Happy Boxing Day to all! A genealogy question has come from a discussion family members were having last night about tattoos. First-I am a rural Protestant Virginian by birth and still by mentality<smile>. I have traveled a lot and in fact left Va in the Air Force straight out of college and only was back for visits. My exposure to various ethnicities has been rather limited even with the traveling I have done. I have always lived in the south eastern US. Our son in law is Irish Catholic from Boston. Obviously a big difference in just his and my background. He brought out during the discussion on Tattoos last evening that in his area of Boston it was quite common to honor a family member who died with a tattoo. Mind you he does not have any but only because his mother prevailed. We then went on talking about other ethnicities that had tattoos to recognize there standing in their particular society etc. I am not trying to discuss the tattoos we see on tribal members etc but am interested, at least for the moment, in European and North American populations. Have any of you dealt with this? read about? had presentations on it? used it to aid in family history? Douglas Burnett Satellite Beach FL

Douglas, very interesting topic! I pulled a Civil War pension file for a friend last year and his ancestor's medical records described the three tattoos he had on his body. I'd never seen that before. The Kentucky Civil War ancestor was born in New York to parents of unknown ethnicity who were of lesser economic means. Not sure if that has anything to do with anything but adding it here in case it is helpful. It will interesting to see if others can comment on this subject. Phyllis-----Original Message----- From: "JDBEsq via" [ [email protected] ]( mailto:[email protected] ) Subject: [TGF] Genealogy in Tattoos? "...We then went on talking about other ethnicities that had tattoos to recognize there standing in their particular society etc. I am not trying to discuss the tattoos we see on tribal members etc but am interested, at least for the moment, in European and North American populations. Have any of you dealt with this? read about? had presentations on it? used it to aid in family history?