Genealogy

Anyone with the name Hicinbothem is probably related to the rest of us. I’ve been interested in the genealogy of our name for many years. Here’s what we know:

The Hicinbothems in the US came from Ireland, but we have no information about their early days.

The first arrivals were probably brothers, David, Robert, and William, possibly along with their father or uncle, also a David. They arrived by ship from Liverpool, England, in 1840. At least one more came over somewhat later; there are records of a Sidney Hicinbothem in the early 1850s, but she did not settle in the NYC area with the rest of them. The 1840 date is interesting; it predates the Irish potato famine by several years, so one has to wonder what prompted their exodus. There may also have been yet another arrival; we’ve found a branch of the family in Idaho that has no known connection to the rest of us. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get any information from them so far.

The original male Hicinbothems settled in the Morrisania section of New York in what is now the Bronx. Quite a few of them are buried in Greenwood Cemetery there. All of the brothers married and had families, and their sons had families, and so on through six or seven generations, so there are now probably a couple of hundred Hicinbothems spread out all over the world. We have extensive records of most of them here.

Alas, in this age of identity theft and internet rogues, we do not allow unrestricted access to our extensive database of Hicinbothem genealogy anymore. If you have a legitimate interest, you’re welcome to request access by sending us an email.

If you already have the username and password, click here and you’ll get an offer to log in. Please note that three login failures will immediately block your IP address from further access; you’ll need to email us to get it turned back on.

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Recipe: Cinnamon Buns

Makes 9 or 12 rolls

Dough:

  • 16 oz by weight all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/8 c (10 oz) milk, heated
  • 2 t instant yeast
  • 1/8 c (2 T) butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 t salt

Filling:

  • 1/4 c butter, slightly melted
  • 1 c raisins
  • 1/2 c brown sugar
  • 1 t cinnamon
  • 1/2 c nuts, chopped (optional)

Glaze (optional)

  • 1 c powdered sugar
  • 1 T cold milk

Combining all of the ingredients and knead until smooth. Dough should be moist but not sticky. Allow to rise until doubled.

Plump the raisins by soaking in boiling water for a few minutes.  Drain thoroughly and pat dry.

When the dough has risen, roll it out on a floured surface, as close to a 18 x 24 ” rectangle as possible.  Spread the butter on the rolled-out  dough.  Sprinkle with the rest of the filling ingredients.  Don’t forget the raisins!  Roll into a cylinder.  For a dozen smaller buns, roll the long side up.  For nine larger buns, roll the short side.  Cut into 9 or 12 equal pieces.  Put into greased 9 x 13 baking pan.  (If you want a particularly sticky bun, you can put some additional filling in the bottom of the pan.)

Allow to rise until doubled in bulk and the sides press against each other.

Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Cool for five minutes.  If you went with the sticky variety, invert the pan over doubled aluminum foil.  Beware of the hot filling.  Cooks call that stuff “napalm” for good reason.

Let the rolls cool, then glaze.

Adapted from a recipe posted on The Fresh Loaf.

Changes

Well. That was fun. I’m glad it’s over.

I’ve moved the Hicinbothem web sites (.com and .org) to a new web host, Bluehost. The single new host has the same (or more) features than the old multiple hosts at about a quarter of the cost. If you’re reading this, everything has gone well and you’re looking at the new host.

Oh, and as if moving everything wasn’t enough fun by itself, I did a little spring cleaning and a tuneup at the same time. The entire site has been moved to a WordPress blogging platform. I’m still in the process of cleaning things up and importing old data, so there may still be a few things that don’t work. They’ll be fixed over the next couple of days.

Those of you using the Internet Explorer browser may notice a few things that don’t look real nice. All the design and construction have been done in Mozilla Firefox so there’s still some adjustments that need to be made.

The blogs which have always been the most popular part of the site can be found via the “topics” and “archives” links over there to the left. The older entries that were on other blogging platforms have mostly been imported into WordPress but there’s still some cleanup to be done there, too. I’ve added a couple of nice new tools to make it easier to add blog entries, and I’ve been testing them out over the past couple of days. You can expect to see more content, more often.

If you have a hicinbothem.com email address, it should be working again. The webmail interface is exactly as it was before, and your POP3 email client shouldn’t have needed any changes.

Any problem or questions, let me know.

Home Depot

I have a love/hate relationship with Home Depot.  On the one hand, they’re always open and they usually have what I need, or a reasonable facsimile.  But on the other, they’ve driven pretty much everyone else out of business so they’re the only game in town for the DIYer.  As they’ve become a de-facto monopoly, the quality of customer service has dropped to the point that I won’t even go there on a weekend morning anymore.  Consumerist has a roundup of all that’s wrong with their customer service.