David Draper

Ancestors

Problems/Questions Profile manager: David Draper [send private message]

Biography

Dave Draper is still alive and kicking in Bloomington, Illinois, USA.

• He is retired

After Dave Spilled Coffee On His Laptop!

• A member of AARP (if I renewed it...hmmm)
• Has not had to have his diver's license taken away yet!
• His biggest achievement so far in his short time on earth is having a wonderful wife of 50 years, 5 great kids who didn't get into trouble, and 11 grandchildren to tell stories to.
• Dave fried his new lap top by giving it a cup of coffee to drink!

Pedigree

• Father: Thomas Draper 1920-2003 Illinois, USA
• Grand Father: Fred Rex Draper 1889-1970 Illinois, USA

1. Great Grandfather Robert Reece Draper 1854 -1941 Nebraska, USA
2. Great Grandfather Ira Dillingham Draper 1814 - 1891 Nebraska, USA
3. Great Grandfather John Harrison Draper 1789 - 1866 Indiana, USA
4. Great Grandfather William Draper Sr. 1760 - 1818 Viginia, USA
5. Great Grandfather Solomon Draper 1731 - 1807 Viginia, USA
6. Great Grandfather Thomas Draper Sr. 168? - 1735 Viginia, Colonial America
7. Great Grandfather Unknown Draper

Oldest Great Grandfather: (on my mother's side)

• Tuathal "Bonaventura, High King of Ireland" Techtmar formerly Teachtmar
  • My 54th great grandfather who lived from abt. 0056 - 0106

Dave Draper's DNA Map

Background Information

David Earl Draper Left-hand information, entered by David Draper at registration. (yes, I'm a "south-paw" signpainter!

Dave has a Horse Story Below

David Draper is living the dream in McLean County, Illinois Don't wake me up!.

David spends way too much time on WikiTree! added by his wife

David was featured in a Meet Our Members Post.

David Draper is a descendant of Mayflower Passenger James Chilton1556-1620.

David is the 1st Husband of Cindy Draper who isn't training another husband.

David is a Left Handed Sign Painter.

David is the 5th Cousin 25x Removed of Empress Maud, Lady of the English.

Birth At St. Mary's Hospital, Galesburg, Knox, Illinois, United States, North America, Planet Earth, The Solar System (which has no actual name), Milky Way Galaxy.

Marriage to Cindy (Russell) Draper mid 70's

Children

1. Girl 1978 living, married, 3 children
2. Boy 1979 living the life single
3. Boy 1982 living, married, 4 children, 1 girl, 3 boys
4. Boy 1986 living, married, 2 children, twins, boy and girl
5. Boy 1988 living, married, 2 boys

Grandchildren 11 as of September 1, 2022

Death TBA

Burial Considering donation to science: Maybe doctors can find how genealogy can make a brain go insane!

Currently Best Remembered For:

• Neglecting family and friends, spending too much time down rabbit holes on WikiTree helping others find their ancestors.
• Upsetting my family by constantly giving updates of family discoveries!

What Nobody Remembers

• Life long sign painter and sign builder,
• Artist: Both paint and music
  • Wrote songs and produced a music CD album called Songpainter to creating 12 original songs about the life and times of sign crafters with the help of sign painters, who called themselves "Letterheads"^[1]
• Performer: played the piano at the surgical waiting area at the local hospital in Normal, Illinois and at several events.
• Article Contributor to Sign Builder Illustrated Magazine.

THE BIOGRAPHY CONTINUES AFTER THESE MESSAGES

Please Visit: Draper Family Stories and the Draper Tour Guide

Enjoy These Stories! >>>CLICK HERE<<<

Over 35 stories, who our family genealogist were, original songs and poems and a great collection of genealogy jokes! Enjoy!

For Your Free Tour Ticket:>>>CLICK HERE<<<

Entering through this gate will take you to 4,600 burials in fascinating cemeteries in this unique database. There are maps, cemetery pictures, family pictures and neat places to visit near the finale resting locations of our past loved ones. Notable grave sites are also listed of the famous ones resting by our family!

My Genealogy Journey Updated For 2024

Dave Draper 2021 Playing For A Ewing Manor Event

Tip: Just read the bold sentences!

No. 1: Genealogist: A person who traces family. They study lines of family descent, starting most often with the living pedigree of a given person and following the line backwards to find parents, grandparents and so on.^[2]

No. 2: Family Historian: The next level of genealogist and is not defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. A "Family Historian" takes genealogy to the next level, looking not just at names, dates, and places, but seeking to place a person's ancestors lives in context, seeking out the family stories, legends and myths. "Family History" looks at the entire family unit in each generation, when, where and how they lived, worked, played, travelled and the family triumphs and tragedies.^[3]

"I'm considered a No. 2" (ummm...keep it clean) I simply took what others had already researched and copied that information to an Internet platform. That being said, my goal was to find the relationships of family members, their movements over time and the stories they left behind.

Like many people, I was never interested in genealogy or family history until one day back in April 2021, my grandson told me he had to do a school report on family history. He asked me where we came from. What he was asking for, and what I thought he was asking for were two very different things. Family genealogy was not what he was asking for. He wanted the real "No. 2" on our family! (ummm....keep it clean)

I opened the dust covered books my mother had left me containing a mix of genealogy and family history for both sides of the family. It was the stories that sparked my interest and curiosity. I was sucked down the proverbial "rabbit hole" never to return! When I fell in love with the STORIES, my family observed I had become obsessed and had become a real No. 2 (interpret that as you wish)

I found my family were Pioneers! They say that 10 people died per mile to make westward expansion possible^[4]. Some of those in forgotten graves by the side of the wagon ruts are my family!

I'm very fortunate and thankful I was even born! And since my ancestors went through all the trouble and grief to get me born, I feel it is the least I can do to tell their story. WikiTree is the best place I have found to accomplish this!

To show my appreciation, I have spent over two years to profile my family! I found the burial locations of over 4,600 of my family and collected well over 35 family stories that will last as long as WikiTree is up and running!

• Those that helped to paper document our family history: Laurie Ann Cartwright, Mabelle Estella Draper Hummel and my uncle Charlie Draper.
• Their work will not sit in crumpled stained boxes on a dusty forgotten shelf in the attic. What they did the entire word now sees!
• If I could thank them I would say, "The family became bigger, better and stronger, and we found out more No. 2 than you could possibly know, and it's awesome! Rest In Peace! We have your "torch" to carry now!"

Achievements

Sign Builder Illustrated Articles and Cover

I wrote magazine articles for Sign Builder Illustrated magazine.^[5] As a life long maker of signs in every format, I was paid by that publication to contribute many "How To" articles that shared the secrets of professional sign crafting. A few of my articles were advertised on the front cover!

Songpainter! Sign Music by Sign People

I produced a music album of original music with a theme centering around the lives of sign painters. 3 songs on the album were mine. We sold about 150 copies! "Every artist has to die before their work is recognized." (hmmm, can't remember who said that, but it might have been here: Reddit^[6]

Meet Our Members: Dave Draper

• My WikiTee Legacy When I become part of the ages this record of my activity on WikiTree will not be lost.

• Updated 4/22/2024
• Honor Code Signed July 5, 2021
• 68,820 contributions
• 1,347 thank-yous
• 2,588 connections
• Score: 3,535,120 points (ranked #1)
• Title: G2G Astronaut
• Questions: 108 (27 with best answer chosen)
• Answers: 2,495 (250 chosen as best)
• Comments: 740
• Voted on: 55,463 questions, 273,280 answers
• Gave out: 328,726 up votes, 17 down votes
• Received: 15,879 up votes, 74 down votes

Of the 48 BADGES received, these are a few

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FEATURED STORY: Blond Beauty & The Wild Ride

A childhood story I never told, until now!

I grew up in Abingdon, Illinois, a small mid-western town where everybody knew each other. On a warm summer evening, in the early 60's, we could rig up a "Cherry Bomb" or "M-80" firecracker, with a cigarette inserted over the fuse, pull out the flick lighter, and make it across town before we heard the explosion.

My dad worked at the Abingdon Pottery, and every weekend in the summer, we would take our boat to the Mississippi River, water ski, swim and camp on the sandbar beach in the middle of the "Mighty Missasip!"

But the best time was "vacation time", which would come in the first week of July. We would head to Missouri, to the house my mom grew up in. From the base point of my grandfather's farm, we could easily visit her brother's farm we called "Uncle Jim's"

Keep this in mind, I am a small town boy, with absolutely no understanding of the dangers of life on a farm. My cousins, Uncle Jim's kids, were a little older and suggested we all go horse back riding. They saddled up three mares for themselves and my older brother, and one Palomino stallion for me. I could feel there was some tension between me and the horse. He was an elegant horse, but when his eyes met mine, I got the feeling he was upset with me. From the perspective of a 10 year old, he looked as tall as a giraffe!

But, the stallion was not upset with me. One of the mares was in heat. The scent was driving the Palomino stallion crazy. He jumped up on the hind side of the mare, while I was sitting on the saddle. A change of plan was called for. My cousins and my brother put me in a fenced in lot to ride the horse, unsupervised, on a stallion who's penis extended almost to the ground and looked like a tree limb! I never saw anything like that before. My older brother and my cousins would ride in the field next to the lot I was in. But they didn't. They disappeared over the hill.

In this lot, where my cousins decided would be a safe place for me to ride, a 10 year old, who had never been on a horse before, was filled with farm machinery. There was a barbed wire fence that separated my horse and the mare he wanted to "hump"! There was a well worn dirt path running along the fence, made by the horses kept in this lot to graze. Next to the path was a row of evenly spaced hedge trees, with low branches. In between each of these ugly trees were plows, with steel disks that could cut a person in half, a harrow with sharp spikes sticking up that look like a bed of huge nails, a bailer, an elevator and rusty stuff you would find in a mid-evil torture chamber!

The stallion would not let me control it, even if I knew how. He galloped up and down the 40 yard long lot, on the dirt path, next to the barbed wire fence, under the low tangled limbs of the ugly trees with farming implements nestled between. The barbed wire fence would scrape the skin off my right leg, and on the return trip, the other leg.

I still remember the terror every time I see a horseback rider, even 60 years later. Blood was running into my eyes as my scalp was torn open from those tree branches. My back looked like that of an unfortunate slave who's master beat him with a whip! My shirt was bloody and ripped to shreds. Blood was running down my legs into my socks, torn open by the barbed wire.

I tried to work out a plan of escape, but the stallion, would reach the end of the lot, turn around and stampede like a rocket back to the other end. I was trapped. I looked down at the barbed wire fence on the one side and the steel plow disks and torture chamber of horrors on the other side that I would land on if I jumped off. I pushed my face into the stallions neck and held on to his mane. The rhythm of the gallop would force my back up into the tree limbs on evenly spaced intervals.

After what seemed like an eternity, for some reason, he stopped, and stared towards the hill. He must have heard my cousins coming back. I jumped off at the end of the lot, fell on my face in the dirt which stuck to the blood, and barely got my foot out of the stirrup not a moment too soon, as he bolted to the other end of the lot again. I came very close to being drug down that path with my foot caught in rigging. What saved me was my PF Flyers (shoes) were untied, my shoe came off, and went for one last ride up the fence line, and fell off.

Then next thing I remember was being nudged in the side several times. I opened my eyes and the stallion's nose was right in my face. Then this huge tongue protruded and in one pass over my face, it was clean, but slimy. I remember saying to the horse, "This wasn't good for me!" He nudged me in the side again, as if to say, "Get up!" His eyes met mine and we bonded. I believe he was genuinely concerned about me. But it only lasted for a second. His head jerked up and his ears twitched forward, he gazed to the hill in the distance, and bolted up the fence line.

I remember it was a long walk up to the house. I could barely walk at all. I was missing a shoe and I had to poop! So I did! One of the farm dogs ran up as I was taking a dump, sniffed it, and then ate the turd! I never seen that before either. I never let that dog lick me again!

The look I got from Uncle Jim, my aunt and my parents face as I limbered up to the house was as if they had seen a bloody monster coming at them. They cleaned me up, and when they were finished, I looked like the "Mummy" in another horror movie, totally wrapped up in gauze. Then the look on my brother and cousin's faces was the second best thing ever. I looked like a little angry monster mummy running at them that was going to kill them, and I probably would have tried, but my parents dragged me back in the house. I could hear uncle Jim screaming at them out by the barn. I loved it! They also found my shoe.

We stayed the night at uncle Jim's. They put me in the featherbed upstairs. The following morning, I was awakened by the rooster crowing and I thought to my self, "Who gets up this early? It's 5am for God's sake!" I could see a faint light, hear family chatter downstairs and the smell of bacon sizzling on the stove. However, I had sunk to the bottom of the featherbed and it had encapsulated me like the BLOB in another horror film of the same name.

We packed the car to leave that morning, and I saw the stallion at the fence looking at me. He was truly a creation of God given beauty. He had a name that I can't recall, but I called him "Blond Beauty", a take off on "Black Beauty", another movie I loved. As I walked over to the fence where he was standing, my mom screamed out in terror! "Davy! Get Back!" I turned and said to her, "It's all good, mom. We're friends!"

Blond Beauty

I barely got to say goodbye to that horse, as my dad picked me up and threw me in the car! As we drove away, I looked out the rear view window. "Blond Beauty's" eyes and mine stayed focused on each other, until we reached the end of the lane, and disappeared in the Missouri hills.

But, now as I write this and remember back, I don't recall seeing that horse ever again. What I do remember: It was the best vacation EVER!

__Story by Dave Draper.

Searching For Cousins?

My Cousins May Be Your Cousins! Updated January 1, 2024 with links to the ancestors we share and now shows how we are connected! >>>Click Here<<<

LINKS

Web Apps With Explainations

WiikTree Statistics

Appreciation Team Task List

WikiTree Tree Huggers Project

Meet Our Members

Free Space Pages

1. Teaching Guide Information how to use Sourcer
2. PIP Voyager Notes Cheat Sheets
3. SONG PARODIES Classic Song with Lyrics Changed to WikiTree Themes
4. Draper Family Stories
5. Draper Tour Guide: Tour de Farnham 4600+ burial locations
6. Graphics
7. Last Will & Testament of John Draper by M. Jamison Once this information is documented, delete and move to Empty Free Space Pages

#To Do List Contains Ira Alexander Draper Census Charts, Use for quick chart making

The Book (all pages locked up tighter than Fort Knox)

1. Section Re-writes in AI
2. Research
3. MAPS
4. Act1 Notes
5. Act 1 Story

Dave is writing a book about an incredible event in the Draper family history! But a book about an event would be boring. This story delves into some dark depression and anxiety issues the hero of the story has to overcome to save the lives of the family! Look for it in October 2024 if all goes well!

WikiTree APPS

• Surname Plotter App Enter a surname, and the tool retrieves profiles and plots occurrences by decade. Pretty simple!
• Profile Overview App Developed by Ian Beacall "I feel like it's a good way of navigating around the tree(s)."
• WikiTree Browser Extension (WBE) is a downloadable software component that plugs into your browser, enhancing your WikiTree browsing, reading, and editing experience. Instruction for installing Installation instructions
• WikiTree Sourcer WikiTree Sourcer is a Browser Extension developed by Rob Pavey and other contributors that helps the user to search for sources and cite them, thus saving a lot of time and manual typing.
• WikiTree Bee is the browser extension that allows you to create categories based on data from other websites. It will extract the data from the website and populate the template code in a new browser tab with the category.
• Surname Generator This app will generate a List of Surnames, in alphabetical order, corresponding to the ancestors in your family tree.
• SuperBig Tree App Click on this app, enter your WikiTree profile ID (as in Draper-4171) to see a great view of all your ancestors. Features zoom up and out for close inspection. Click on the name and information boxes open with liks to their WikiTree profile!

Random Button Click this to get taken to a random profile! Something to do when boared!

What Is WikiTree?

>>>Click Here to view: Introduction To WikiTree Video<<<

MY QR Code

SCAN THIS ON YOUR PHONE Especially at family reunions

This Will Take You to Dave Draper's WikiTree Profile Page

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterheads_Australia
2. ↑ Merriam-Webster Dictionary [1]
3. ↑ Family Tree Explains Genealogist Vs. Family Historian[2]
4. ↑ History & Bits https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/learn_interp_nhotic_quotes.pdf
5. ↑ Sign Builder Illustrated [3]
6. ↑ Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/dwf5pd/why_do_people_become_more_famous_after_their_death/

Advance Directive

To aid WikiTree in the administration of my account should I be incapacitated, or in the event of my death, I hereby give permission for all private profiles I'm managing to be transferred to the following WikiTreers, whether or not they are currently on the Trusted Lists.

Advance Directive

• Cindy Draper Wife, First Choice
• Daniel Draper
• Jenny Lawless
• James Draper

Reviewed and Signed on: June 1st, 2023

Dave Draper