Drill Down Penny and Stinky

You meet a lot of nice, capable, and interesting people in this hobby, primarily online. You also meet some memorable characters. “Drill Down” Penny Rankin (not her real given name) is one of my favorites. “Stinky” Burke (fake surname) is at least notable.

Drill Down Penny

Like a lot of people, Drill Down Penny traced her Rankin family back to the Adam Rankin who died in 1747 in what was then Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, now Franklin County. His wife was Mary Steele Alexander, widow of James “the Carpenter” Alexander. They had sons named James, William, and Jeremiah.

There are a number of good reasons for us amateur researchers to glom onto Adam’s line. First, a fabulous Scottish oral family history has been attached to his name, almost certainly incorrectly. It is probably mostly fiction in any event, although nobody much cares. Second, there are a lot of cool people in the line. Two professional baseball players, my personal weakness. A Rankin who, inter alia, argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, another favorite. Brigadier General Adam Rankin “Stovepipe” Johnson, a Confederate who earned his nickname by capturing an Ohio town without a shot, using a fake cannon consisting of a stovepipe mounted on a wagon. Third, the family also boasts several Revolutionary War veterans, attracting family history researchers who lust after membership in the DAR or SAR. Adam’s son William served in the Revolution. Every Rankin family in the late 1700s and early 1800s had a son named William, and many were searching for a Pennsylvania ancestor. Adam’s family was a prime target.

Drill Down Penny was the daughter of a William Rankin. Her Rankin grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on, back to and including her last conclusively proved Rankin ancestor, were all named William. Her earliest proved Rankin ancestor was a William who died in Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

She needed to find Indiana County William’s father. Naturally, Drill Down Penny identified Rev. War William’s son William (a grandson of Adam) as the same man as her ancestor William of Indiana County. The line gained her admission into both the DAR and, on behalf of a nephew, the SAR. It turns out that it is very easy to prove via traditional paper research that Indiana County William was definitely not the same man as William, son of Rev. War William and grandson of Adam. That William was a doctor who died in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. But Drill Down Penny didn’t know that.

I met her back in the days before Y-DNA 111-marker tests and Big Y tests. One of her Rankin nephews was a perfect 37-marker match with my Rankin first cousin. I was therefore interested in that line: I had been beating my head against a Rankin brick wall for some time.

We exchanged information. Drill Down Penny didn’t do email, so we communicated via snail mail. She sent me some, uh, interesting stuff. One thing was a hand-drawn map of a Pennsylvania cemetery where some people from Adam’s line were buried. There were several unmarked Rankin graves there. She noted the location of such graves with little drawings of coffins, something like this (except this one, drawn by Gary, is three-dimensional with handles; hers were just the one-dimensional shape of the lid):

Her map also had drawings of appropriately located hand drills that looked something like this (except less sophisticated, since this one was also drawn by Gary and, he says, is called a “brace and bit”):

Her idea was to “drill down into some of the coffins to extract DNA.” Thus her nickname. She died not long thereafter, apparently not having succeeded with her DNA recovery project. If she had, any human DNA would undoubtedly have been mixed with pine tree DNA. Not sure if FTDNA could handle that.

I spent a lot of time identifying male Rankin descendants of Adam via paper research and trying to recruit them for Y-DNA testing. There are now two men in the Rankin DNA Project participants from Adam’s line, identified as Lineage 3B.

Guess what? Adam’s descendants are NOT a Y-DNA match to either Drill Down Penny’s line or to mine. I’m glad she wasn’t around to hear that bad news.

I recently “met” another Rankin who claims descent from Adam by inventing a nonexistent son named Alexander for Rev. War William Rankin and his wife Mary Huston. There is no end to ways to claim descent from Adam’s line, usually involving Adam’s son William.

Stinky Burke

I published a version of this story years ago. It bears repeating with an explanation for his nickname, which I previously omitted. I’m going to use phony names and locations for reasons which will become obvious.

Some time ago, I received this email, verbatim, in toto:

 “Whatever prompted you to demote my grandfather from Captain to Sergeant?”

Huh?

I had no clue what he was talking about. I should have ignored the email, because the underlying anger is obvious. Unfortunately, I was curious, and the sender’s surname was one of my lines. Let’s call him Mr. Burke. I was hopeful that I might have found another recruit for Y-DNA testing: I am always on the lookout for living male Burkes, Rankins, Lindseys, et al. who might be willing to test. Consequently, I responded.

Turned out that I had been researching a Burke family who migrated from Tennessee to Missouri. I ran across a Missouri Find-a-Grave listing for a Civil War soldier named Thomas Burke. Find-a-Grave had him listed as a Captain, but I had seen convincing evidence he was a Sergeant. I provided the evidence to Find-a-Grave without requesting any change to the post. Find-a-Grave nevertheless changed his rank to Sergeant. This infuriated my correspondent.

I told Mr. Burke I would ask Find-a-Grave to revise the entry if I were wrong. However, a graves registration form filled out by the soldier’s son gave his rank as Sergeant. Also, a listing of his company roster identified him as a sergeant in Captain Chamberlain’s company of Union soldiers.

I duly reported the evidence to Mr. Burke and suggested he provide his contrary evidence to Find-a-Grave. He declined to do so. He didn’t care about results, unless I made the changes – he just wanted to harass me. His proof was a family heirloom Civil War pistol engraved “Captain” on the handle. His emails expressed outrage that (1) I did not immediately recall providing the evidence to Find-a-Grave, (2) it took me some time to relocate the evidence, and (3) I was “messing with” someone else’s “family tree,” which he found reprehensible. Oh, and he had “no intention” of DNA testing.

The exchange ended with this email from him:

“In the impending civil war, I will keep you tight on my rank and my confirmed kills.”

One of my friends who has dealt with such situations deems that a death threat. I do not, because bullies are almost always cowards. Her concern nevertheless inspired me to research Mr. Burke to determine whether he was sufficiently nearby to make it easy to add me to his list of confirmed kills even before his (probably longed-for) civil war commences.

Sergeant Burke was his great-great grandfather rather than his grandfather. After the Civil War, the Sergeant lived in a medium-sized community in a midwestern state. His son and grandson were attorneys in the same county. His great-grandson was an attorney and a judge there.

My correspondent, a son of the judge, left home for a small town (population less than 300) in a western state that is a hotbed of militia activity. The town apparently consists primarily of house trailers, dilapidated late model pickups, propane tanks, one bar, one liquor store, and a church. He commented multiple times in a local online discussion string, making anti-semitic comments, using the “C” word, referring to “faggot liberals,” and inviting people to fight. Another person on the string implied that he was a meth addict. A real charmer.

In response to his email saying that he would keep me informed about his rank and confirmed kills, my initial impulse was to reply as follows, tongue planted firmly in cheek:

“In the impending civil war, you need to watch your six — because there is a descendant of Captain Chamberlain out there looking for a descendant of the sonuvabitch who stole his service pistol.”

My better angels vetoed the idea. Instead, I told my friend Lynne about the exchange. She has a fabulous imagination and writes clever stories. She sent this:

Mr. Burke lives in a trailer with broken widows covered by sheet plastic. It is located at the end of a dirt road  that is always muddy. Every other day, he goes to the library looking for an email from his friend Robin. She is his only friend. The librarian calls him Stinky, I don’t know why. She had him banned from the library when she found out he was using a library computer to harass women, Jews, and others in chat groups.

He was once briefly married but was divorced so soon his ex-wife gave birth to a child whom he has never seen. He blames Communist Libruls for this because they invented divorce. That drove him to join a militia group, which meets monthly to practice drills and brag about how much ammunition they have accumulated. Stinky has 5,000 rounds, but he had to hock the gun that uses them to pay for his, uh, medication.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print.

See you on down the road.

Robin