Wedding Traditions: Silver Sixpences

One of the reasons that I fell headlong into the genealogy obsession is that at its root, it feeds a larger obsession of mine - research.  Who appeared in a certain film? What is the etymology of a word, or phrase? Ask me these questions, and my first instinct is to go online and search for the answers.

During our preparations for our wedding, I decided to research the origins of the wedding rhyme:

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a (silver/lucky) sixpence in her shoe.

Wikipedia doesn't have much on the origin, besides dating it back to at least 1883.  However, the sources used to back this up all are post-1980.  There is supposedly an English newspaper article from 1883 that contained the rhyme and attributed it to Lancashire.

The Phrase Finder says:

The rhyme was certainly in use by the late Victorian period and was printed in an 1894 edition of the Pennsylvania newspaper The Warren Ledger, where it was listed as a 'Puritan Marriage Custom'.

So I went to Google Books

There I found several references in sources from the 1890s to the rhyme without the 'sixpence in her shoe' ending, making me wonder if the newspaper articles from 1883 and 1894 referenced in the above sources contained the whole quote or not.

So I thought to myself "British Newspaper Article... I should check The British Newspaper Archive!" where I had found some newspaper articles mentioning some possible relatives back in March.

I found a reference in an 1881 edition of The Lancaster Times - once again, without the silver sixpence, and attributed as 'an old saying' from Allegra in Life.  Since it predates the current source for Wikipedia, someone could theoretically update the entry and cite this blog post. Ideally, they would cite The Lancaster Times, but Wikipedia editors seem to be fine with citing sources that cite earlier sources.

Where does "Silver Sixpence in her Shoe" come from? There are many old references to silver sixpences bringing luck - at all times of one's life, regardless of where one found the coin.  Several works of short fiction played on the theme:

• The Lucky Sixpence, dated 1845
• The Silver Sixpence, dated 1832
• The Old Dame and her Silver Sixpence, dated 1850

I suspect at some point the luckiness of the sixpence got tied to the wedding rhyme, and it was placed in the shoe for poetic purposes. (Shoe rhymes with Blue and New.) This shouldn't detract from the custom, even if it wasn't originally part of the wedding rhyme, since sixpences have long been considered lucky. But unless someone can find a 19th century source for the entire rhyme, I suspect the melding occurred at some point in the 20th century, and possibly in America.  Emily Post in 1922 is the earliest definite citation I can find containing both halves.

Did Ancestry Shut Its Doors on All Professionals and all Bloggers?

Marian at Roots and Rambles has an intriguing post. It appears Ancestry.com has changed its Terms of Service.

From the comments to the post:

Old TOS (October 6, 2010)
You are licensed to use the Content only for personal or professional family history research, and may download Content only as search results relevant to that research.  

New TOS (March 24, 2012)
You may access the Website, use the graphics, information, data, editorial and other Content only for personal family history research.

The entire current Limited Use License (with some of the language emboldened for emphasis)

You may access the Website, use the graphics, information, data, editorial and other Content only for personal family history research. Republication or resale of any of the Content or other protected data is prohibited. The Content may be downloaded onto mobile devices or desktop through the use of authorized Ancestry software. When downloaded, the Content remains subject to the limited use license contained in this Agreement. You may use the software provided on the Website only while online and may not download, copy, reuse or distribute that software, except where it is clearly stated that such software is made available for offline use. Ancestry and its licensors retain title, ownership and all other rights and interests in and to all information and Content on the Website. Bots, crawlers, spiders, data miners, scraping and any other automatic access tool are expressly prohibited. Violation of this limited use license may result in immediate termination of your membership and may result in legal action against you.

The entire Limited Use License from the old TOS

You are licensed to use the Content only for personal or professional family history research, and may download Content only as search results relevant to that research. The download of the whole or significant portions of any work or database is prohibited. Resale of a work or database or portion thereof, except as specific results relevant to specific research for an individual, is prohibited. Online or other republication of Content is prohibited except as unique data elements that are part of a unique family history or genealogy. Violation of this License may result in immediate termination of your membership and may result in legal action for injunction, damages or both. You may use access software provided on the Service only while on line and may not download, copy, reuse or distribute that software, except where it is clearly stated in connection with software that it is made available for offline use and a license for that use is provided in connection with that software.

 The old TOS specifically mentioned professionals, so the absence of professionals in the new TOS can't be an oversight.  It seems Ancestry is saying if you are a professional genealogist and you access their website for your business, you are violating their Terms of Service, and if they find out, they are likely to terminate your subscription.

And since "Republication or resale of any of the content or other protected data is prohibited" - this implies if a personal family historian has a blog, and "republishes" the content on their blog, they are in violation of the TOS as well. Even if the blog isn't commercial, since it's 'republication or resale' and not just 'resale.' [Note that the old TOS allowed resale and republication of content 'relevant to specific research for an individual.'] 

This seems to be in direct conflict with the email Heather Wilkinson Rojo of NutfieldGenealogy received from Ancestry Legal regarding Pinterest.  But maybe Ancestry Legal was responding with the old TOS in mind, and not the new TOS.

I think Ancestry.com needs to clarify this for all professional genealogist and all bloggers.  And if the above interpretation is accurate, they need to offer subscription refunds for those professional genealogists and bloggers who are no longer allowed to access their website for the purpose they originally subscribed.


Update: It appears that Ancestry updated their TOS today, April 26, but the limited use license paragraph is the same in the newest version.


Update 2: 
I believe Ancestry updated their TOS twice today, though it is possible I misread the update earlier.  Anyway, the language in the Limited Use License has changed. It now reads:

You may access the Website, use the graphics, information, data, editorial and other Content only for personal or professional family history research, and download Content only as search results relevant to that research. The Content may be downloaded onto mobile devices or desktop through the use of authorized Ancestry software. When downloaded, the Content remains subject to the limited use license contained in this Agreement. You may use the software provided on the Website only while online and may not download, copy, reuse or distribute that software, except where it is clearly stated that such software is made available for offline use. Ancestry and its licensors retain title, ownership and all other rights and interests in and to all information and Content on the Website. Bots, crawlers, spiders, data miners, scraping and any other automatic access tool are expressly prohibited. Violation of this limited use license may result in immediate termination of your membership and may result in legal action against you.

The line about resale or republication appears to have been removed, suggesting bloggers are within the TOS once again.

Hat/tip to The Legal Genealogist for this second update.

Just Married!

This post is to announce that the blogger ... (b'lil ayin hara) .. is now a married man.

Naturally, there are no photos to share yet.  As a placeholder...Here's a photograph of my great grandparents' Barney Newmark and Bertha Cruvant on their wedding day.

This post has been previously written and scheduled - hence the Hebrew phrase at the top. This blogger is not the type to spend his wedding day writing a blog post.

Not-So-Wordless Wednesday: The Sunken Gardens - From 1904 to Today

The St. Louis Public Library has an online exhibit concerning the 1904 World's Fair (aka The Louisiana Purchase Exposition)  In this exhibit are some photographs of what was known then as The Sunken Gardens.

I have several great grandparents who were living in St. Louis at the time and would have likely enjoyed all the sights of the exposition. What remains today?

I don't believe any of the buildings in the photographs above remain, but some of the gardens. It appears in 1912, the St. Louis Public Library was built on the grounds of the buildings on the right in the upper photograph.  If you compare a 1914 postcard (source), which references both the library and The Sunken Gardens, you can see how the pathways match up.

Here's a photograph from the 1960s (Source: Lucas Park in St. Louis Facebook Page)

Google Images provides a satellite image of what it looks like today.  

The Gardens are now known as Lucas Park.  I work down the street and walk by the park often on my way to lunch. There is no indication of its historical past. If it weren't for the 1914 postcard above I wouldn't have made the connection, and I'm not sure I would have believed it.

Update: I was wrong. Those Sunken Gardens aren't these Sunken Gardens

Other photographs
1920 - Missouri History Museum
2011 - UrbanReviewSTL