Birthdays – Week 46 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Sharing Birthdays

Want to have a little fun?

Check out the interactive map at https://www.vizwiz.com/2012/05/how-common-is-your-birthday-find-out.html. Just scroll down to the larger map and hover over any date to see the ranking. I was born on May 8 which is ranked as the 276th most common birthday out of 366 possible days (yes, February 29 is included even though it only occurs every 4 years). Gary was born exactly one week later on May 15 (though 4 years later) and his birthday is ranked as the 183rd most common birthday. Gary’s mom, Georgene, and my dad, Bill, were both born on April 1 which is listed at 348.

Birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate another year of life. As such, they didn’t become a special event until calendars were invented. While the ancient civilizations celebrated the “birth of a god,” it was probably the Romans who began celebrating ordinary people. We want to thank the German people for starting the tradition of the birthday cake (“Pump it up Party”).

I share a birthday with my paternal grandmother, Fanny Vandyke Watkins aka Delores Russell who was also born on May 8.

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We moved to Coffeyville, Kansas right before I began 7th grade. On the first day of school, I met Janice and we discovered that we shared the same birthday and also a passion for the Donna Parker book series. I had all the books in the series that Janice didn’t have and she had all the ones I didn’t have so we both had the opportunity to read the entire series.

All through junior and senior high, Janice and I celebrated our birthdays together, one year at her house and the next at mine. We usually had slumber parties and her mother was known for her delicious and creative cakes.

I thought it would be interesting to see some of the ancestors who share a birth month with me. (My mother was born in May and shares the same birthday as Gary’s nephew and his niece has a birthday exactly one week after Gary’s so the three of us are stepping stones.) I checked my grandparents chart and found these ancestors who are directly related to me as grandparents with May birthdays (this list is incomplete; I have not been able to find the birth-dates for many ancestors and for others I only have the year ):

• May 4, 1799 Oriminer L. “Miner” Runyon
• May 16, 1817 Oliver Liggett
• May 10, 1823 Otillia Endres Anthony
• May 24, 1869 John Calvin Watkins
• May 8, 1910 Fanny Vandyke Watkins aka Delores Russell

Historically, May 8 also has a reputation for extreme weather. “There have been interesting, wild and catastrophic weather events related to hail and other natural phenomena throughout recorded history on May 8 (AccuWeather).” As a tie-in with last week’s post, there was a devastating hailstorm in Winnsborough, South Carolina on May 8, 1784. “Several people were killed and there was great carnage of livestock and wildlife (AccuWeather).”

In addition to crazy weather, on May 8, 1895, “It rained large, winged black ants in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Area roads and sidewalks were covered by the mass of crawling, slippery insects (AccuWeather).”

Here’s hoping this May 8 brings beautiful weather (and no flying insects).

Sources

AccuWeather. “May 8th: A Hail of a Day.” AccuWeather, AccuWeather, 9 May 2012, https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/may-8th-a-hail-of-a-day/227208.

Admin. “Pump It up Party.” Pump It Up, 3 Feb. 2017, https://www.pumpitupparty.com/blog/how-did-the-tradition-of-birthdays-begin/.

Kriebel, Andy. “How Common Is Your Birthday? Find out Exactly with an Interactive Heat Map.” VizWiz, https://www.vizwiz.com/2012/05/how-common-is-your-birthday-find-out.html.