doing my morning business, I began to itch, you know, down there. Now, don't try to claim that you have never had bung hole itch before, so stop with the "ewwwwwwwwwww" looks. Anyway, we all know that when that happens, you have to deal with it.

But, here's the weird part. My belly button also started itching at the same time.

Do you think there's a connection between the two itches? It seems a bit odd, but it could be possible.

Has this ever happened to you?

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Now, I know that last segment made some of you uncomfortable. But, as I have often said, great artists make their audiences uncomfortable sometimes.

Besides, even blogger says I'm funny. This was my word verification when I commented on Tink's blog yesterday ...


And, yes, my comment was funny too.

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Friday is the fourth anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide.


To commemorate this day I will be getting totally fucked up on a crazy-ass cocktail of drugs and attempting write my next blog post Tweeting HST quotes throughout the day tomorrow. I can tell how excited you are about that.

The Family Tree Grows ...

Those of you who have been around awhile might remember that back a year or more ago, my sister, my mother and I all did blog posts about our family tree. We were kind of throwing some stuff out there to the cyber cosmos to see if anyone ever answered.

We were stuck trying to trace mom’s family. We knew that her great grandfather George Loy was living in Middlesbrough, England at the time of his death. And we thought that he was born in County Armagh, Ireland sometime around 1849. (This area is now part of Northern Ireland.)

Well, even though that was a long time ago, Kell got an email from someone who believes she might be our 4th cousin today. And, she not only knew the town that George (and her brother Peter, her great great great grandfather) came from, but she also knew THEIR father’s name!

So, if there is anyone out there who might know of a Thomas Loy who emigrated to Middlesbrough, Enlgand sometime after 1864, or other Loy’s, from the Forkhill, county Armagh, Ireland area, please send me an email which you can find on my profile page.

Or if you know any Loy’s from the Middlesbrough, England area, that would be cool too.


This tracing the family tree thing pretty hard to do if you don’t really know what you are doing. And if you refuse to pay any of those websites that say they will give you access to all kinds of information.

I hate those sites. They’re always like “Oh sure, we have lots of stuff on George Loy form Forkhill, county Armagh, Ireland. Just pay us a ridiculous monthly fee and you will see what’s there.” And then you pay and don’t find a damn thing.

Those sites are a lot like dating sites. Dating sites love to send emails saying “You have five messages from women wanting to meet you!” and then you pay the fee and find that those messages are all spam. Fuckers.

Anyway, it’s pretty slow going, but we are making some progress. It would be nice to go and visit these places though. And maybe even meet some people that I’m related to.

So how bout you guys? Anyone traced your family way back? Anyone traced your family back to anyone really famous or infamous even?


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I almost forgot about Mellow Yellow Mondays. It’s hosted by Drowsey Monkey.

Yellow label: