Tribe Genealogy - Family Trees

30/10/2025

In 1854, a sixteen-year-old girl stood before a mirror in white silk, about to trade her freedom for a crown—and no one ever saw that dress again.
Her name was Elisabeth. The world would call her Sisi. And the mystery of her missing wedding dress tells us everything about the life she was about to enter.
The Girl from Bavaria
Imagine being sixteen years old, running wild through Bavarian countryside, skipping lessons to go horseback riding, living in a world of lakes and laughter and absolute freedom.
That was Elisabeth—Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria—daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph, who loved circuses more than court protocols and let his children grow up unrestrained and unstructured.
Her summers were spent at Possenhofen Castle by the Starnberg Lake. Her winters in Munich. No rigid etiquette. No suffocating formality. Just mountains and horses and the kind of childhood where you could be yourself.
And then, in August 1853, everything changed.
The Emperor Who Chose the Wrong Sister
Archduchess Sophie of Austria had a plan: her son, 23-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph, would marry her niece—Elisabeth's older sister Helene.
It was arranged. Helene was 18, pious, proper, perfect for an empress. The families traveled to Bad Ischl for the official engagement.
But fate had other plans.
When the coaches arrived, they'd gotten separated—the one carrying their gala dresses never showed up. Elisabeth and Helene had to meet the young Emperor wearing black mourning clothes because they'd visited the Queen Dowager who was in mourning.
Black didn't suit dark-haired Helene. But it made her fifteen-year-old sister's fair beauty striking.
Franz Joseph took one look at Elisabeth and fell instantly in love.
He didn't propose to Helene. Instead, he defied his powerful mother and declared: if he couldn't have Elisabeth, he wouldn't marry at all.
Five days later, their betrothal was announced.
Elisabeth was fifteen. She hadn't been prepared. She hadn't been chosen. And she was about to become Empress of Austria.
April 24, 1854: The Wedding
Eight months later, on April 24, 1854, sixteen-year-old Elisabeth walked down the long aisle of Vienna's Augustinerkirche.
Her footsteps echoed under the high dome. Vienna's streets overflowed with crowds desperate to catch a glimpse of their new empress. The entire empire was watching.
She wore a gown of white silk with rich embroidery in gold and silver. Over it, she wore a magnificent court train—long, lavishly embroidered, trailing behind her like a river of fabric.
No journalists were allowed inside. No photographers. No illustrators to chronicle the event. The Imperial wedding was private, sacred, controlled.
So when the ceremony ended and Elisabeth left her childhood behind to become Empress... something strange happened.
The dress disappeared.
The Missing Gown
For nearly 170 years, no one has known what happened to Empress Elisabeth's wedding dress.
The court train survived—kept by her favorite daughter, Archduchess Marie Valerie, as a precious memento, now displayed in Vienna's Imperial Carriage Museum.
But the dress itself? Gone.
Vanished into history like so many pieces of Elisabeth's true self.
Historians have searched. Archives have been combed. Monasteries in Hungary and Bavaria have been investigated. Nothing.
Some theorized it was destroyed. Others thought it might have been given away or repurposed—common practice even among royalty. Still others wondered if Elisabeth herself had wanted it gone, erased, forgotten.
Because if anything symbolized the life she was losing, it was that dress.
The Life She Never Wanted
Behind that white silk and gold embroidery lay the death of freedom.
Ahead of Elisabeth waited Vienna's marble halls, the rigid etiquette of the Habsburg court, and a mother-in-law who would control every aspect of her life—including taking away her children to raise them herself.
Elisabeth struggled from the beginning. The formality suffocated her. The protocols felt like chains. She had no privacy, no autonomy, no escape from being watched, judged, perfected.
She became famous for her beauty—her tiny waist (achieved through extreme exercise and near-starvation), her floor-length hair (which took hours to maintain), her ethereal presence that inspired poets and painters across Europe.
But she was miserable.
She traveled constantly, seeking escape. She found affinity with Hungary and helped bring about the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. She exercised obsessively. She wrote poetry filled with longing and darkness.
And after her son Crown Prince Rudolf's su***de in 1889, something in her broke completely.
She wore black for the rest of her life. She traveled more frantically. She seemed to court death.
September 10, 1898
In Geneva, Switzerland, an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni stabbed Empress Elisabeth in the heart.
She died at age 60, after 44 years as empress—the longest reign of any Austrian empress.
She had spent those decades trying to escape a role she'd never wanted, a life chosen for her before she could choose for herself.
The Dress Reappears—Sort Of
In 2021, nearly 170 years after the wedding, Spanish researcher Silvia Santibañez discovered something extraordinary: an obscure 1857 portrait of Elisabeth at the Silesian Museum in the Czech Republic.
In it, Sisi was wearing what appeared to be her wedding dress.
Dr. Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner, director of Vienna's Imperial Carriage Museum and nicknamed "the huntress of lost treasure," assembled a team. They studied the painting. Analyzed the fabric patterns. Searched for a printer who could recreate the textile.
And in 2023, they unveiled their work: a painstakingly accurate replica of Empress Elisabeth's wedding dress, reconstructed from that single portrait.
The replica now stands in Vienna—a ghost of the original, beautiful and haunting.
But the real dress? Still missing. Still lost to history.
What the Missing Dress Tells Us
Maybe it's fitting that Elisabeth's wedding dress disappeared.
Because in many ways, so did Elisabeth herself—the girl who rode horses through Bavaria, who skipped lessons, who lived freely.
That sixteen-year-old who stood before a mirror on April 24, 1854, putting on a gown that would mark her last day of innocence... she vanished the moment she stepped into Vienna's Augustinerkirche.
What remained was Empress Sisi: beautiful, tragic, trapped in a role that never fit, spending 44 years trying to find the freedom she'd lost that day.
The dress is gone. But the story remains.
A story of a girl who became an icon but lost herself in the process.
A story of beauty that became a cage.
A story stitched in white silk and gold thread—and then erased, like so many women's truths, from the pages of history.
Today, the court train still exists in Vienna, perfectly preserved.
But the dress itself—the symbol of that last moment before everything changed—remains lost.
Just like the girl who wore it.

~Professor Calcue

25/09/2025

16/06/2025

So very sad, how disposable human beings are.

Mass forensic excavation begins to identify 796 babies and children buried in disused septic tank https://www.itv.com/news/2025-06-16/excavation-to-identify-796-babies-and-children-buried-in-sceptic-tank

14/06/2025

Marie Dorion lived a life shaped by both hardship and quiet heroism. Born around 1786 to an Iowa (or Ioway) Native American mother and a French Canadian father, she grew up in a world where cultures met, clashed, and often tried to erase one another. As a Métis woman, she understood survival early on—not just in the natural sense, but socially, culturally, and spiritually.

When she joined the Pacific Fur Company expedition westward in 1811, it wasn’t as an observer. She was the only woman in a group of fur traders traveling into what’s now Oregon, bringing with her not only her young children but also her skills as a healer, guide, and interpreter. She was strong, sharp, and accustomed to the rhythms of wilderness life. But the journey was treacherous, and the story took a brutal turn.

After her husband and several other men in the party were murdered, Marie was left alone in the dead of winter with her two children. She was deep in unfamiliar territory, with little food, no weapons, and no guarantee of kindness from strangers. What followed is almost mythic in its endurance—she traveled over 200 miles across the snow-covered Blue Mountains on foot. She hunted, foraged, and protected her children against starvation and exposure. She made snowshoes from bark. She carried one child while pushing the other forward, teaching them how to survive in a world that seemed determined to see them vanish.

Both children died. One on the trail, one just after. Still, she kept going.

Eventually, she reached help. She survived.

And even after such unthinkable loss, Marie Dorion continued. She remarried, gave birth again, and lived in what is now Oregon. She raised children, healed others, and worked land with her hands. She was known for her strength, her silence, and her skill with medicinal plants. Some called her a mystic. Some called her fierce. History rarely called her anything at all.

07/06/2025

They've roamed the winding roads of Ireland for centuries—craftspeople, storytellers, tinsmiths, horse traders. Often misunderstood and wrongly called “Gypsies,” the Irish Travellers are their own people, with a heritage as rich as the green hills they traverse.
Though they share Ireland’s soil, studies show that Irish Travellers are genetically and culturally distinct from the settled population. Their history, passed down through generations, is rooted in tight-knit family bonds, a unique language called Shelta, and a way of life shaped by motion, tradition, and community.
For some, life on the road continues. For others, the caravan has given way to permanent homes. But what remains unchanged is their identity—one built on resilience in the face of discrimination, and pride in their customs, language, and rituals.
They are a reminder that Irish culture is not one story—but many. In every campfire, wedding, roadside stop, and shared tale, the Travellers continue to protect a vibrant thread of living history.

07/06/2025

06/06/2025

The Somme’s Bitter Harvest

These women pull farm equipment on the Somme in 1916, most likely in response to the French army requisitioning available horses, and conscripting males.

Many allied soldiers remembered seeing the French peasants labouring in the fields. ‘They appeared strangely ambivalent to the activity surrounding them,’ recorded one, ‘for them the war seemed like just another force of nature to contend with, like floods, famine, or drought.’

One soldier recorded, ‘There were no young men, only old men and women and children and many widows and orphans.’

Another noted the following response whenever billets were sought from the French: ‘Room monsieur - yes, there is the room of my son who was killed at Argonne - of my husband who was killed at Verdun.’

Away from the front line, some soldiers pitched in and helped the peasants. ‘I remember seeing an Australian out in a field milking a cow,’ recalled one. ‘Perhaps he enjoyed it because of the home memories it brought.’

Even at the war’s end, the French farmers were condemned to countless years of clearing their fields of the dreaded iron harvest.

Excerpts from ‘Pozieres: The Anzac Story’.

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06/06/2025

Deep within the enigmatic "Siberian Valley of the Kings," a recent archaeological marvel has galloped into the spotlight, unearthing secrets that bridge millennia and cultures. Imagine a landscape dotted with ancient burial mounds, or kurgans, each a silent sentinel to forgotten civilizations. One such mound, recently excavated in the Tuva region, has yielded a breathtaking discovery: the remains of a prominent individual, accompanied by the staggering presence of 18 sacrificed horses. This astonishing find, radiocarbon dated to the late 9th century BCE, offers an unprecedented glimpse into the nascent stages of funerary practices that would later define the formidable Scythian culture.

The sheer number of horses speaks volumes about the status and power of the interred individual. In nomadic societies, horses were not merely beasts of burden; they were integral to survival, warfare, and identity, revered as companions in both life and death. Their sacrifice underscores a profound belief system, perhaps indicating a desire to equip the deceased for an impactful journey into the afterlife, or to symbolize their immense wealth and influence. What adds another layer of intrigue to this already compelling narrative is the discovery of an additional human skeleton, presumed to be that of a woman, nestled within the burial. This detail hints at the unsettling possibility of human sacrifice, a practice observed in various ancient cultures as a means of honoring the deceased or ensuring their comfort in the next world. This kurgan, therefore, is not just a burial site; it is a meticulously crafted portal to the past, offering invaluable insights into the complex rituals, social hierarchies, and spiritual beliefs that characterized the early interactions between Siberian and Scythian peoples. It serves as a stark reminder of the enduring human fascination with death, legacy, and the intricate ways societies have sought to bridge the chasm between the living and the departed.

05/06/2025

Travelling back in time II. Victorian Coffins.

Old Brompton Cemetery, London

20/05/2025

Truly amazing - both the modern technology and the ancient.