As part of our efforts to preserve the Bunker heritage, the website includes a copy of the memorial booklet produced for the dedication ceremony of the Bunker Graveyard Memorial Bench in Durham, New Hampshire.

For those interested in the general locale of the graveyard (which is maintained by the Bunker Family Association), you can visit here.

Here are the precise coordinates of the graveyard parking lot entrance: latitude 43° 8’9.27″N longitude 70°53’23.66″W

Visitors have a short walk from the parking area to the graveyard.

 8-page Memorial Booklet [PDF]

An application form for this year’s Annabelle Moore Scholarship may be accessed at the following link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/64ad29xy3akdr23/2022_Annabelle_Moore_Scholarship.docx?dl=0

The file is a Microsoft Word file, and may be completed and sent electronically along with the other required documentations. The scholarship is awarded to a child or grandchild of a Bunker Family Association member in good standing. Applicants must be high school seniors or college freshmen. Do not miss the June 30 deadline.

If a reader has trouble downloading the file, please send an email to doug.detling@gmail.com and the file will be sent to you directly.

March 19-20, 2022 – Tucson, AZ

Already tired of Winter? If you are, come to the first Bunker Family Association Regional Meeting in Tucson, Arizona, in March.

This will be a fairly casual event. There will not be a formal business meeting and no hotel block. However, we have a couple get togethers planned for us to get to know each other or reacquaint ourselves.

This is the perfect time to visit Tucson with wonderful Southwestern weather. There are many beautiful places to visit. One of my personal favorites is the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun Museum. 

Some of us are staying at the Tucson/Lazydays KOA Resort, 5151 South Country Club Road, Tucson, AZ 85706. Reserve at 800-562-8730. There are cabins as well as RV and Tent sites available. LiAnn Pennington, Vice President of BFA, will be staying there from Mar 15 – Mar 25^th. You are welcome to stop and say hello if you are travelling thru and won’t be able to come the 19-20^th. You are welcome to stay wherever you wish, however. Make reservations early. This is a popular time in Tucson.

March 19, 2022 – 10:00 am – Saturday morning

Hike the Red Hills Visitor Center in Saguaro National Park West, 2700 N. Kinney Road, Tucson, AZ. The visitor center is open from 9-5. A park entrance fee of $25 per vehicle. 

See https://www.nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/fee.htm.

Military and disabled are free. You may use your annual National Parks Pass for entrance, as well. There are two trails leading from the visitor center. One is paved with many benches and is wheelchair accessible. Our family historian Bette Richards, age 84, using a walker, will be leading this hike. The other starts from the same place but involves a set of stairs that lead down into a wash where you walk 650 feet on sand. Bring water bottles. Wear hats. Use sunscreen. Wear sturdy shoes. Long pants are best as there are prickly plants around.

Picnic

About 11:00 am, following the hikes, we will meet at Juan Santa Cruz picnic area in Tucson Mountain Park, 2000 N. Kinney Rd., Tucson, AZ. BRING YOUR OWN SACK LUNCH!

Average temperatures for this time of year are nights in the 40s and days in the 70s. It is very dry and might rain but that is not too likely. Be prepared to drink LOTS of water. The picnic area and visitor’s center have restrooms.

March 20, 2022 – 10:00 am – Sunday morning

Anyone who wants to can join us for breakfast at Denny’s Restaurant, 3702. E. Irvington Road, Tucson at 10a.m.

Bette will have her computer with the BFA database with her for anyone who wants to do some research. She will  have the DNA project records with her if anyone has questions.

We will bring the prior BFA books and Bunker Banner for people to look at.

Please let us know you are coming! 

Name/s ____________________________________________________ Number of people __________  

Email ________________________________________________

Telephone contact ____________________________________

Mail or email above information to: lianngrannyp@gmail.com

LiAnn Pennington, 2632 52nd Ave, Greeley, CO 80634

The photo archives of the Bunker Family Association haves been moved to a Dropbox folder, accessible at the following:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/120ye3et7vrdnrk/AABu4cP8EeFAqxiyVGvWhn5xa?dl=0

I believe none of these albums are password protected, but if someone has difficulty accessing them please let me know.

The files are no longer accessible on Smugmug.

The Bunker Family Association established a college scholarship of $200 in 1979.  The first recipient was Brent D. Bunker of Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1980.  Annabelle Moore served as Bunker Family Association (BFA) President from 1969 until her death in September 1977. In addition to her many years of service as BFA President, she is especially recognized by her fellow Bunkers for her efforts toward restoration of the Bunker graveyard outside Durham, New Hampshire–the burial place of James Bunker, founder of the Dover Branch of the Bunkers in America, and descendants. Ms. Moore bequeathed $10,000 for a college scholarship. This bequest allowed the BFA to increase its annual scholarship to $500. One recipient per year is selected by the BFA’s scholarship selection committee.

The following is an excerpt from the Bunker Banner of May 2017 (#179), p. 2231:

Annabelle Moore was “the 16th BFA president from 1969 until her death in 1977. Actually, you could call Annabelle the 12th president as three others served multiple terms and not necessarily in consecutive years. Annabelle bequeathed ten thousand dollars to the BFA and the membership voted to fund scholarship grants in her memory. A $500 gift has been awarded annually, save for a couple years when no one applied.

“I [BFA President Gil Bunker] met Annabelle in 1976 (my first BFA meeting) and remember her well; she was a spirited president who presided over the meetings in a forceful manner, Robert’s Rules be damned. A no nonsense woman, who as “Old Blue Eyes” would sing, “I did it my way.”

“Annabelle will be remembered for her exceptional work in organizing the restoration of the Dover Graveyard in the early 60s. Discovery of the neglected burial ground in the late 50s belongs to Anna Tenney who found the site while searching for DAR ancestors. She immediately began to excavate the buried marble markers with her bare hands. Annabelle joined in the dig.

“During her presidency, Annabelle officially released the completed graveyard to the Town of Durham on June 17, 1971. It was accepted by Philip Wilcox, Trustee for the Trust Funds for the Town. Philip challenged us to remember “Cemeteries are public, graveyards are private.”

An application form for this year’s Annabelle Moore Scholarship may be accessed at the following link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d56h1v2aog314u6/2021_Annabelle_Moore_Scholarship.docx?dl=0

The file is a Microsoft Word file, and may be completed and sent electronically along with the other required documentations. The scholarship is awarded to a child or grandchild of a Bunker Family Association member in good standing. Applicants must be high school seniors or college freshmen. Do not miss the June 30 deadline.

If a reader has trouble downloading the file, please send an email to doug.detling@gmail.com and the file will be sent to you directly.

The following update was sent to DNA Project Administrators:

Dear Group Project Administrators,

We are excited to announce the following updates that we will begin releasing today, June 5th, and in the coming weeks.
myOrigins 3.0

We have nearly tripled the number of populations in Family Finder’s myOrigins report! We will release a white paper in the coming months that will include the science behind the new myOrigins, but here is a little information about the new populations.

New Populations
The new myOrigins includes 90 reference populations sourced from 8,053 individual samples.
These populations break down as follows:
33 from Asia and Oceania
27 from Europe and the Middle East
21 from Africa and the Americas
When will users get results?
Approximately 287,000 testers will display the update upon release next week.
The remainder of the database will be updated in waves.
Priority will be given to those who have most recently signed in to their kits.
Those who have not signed in for a year or more will be last to get the updated version of myOrigins.
For those kits who do not receive the update next week, an email will be sent to the primary email address on the kit when the new results are ready to view.
New testers or transfers who get results after the release will receive only the myOrigins 3.0 results, not the 2.0.
A CSV file summary of myOrigins 2.0 results will be available on the dashboard for a limited time.

Big Y STR Results

Thanks to the improvement in our Big Y STR technology and quality thresholds, reanalyzing current Big Y data is allowing us to provide additional STR values at no charge. SNP results will not be affected by this update.

This reanalysis will go as follows:
Big Y-700 customers should have received additional STR calls in Panels 6 and 7 over the last few weeks.
Big Y-500 customers will receive additional STR calls in Panels 6 and 7 in the next few days.
Once all customers have been updated, STR calls in Panels 6 and 7 for all customers will be refined based on improvements to our quality control thresholds.

It’s important to note:
For Big Y-700 testers, up until now, if there was a call at a location in the 500 but not in the 700, we preserved the 500 call. With the update to the STR calling process, Big Y-700 testers will only have those STRs called in the 700, which may mean some no-calls at positions that previously had values.
While Big Y-500 customers will receive some additional STR values, the only way to guarantee that a tester receives the full 700 STRs is to upgrade to Big Y-700.
If you have any questions about these updates, please contact the FamilyTreeDNA Groups Team at groups@familytreedna.com.

We hope you are all safe and healthy. Thank you for all of the work you do with your projects!

Sincerely,
FamilyTreeDNA

Seventy-five years ago nearly 400 brave souls were lost during an attack on the USS Bunker Hill. It was one of numerous conflicts fought since the Colonists entrenched themselves 245 years earlier on the hill above Charlestown, Massachusetts on June 17, 1775.

Now we pause to remember 398 crew members of the USS Bunker Hill CV-17 (launched Dec 7, 1942) that were buried at sea after devastating attacks by two Kamikaze pilots. The valiant dead were wrapped in canvas, weighted with a round of ammunition and consigned to the deep. That was Saturday May 12; 1945; the ceremony continued throughout a long day, 

The second Sunday in May was proclaimed as Mother’s Day by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. President Harry S. Truman stated in 1945, it was an official day for honoring all mothers. He claimed the American mother was “the greatest source of the country’s strength and inspiration.”

On May 8, we celebrated the 75^th anniversary of V-E Day (Victory in Europe) and on Memorial Day, May 25^th we shall honor our war dead, including a neighbor, Seaman Harry A. Dove (1921-2012) of Sewell, NJ. A plaque honoring his WW II service will be unveiled at the James G Atkinson Memorial Park; sponsored by American Legion Post 521 in Washington Township. He nearly succumbed to the Kamikaze attacks on May 11, but recovered and helped locate and bury shipmates, many were close friends.

What about the other Bunker Hill conflicts? The second battle occurred in 1780 aboard the schooner Bunker Hill when she helped capture the 200-ton Commerce. A steamer Bunker Hill ran aground in fog in 1841; a second collided with the Independence in 1843 in the Great Lakes. Surely those sailors were fighting for their very lives. A third steamer launched in 1907 at Philadelphia played a significant role during WW I, she was rechristened as the USS Aroostook. The tanker Bunker Hill, built in Chester PA, exploded in 1964 and sunk in Puget Sound, killing five of her 30-man crew. Battles occurred in and around Bunker Hill, West Virginia during the Civil War in 1861 and Brig Gen James J. Pettigrew, NC CSA died there in 1863 three days after being mortally wounded at Cemetery Ridge. Two battles of Bunker Hill, Illinois occurred in 1938 and 1948 when tornados devastated the town; the second destroyed 80% of the town and caused $4.5 million in damages. The cruiser USS Bunker Hill CG-52 launched in 1986 fired some of the first Tomahawk Cruise missiles in support of Operation Desert Storm (1990) and Iraq Freedom (2003).

In May we shall celebrate V-E Day, Mothers’ Day, USS Bunker Hill and Memorial Day, it will be a month filled with tributes and thankfulness. We especially remember the men and women that continue to serve in far off places in the cause of freedom, and pray for their safe return.

— Gil Bunker, BFA President

An application form for this year’s Annabelle Moore Scholarship may be accessed at the following link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4b4puq57o1fhtz/2020_Annabelle_Moore_Scholarship.docx?dl=0

The file is a Microsoft Word file, and may be completed and sent electronically along with the other required documentations. The scholarship is awarded to a child or grandchild of a Bunker Family Association member in good standing. Applicants must be high school seniors or college freshmen. Do not miss the July 30 deadline.

If a reader has trouble downloading the file, please send an email to doug.detling@gmail.com and the file will be sent to you directly.

Our website was down for about 20 hours due to an incomplete software update that corrupted the date base on the server. Fortunately, we do regular backups, and we were able to recover the site.