Randy, over a GeneaMusings has posted his weekly SNGF challenge!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music!), is:

1) Remember when you were 12 years old? On a summer day out of school? What memory do you have of fun activities?

2) Tell us about that memory (just one – you can do more later if you want to) in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a comment on Facebook.

I have many more memories of the summer after my 7th grade year, when I was twelve. That is because it was my first year in a new town after my parents divorced. Unfortunately, they are general, rather than specific memories. Children of divorce ride a roller coaster of emotion, and I was very unsettled and upset, and had a lot of many ups and downs.

When my parents separated during the previous summer, we three children had no idea what was going on. I had never even met anyone who had divorced parents, and I had never heard the word, divorce. I know it is hard to imagine in this day and age, but that is the truth. My mother was a strong, independent person, so she followed the logic I remember so well, and headed off to a new town and a chance for higher education at the University there. The move was sixty-five miles, and Mom did it herself, using a U-haul and we children helped load and unload. I was 11, one brother 10, and our youngest brother was 5. We moved beds, dressers, and box after box of other items all by ourselves.

Things were radically different in my new town. All my old friends were far away and long gone from my life. No one knew who I was, and no one cared. We lived in an upstairs apartment, much different from my two story home in my old town. Mom, who was attending the university just two blocks from our home, became engrossed in her classes and I felt much like an afterthought. Dad never called, and we rarely visited his home in our old town. It was as if he had disappeared.

After being the “new kid” all year at school, I had settled in a little. That first summer in my new home I remember the organized activities at a local elementary school. The school was open for set hours each day, and kids dropped in and took advantage of planned activities. I played kickball, basketball, foursquare and jump rope. During these long summer days, I had fun and met many children from the neighborhood. I remember feeling terrible when the weekend rolled around, since there were no activities at the school on Saturday.

Thanks to all the volunteers, aids and parents who make drop in centers and open gyms available for children’s activities. Those tough days of my twelfth summer were enriched by some very caring adults.

Randy says:

Hey, genealogy fans – it’s Saturday Night, and time for some Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music…), is:

1) Find out the geographical distribution of your surname – in the world, in your state or province, in your county or parish. I suggest that you use the Public Profiler site at http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/, which seems to work quickly and easily. However, you cannot capture the image as a photo file – you have to capture the screen shot, save it and edit it.

Here is the world-wide view for my name, which is Yearnd:

According to the map, this name exists only in the United States. Here is the USA distribution:

The stats are a little small in this, but it says: Arizona, 1.2 frequencies per million, and Illinois, .33 frequencies per million.

I know this name is infrequent, it seems that my g-grandfather and his family invented the spelling after they arrived in Michigan about 1870. Although I have found a few other occurrences in early records, they seem to be errors, or people with no connection. In one case, a family claiming German roots, as my ancestors did, resided in Wisconsin in 1860. Footnote members may see information on them, which I spot-lighted on Footnote. I have spent the majority of my adult life dreaming up possibilities for the original spelling of my name. Knowing what the name was is my key to finding any connection to Germany, or wherever the family originated. The key is still hidden.

Currently, There are exactly five living males with this surname, my two brothers, their two sons, and my cousin. There are eight females that I am aware of, my two brother’s wives, my cousin’s mother, my cousin’s wife, and two ex-wives of my brother, and my two nieces. That is 13 total people, and six of them live in the states found and highlighted by this profiler. The remaining seven people live in states which do not show up.

Based on my results, this is an interesting tool, but I wonder where the data comes from. I believe at least some of the missing individuals are “listed” in either in phone or city directories. I guess I would use care in quoting the results, since there is a pretty large error rate.