The Geneline The Monthly Newsletter of the Amelia Island Genealogical Society March 2015

AIGS March General Meeting Tuesday, March 17, 2015, at 7:00 PM The Community Room, Fernandina Beach Police Station, 1525 Lime St, Fernandina Beach, FL Public welcome! March Program

Missing in America Project Our March topic will be, “The Missing in America Project” (MIAP). MIAP is a national program that seeks to locate, identify and inter unclaimed, cremated remains of American Veterans, through the joint efforts of private, state and federal organizations. All too often, veterans’ remains are left in funeral homes, forgotten for years. MIAP volunteers attempt to find the veterans’ families and see that the remains are interred with full honors. Their purpose is to provide honor and respect to those who have served this country by securing a final resting place for our forgotten heroes. Our speaker, Sharon Gilley, will discuss the process by which MIAP locates and identifies veterans’ remains. The process involves researching records similar to doing genealogy research. MIAP sometimes serves in place of the family to repay a Veteran for the services they rendered. Ms. Gilley said, “Military history has always fascinated me, so after careers in banking and the medical field, I went back to college when I was 52.” Ms. Gilley earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 2008 and a master’s degree in military history with an emphasis on World War II in 2010. Ms. Gilley lives in the Jacksonville area and has been involved in this effort for some time. She has done MIAP work in Florida, Texas, Virginia and New York. Her New York work allowed her to find information on two Civil War veterans who were eventually, thanks to MIAP, interred in New York with full military honors. She has recently become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (www.DAR.org).

1 March 2015 - Message from the President

From Jean Mann 2015 AIGS BOARD MEMBERS Dear Members, Jean Mann I hope, by now, that you have each had an opportunity to visit our President new website. Jim Miller, our new webmaster, and Lori Miranda gave Tonia Quarterman an excellent overview at our February meeting of the material Vice President available. The Board has been disappointed at the number of members who have not looked at the site yet. “But I don’t have any Carol Miller Nassau County ancestors!” Is this your excuse for not looking at the Secretary site? This may be true, but there are opportunities for you to make Marcia Pertuz contact with other researchers. Our Surname Research section gives Treasurer you the opportunity to add the surnames you are searching to the Gus Reinwald data base. In the event a researcher wants to contact you, it will be Past President through the AIGS website and then up to you to divulge your “real” Larry Conte, email address. For those who do have Nassau County ancestors, Director/Membership there is a wealth of information that you may not have seen! I was Chairperson pleasantly surprised to find information about my family that I didn’t Bob Keane have, but was a part of the newspaper project! So, please, please! Go Director to our new website and check it out at www.aigensoc.org Susan Anstead Do you have Revolutionary War ancestors and haven’t been able to Director find documentation you need? The Daughters of the American Revolution is “committed to making family research materials more Lori Miranda Director readily available to the public” according to the President General Lynn Young. Supporting documents for membership applications COMMITTEE CHAIRS & EDITORS are now available for purchase. The documents may include Bible records, deeds, wills, land records and other materials used to prove Jim Miller lineage to a patriot of the American revolutions. This service is AIGS Website provided through the Genealogical Research System (GRS) which is a Bob Keane free resource provided by the DAR to aid in general genealogical Program research. Records that are less than 100 years old will not be Lori Miranda available due to privacy concerns. To go to the public site, visit Publicity www.dar.org. Teen Peterson Librarian We look forward to seeing you at the March 17th meeting. Come early and share your successes or brainstorm with other members Kathy Nemaric Research Coordinator about your brick walls! Susan Anstead Jean Mann Editor Geneline

Jean Mann Editor of Nassau County Genealogist

2 News You Can Use!

This corner of the Geneline will highlight news each month that we hope interests you. It contains descriptions of new books added to our library, volunteer opportunities, openings on the board, upcoming local speakers, Nassau County Library updates, and much, much more. We hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.

Canadian Records This link is to the Laurier Military History Archive. They state, "The purpose of the Laurier Military History Archive is to acquire, preserve and make available documents relating to the Canadian and international experience of military conflict in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." Check it out if you have Canadian ancestors: http://lmharchive.ca/collections/

BROWN BAG LUNCH - March 4, 2015 @ noon The Amelia Island Museum of History invites you to attend its next Brown Bag Lunch on Wednesday, March 4th, at noon. Guest speaker Jim Longacre will deliver a presentation entitled: Lee and Grant on Amelia Island. During the course of their lives, fate and circumstance brought two of the Civil War’s most famous generals to Fernandina, Florida. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee ended the War Between the States as commanders of their respective armies, and both number among the most studied military leaders in U.S. history. We will explore both men’s unexpected rise to prominence, and discuss the events that brought these two American icons to Amelia Island. This program is free and open to the public. For more information contact Gray at 261-7378 ext 102. [email protected] 3rd on 3rd - Friday, March 20th @ 6:00 pm Join us Friday, March 20th, at 6 pm. Special guest Dr. Rosalyn Howard will deliver a presentation entitled The African Presence in Spanish Florida: Black Seminoles. African slaves have often risked life and limb to escape southern slavery, but their options for sanctuary were extremely limited. Some fled to the Caribbean, while others fled south and joined forces with another group of freedom-seekers: the Seminoles. Dr. Rosalyn Howard will examine the African influence on Florida’s iconic tribe, as well as the related Caribbean diaspora. Professor Rosalyn Howard is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the North American Indian Studies Program at the University of Central Florida. She specializes in Cultural Anthropology and her primary area of research is ethnohistorical studies of the African Diaspora with a focus on the interrelationships formed by African and Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean.

3 This program is free for members, with a suggested donation of $5 for nonmembers. Seating is first- come/first-served. For more information contact Gray at 261-7378 ext 102, or email Gray., or email Gray: [email protected]

Volunteer Opportunities Do you have a little extra time to help others? Then we have a job for you! There are lots of volunteer opportunities and there may be one that’s just right for you. You will find many opportunities right here at the Amelia Genealogical Society. A few opportunities are outlined below. For more information contact the AIGS President: Jean Mann at [email protected] Writers needed! Do you like to write? Do you have a story to tell? Do you have genealogy research information you’d like to share? We have an entire readership waiting to hear from you! We are always looking for articles for the monthly AIGS Geneline. It covers a broad spectrum of topics from research hints to personal family histories to research tool analyses and anything else we think may be of interest to our readers. If you have a topic or information you would like to share, we can help you organize it too!

Cemetery Survey Project The cemetery survey committee is in need of volunteers. There are many facets to the process and no special skills are required. If you enjoy fresh air and getting outside and doing important work, this committee is for you! Bebe Granger, the new committee chair gave us this update: “The AIGS Bosque Bello Cemetery Survey is slowly moving along during the winter months. The photo is Amos Latham’s gravestone in the old section of Bosque Bello. He was a Revolutionary War Patriot. AMOS LATHAM, CPL, 1 CONN REGT, REV WAR, JUL 18 1761, APR 28, 1842. Portions of the brick walls are crumbling around his family plot, as many are in the old section.” Contact Bebe Granger, at [email protected] if you are interested in joining the cemetery survey group.

We’re here for you!

Need help? Are you trying to get your research started? Do you need help organizing your work? Have you hit a brick wall in your research? Do you need translation of foreign language documents? As a society, we have lots of resources from which to draw. We have many talented, experienced, volunteers, just waiting to help. Contact Jean Mann at [email protected], if you need help with a genealogy problem. She will find the right resource for you. Your problem is just waiting to be solved!

4 Feature Article of the Month War Games - The Monopoly Game & WW II Foreword by Susan Anstead I was looking for a Feature Article for this month’s Geneline and wanted the topic to be relevant to the military since our speaker this month is dedicated to honoring our veterans and will be speaking on that topic. I found an article in a genealogy publication that interested me but no sources were cited so I was reluctant to reprint it, not wanting to propagate misinformation. So, I did a little digging on the Internet and was very surprised at what I found. The same article was reviewed by Snopes.com, a website dedicated to researching Internet rumors (a.k.a. urban legends) for accuracy. Snopes indicated that the article was found circulating via emails. With a little more digging, I found the earliest copy of the same article published in a magazine called, “Mental Floss” in 2007 and reprinted online by CNN.com, citing Mental Floss as the source. The article, slightly modified, was again picked up in 2013 and again in 2014 by ABCNews.com, the London Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and on and on… It turns out there are publications of the same topic, going at least back to 1985. I am reprinting the article here because I am hoping you will find it interesting. I am also including the fact corrections as investigated by Snopes. Com, at the end, so you have all of the facts as we currently know them.

How board game helped free POWs

From CNN.com; Reprinted from “Mental Floss” Magazine, 2007 http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/12/05/mf.waropoly/index.html?iref=newssearch Park Place, Boardwalk, and a hidden map with a secret escape route? For Allied POWs during World War II, Monopoly® games came equipped with real-life "get out of jail free" cards. During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. The original notion was simple enough: Find a way to sneak useful items into prison camps in an unassuming form. But the idea to use Monopoly came from a series of happy coincidences, all of which started with maps. Smooth as silk Maps are harder to smuggle than you might think. They fall apart when wet, and they make a lot of noise when unfolded. Allied officials feared paper maps might draw the attention of German troops, so they turned to an unlikely source for help -- silk. Not only would silk maps hold up in all kinds of weather, but they'd also come with the life-saving benefit of being whisper quiet. Muukrant.nl via Snopes

5 To produce these silent maps, the Brits turned to John Waddington Ltd., a company that had recently perfected the process of printing on silk and was already manufacturing silk escape maps for British airmen to carry. What else was Waddington known for? You guessed it -- being the licensed manufacturer of Monopoly outside the United States. Suddenly, the popular board game seemed like the perfect way to get supplies inside German-run POW camps. At the time, the Nazis were hard-pressed to get provisions to their own troops, much less to the Allied soldiers they'd captured. Wishing to hide this less-than-stellar upholding of the Geneva Convention, they happily welcomed Red Cross aid packages for POWs. So throwing Monopoly games into the care kits along with food and clothing was met with little scrutiny. Monopoly WW II silk made map of Milan, Italy;- was already a well-known game throughout Europe, and the Source: Public Domain German guards saw it as the perfect way for their detainees to remain occupied for hours. In 1941, the British Secret Service approached Waddington with its master plan, and before long, production of a "special edition" Monopoly set was underway. For the top-secret mission, the factory set aside a small, secure room -- unknown to the rest of its employees -- where skilled craftsmen sat and painstakingly carved small niches and openings into the games' cardboard boxes. Along with the standard thimble, car, and Scotty dog, the POW version included additional "playing" pieces, such as a metal file, a magnetic compass, and of course, a regional silk escape map, complete with marked safe-houses along the way -- all neatly concealed in the game's box. Even better, some of the Monopoly money was real. Actual German, Italian, and French currency was placed underneath the play money for escapees to use for bribes. Also, because of its collaboration with the International Red Cross, Waddington could track which sets would be delivered to which camps, meaning escape maps specific to the area could be hidden in each game set. Allied soldiers and pilots headed to the front lines were told to look for the special edition game if they were captured. The identifying mark to check for? A red dot in the corner of the Free Parking space. Get out of jail free By the end of the war, it's estimated that more than 35,000 Allied POWs had escaped from German prison camps. And while there's no way to set an exact figure on it, more than a few of those escapees certainly owe their breakout to the classic board game. But despite its brave and noble role in all of it, Monopoly's heroic war deeds would go unrecognized for decades. Strict secrecy about the plan was maintained during the war, not only so that the British could continue using the game to help POWs, but also because Waddington feared a targeted reprisal by German bombers. After the war, all remaining sets were destroyed, and everyone involved in the plan, including the escaped prisoners, were told to keep quiet. In the event of another large-scale war, Allied officials also wanted to make sure the seemingly innocent board game could go back into action. Uncle Pennybags goes behind the Iron Curtain Believe it or not, it wasn't long before Monopoly found itself in the middle of yet another international conflict -- this time defending itself from Communist leaders in Russia. Being that Monopoly is essentially a game in which one player gets rich at the expense of others becoming poor, Soviet officials had long seen the board game as an overt symbol of capitalistic

6 frivolity and greed. So, as its popularity soared, Communists took more and more efforts to curb the enthusiasm. Cuba, the U.S.S.R., and other Eastern Bloc countries outlawed Monopoly Russian Game Board Edition 1987 - All artifact images, interpretive the game for fear it would corrupt the public with positive information, and website text notions about a free-market economy. Soviet leaders even tried coming up with their own Marxist-themed spin-off games designed to highlight the virtues of frugality. The title of one such knockoff from Communist-era Hungary loosely translated to "Save," while another in Russia had a name that roughly meant "Manage." But bans and spin-offs couldn't hold down the individualistic drive of the human spirit. Monopoly became an underground success, secretly coveted and played behind the Iron Curtain as a way of escaping the drudgery of Soviet life. It wasn't until 1987, four years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Monopoly was allowed to be legally sold there. Today, Monopoly is licensed in more than 80 countries, and no fewer than 200 spin-off versions exist. Of course, playing it in the cozy confines of your living room, it's easy to take for granted that there was a time when, to many, Monopoly was a lot more than just a game. For more Mental Floss articles, visit MENTALFLOSS.COM ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THIS ARTICLE COPYRIGHT, MENTAL FLOSS LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Source: Snopes.com The general outline of the scheme to smuggle escape aids to POWs through specially manufactured Monopoly kits is recounted (among other places) in The Game Makers, a 2004 history of the Parker Brothers game company: When allied airmen began to risk their lives flying missions over occupied Europe, Parker Brothers' English partner found a way to use the Monopoly game to come to the aid of those who were captured by the Germans. The British War Office worked with a select group of Waddington staffers to modify Monopoly boards for insertion in games that the Red Cross would deliver to Allied prisoners of war. These men carved out precise depressions in the unfinished game boards and, before applying their labels, filled them with low-profile compasses, files, and maps that depicted escape routes from the prison camp where each game was to be sent. (The maps were printed on silk because silk did not rustle when opened. Waddington's had perfected this process to such an extent that virtually all British flyers climbed into their warplanes with a Waddington's map secreted in the heel of one of their boots.) Hidden among the games' play money was real currency — German, Italian, or Austrian. It is not known how many airmen escaped thanks to these Monopoly games. Regardless of when it may have been officially declassified, information about the rigged Monopoly kits was openly acknowledged and discussed long before 2007. A 1985 Associated Press article, for example, reported that: Waddingtons, which received the license to distribute Monopoly in Britain in 1935 from Parker Brothers in the United States, got involved in aiding the prisoners of war because of its printing expertise. It printed maps for the military on durable silk. Thousands of fliers who went on missions over German-occupied Europe had the maps sewn into their uniforms if they were shot down and captured. Victor Watson, chairman of the firm, said Waddingtons had a secret department that put the maps, files and money in shallow recesses on the board under the paper face. Then MI-9, the

7 division of Military Intelligence devoted to helping POWs escape, smuggled the sets into prison camps as recreational equipment. Powell Davies, who was a 19-year-old flier when he was captured, said the prison escape committees would destroy the sets after removing the escape aids to keep the guards from figuring out what was going on. Although the account claims "an estimated one-third [of escaped POWs] were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets," both the Game Makers excerpt quoted above and Waddington's chairman said the number of POWs who were actually aided by the smuggled game kits is unknown: Maps, files and compasses were hidden in Monopoly sets and smuggled into World War II German prison camps to help British prisoners of war escape, the game's manufacturer, the John Waddington company of Leeds, England, says. Monopoly boards were made with maps hidden in them showing "escape routes from the particular prison to which each game was sent," chairman Victor Watson said. "Into the other side of the board was inserted a tiny compass and several fine-quality files." The money piles were real money, with one piece of Monopoly money on the top and bottom of the pack. "We are not sure how many prisoners were able to escape by this method," Watson said, but the company likes to think a few did. A former archivist with John Waddington also pointed out some discrepancies in the account in response to a 2007 London Times recounting of it: Sir, I write as the former archivist for John Waddington, the company which made Monopoly during the Second World War. In his article about Monopoly, Ben Macintyre states that the special sets of Monopoly were sent to prison camps via the Red Cross. Waddingtons produced many escape aids which were sent to the Nazi prison camps, but these were always sent via private, often fictitious, organisations like the Licensed Victuallers Prisoner Relief Fund. No escape aids were enclosed in the Red Cross parcels, so that the Germans would have no justification for stopping these much needed parcels from reaching the prisoners. It is untrue that safe houses were shown on the maps, as there was a virtual certainty that some of the maps would fall into German hands — the Germans were not fools when it came to tracking down prisoners' ruses. Read more at http://www.snopes.com/military/monopoly.asp#ITKBpQ730jCTY0Lq.99

To find out more information about the Amelia Island Genealogical Society and to access previous GENELINE publications visit our website: http://www.aigensoc.org/ The Society’s Library Collection is housed in the Fernandina Beach Library, 25 N. 4th St. Fernandina Beach, FL 32034. It includes the Nassau County Genealogist, and the GENELINE, AIGS’s monthly newsletter. All GENELINE articles are indexed by PERSI.

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The Amelia Island Genealogical Society P.O. Box 6005 Fernandina Beach, FL 32035-6005

Membership Information Membership dues are $25 per person & $35 per family, per year. The membership year runs from January 1st through December 31st. To print a membership application or for more information go to our web site: http://www.aigensoc.org/aigs/index.asp To join, please send the completed application form, along with the appropriate fee to the address below or bring them to the next general meeting. The Amelia Island Genealogical Society P.O. Box 6005 Fernandina Beach, FL 32035-6005 The membership packet includes AIGS information and all current year issues of the society’s quarterly publication. Family history research training is offered through classes, workshops and ongoing programs.

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