July Newsletter: USA Celebrations, Funerals and AI

Hello everybody,

It’s the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence this month and I’ve been enjoying the wonderful podcast on BBC Sounds entitled, The History of the United States in 100 Objects.

If you’ve read any of my books, you’ll know that I like to build up histories from the smallest of details, a note in the margin, a family saying, an unusual vase passed down through the generations. This podcast does much the same thing but on a much bigger scale. My favourite episode so far has been Episode 2: 60 Degree Screw which is almost entirely about the history of screws! By standardising the dimensions of these small metal objects, the presenter explains how America took over the world from the Second World War onwards. What a great premise for a programme! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0njg0dx

I’ve written about British-American connections twice. In my family history book, Unearthing Family Tree Mysteries (Pen and Sword, 2016), there is a chapter about using passenger lists to follow up the family rumour that my great grandfather George Wilkinson – a Wigan miner – went to live among the Native Americans! I did discover that he travelled twice to America to work – to Pennsylvania and Texas in 1893 and to Roslyn, Washington in 1909. On that second journey, he was accompanied by a brother and was on his way to live and work with other mining family members who had already moved across the pond. I speculate about his association with the Yakama Indians who lived near to his second destination. You can buy my book and read that article in it here: Buy Unearthing Family Tree Mysteries at Amazon, click this link.

In honour of the 250 year anniversary, I’m making another article on USA connections available on my blog from today. This one, entitled ‘Dollar Princesses’ is about the wealthy American heiresses who married into the British aristocracy in the mid-twentieth century. It was first published in Discover Your Ancestors online periodical in 2019 not long after the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle: you can read it here: ‘Dollar Princesses’: What Our UK Ancestors Made of American Women – searchmyancestry – Ruth A. Symes

Funereal Follies

The featured article on my blog this month, is the second in my series on the funny things that sometimes happened when our ancestors celebrated vital life events. This time it is the turn of funerals and there is a feast of examples of calamities that occurred on these sad occasions. One reader who used to work as funeral director commented that many of the same sort of mishaps are still happening at funerals today. In the Victorian period – and in the absence of other verifiable news – national newspapers often took up these local stories with added relish. Read the article here: https://ruthasymes.co.uk/2026/07/02/funeral-faux-pas/

Don’t Trust AI

I made the mistake of looking myself up on AI recently and discovered that it’s not foolproof! There is another writer named Ruth Symes and it looks like she and I have become one person in virtual reality ! The absurdity has reached the point where I am down as being married to her husband! Just for clarity, I am Ruth Alexandra Symes and she is Ruth Louise Symes. She also writes under the name of Megan Rix. Her children’s books are fab, but they are quite different from my social history stuff – neither of us is quite that versatile!

Best wishes for the summer !

Ruth