Jim Taker

“If you can’t be good, be colorful.” – Charles “Pete” Conrad – NASA Astronaut; Commander, Apollo 12; 3rd man to walk on the Moon.

Welcome to jimtaker, a web site that celebrates the colourful character that was “Jim Taker” and his descendants.

My intention is use this blog as a way to document and share my journey of discovery of my family history, as well as something of the historical and cultural context surrounding the events.

I will be treating this as something of a detective story. It may be of some use to those who are experienced in family history research and those who are just starting out – not just people connected to my extended family. It will undoubtedly cover minor and almost trivial points. I will make mistakes, follow red herrings, and speculate. There will be lessons to learn along the way. Hopefully there are people out there who will know better and help to put things right.

It is part reference repository and part notebook.

People

This section is a growing and evolving repository of profiles of individuals and families. Everything will be a work in progress, as profiles will be continuously updated as new information or connections come to hand. Initially, they will be more of a “data dump”, recording information as I come across it, then evolving to include more about the historic, cultural, and personal context.I will be avoiding speculative fiction: the tendency of many researchers to flights of fantasy with little or no basis in reality.

If facts replace speculation, I will move the speculation – if interesting – to footnotes where it doesn’t already exist in the Discovery section.

Articles about people will be based on their birth surnames. Categories and menus will be structured to allow access by  married surnames, where applicable.

The Taker/Teager/Teaguer family is problematic. Originating with “Jim Taker” from Amoy, China, the children were born as Taker, generally married as Teager, and died as Teaguer (unless they died in childhood as Taker). As a result, the children are listed as Taker. Edward Taker is the only male son who had children, who were most likely Teaguer.

Discovery

This section includes posts resulting from the process of discovery. Posts include rough notes, journeys, musings, observations, speculations, and discoveries.

Research Blog

This section is the “blog of the blog” as journal entries in the journey of discovery.