Saturday Genealogy Fun - Which Date is the Correct Birth Date for Alice?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- The Date Your Grandmother Was Born

It's Saturday Night, 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:1)  What day of the week was your Grandmother born (either one)? Tell us how you found out.

2)  What event was a headline in the newspapers on that date?  Tell us how you found out.

3) What has happened in recorded history on your Grandmother's birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

4)  What famous people have been born on your Grandmother's birth date?  Tell us how you found out, and list five of them.

5)  Put your responses in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

Because it is St Patrick's Day, I have chosen to begin with my Irish Grandmother Alice Fleming Connery,  According to family tradition, Alice was born to Thomas and Mary Hennessy Fleming on 1 January 1872 in Ballylanders, Co Limerick, Ireland.  Although Irish Civil Registration provides this information:

Alace Fleming

Ireland Births and Baptisms

Name:	Alace Fleming
Gender:	Female
Birth Date:	31 Dec 1871
Birthplace:	Limerick, Ireland
Father's Name:	Thomas Fleming
Mother's Name:	Mary Hennessy

Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C01237-8 , System Origin: Ireland-EASy , GS Film number:255846 , Reference ID: v 4-2 p 993 *

I cannot at this time determine which is the correct date although I suspect that the actual birth was 31 Dec 1871 with a baptism date of 1 Jan 1871.  Perhaps this summer when the Catholic Church records for Ireland are released the actual date can be determined.  For this project I will use both dates.  

Alice was born either on Sunday 31 Dec 1871 or on Monday 1 Jan 1872.  To determine this I used a google search for the phrase "calender January 1872"

These were the headlines in the New York Times on 31 Dec 1871 and below are the headings from the Chicago Tribune for 1 Jan .1872.

For this information I accessed my newspapers.com account.

Things that have happened on 31 December are: 11999 Panama Canal turned over to Panama 2. 1775 Patriots defeated at Quebec 3. 1778 Edison Demonstrates incandescent light 4. 1600 Charter granted to the East India Company 5. 1968 Bloodiest year of the Vietnam War ends

Five things that happened in history on 1 January are: 1. 1959 Batista forced out by Castro-led revolution 2. 1781 Mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line 3. 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect 4.  45 B.C., New Year’s Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect. 5. 1876 First modern Mummers Parade

For this information I took advantage of the website history.com/this day in history..

Five famous people born on 31 Dec are: 1378 - Callistus III, (Alfonso the Borja), Pope (1455-58)

1491 - Jacques Cartier, French explorer (d. 1557) 1720 - [Bonnie Prince] Charles Edward Stuart, English pretender to throne 1869 - Henri Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord, impressionist painter (Odalisque), (d. 1954) 1880 - George Marshall, Uniontown Pa, authored Marshall Plan (Nobel 1953), (d. 1959) 

Five famous people born on 1 January are: 1431 - Alexander VI [Rodrigo Borgia], Spanish/Italian pope (1492-1503) 1449 - Lorenzo de 'Medici (The Magnificent), Florentine statesman (d. 1492) 1735 - Paul Revere, silversmith/US patriot (British are coming) 1752 - Betsy Ross [Elizabeth Griscom], seamstress widely credited with making the first American flag 1895 - J. Edgar Hoover, Washington, D.C., first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1924-72)  and of course my sister Alice!

For these entries I used HistoryOrb.com.

There is a lot more to Alice than this reveals and I haven't finished with her yet.

*Citing this Record

"Ireland Births and Baptisms, 1620-1881," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FPLC-961 : accessed 17 March 2015), Alace Fleming, 31 Dec 1871; citing Limerick, Ireland, reference v 4-2 p 993; FHL microfilm 255,846.