An 1890 newspaper article was strangely titled “Potato Day Report” and then listed the schools in the small town along with their totals: Ward One: $3.74 in cash & $10.56 in vegetables. Ward Two: four dozen eggs, fourteen chickens, eight cans fruit, one pound butter, three packages soda, four boxes crackers, three sacks corn meal, three sacks flour, thirteen cabbages, eight squashes, six pumpkins, two and one-half bushel sweet potatoes, seven bushels Irish potatoes, two and one-half bushels apples, one bushel turnips, two and one-half bushels beets, two and one-half bushels onions, three and two-thirds bushels corn… And then… “one pair of...
Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge was posted last night at Genea-Musings. This week’s challenge was to find out how many direct ancestors you’ve found. Here are the rules: Determine how complete your genealogy research is. For background, read Crista Cowan’s post Family History All Done? What’s Your Number? and Kris Stewart’s What Is Your Genealogy “Score?” For comparison purposes, keep the list to 10 or 11 generations with you as the first person. Create a table similar to Crista’s second table, and fill it in however you can (you could create an Ahnentafel (Ancestor Name) list and count the...
This week, I listened to an Extreme Genes podcast with an interview of Judy Russell, “The Legal Genealogist.” She made the point that family stories are usually lost within three generations. Let’s not lose our stories! I am starting a weekly theme called “Our Stories.” These are the stories of not only ourselves, but also our more recent family. If they are still living, you can ask! If not, maybe you can remember! The first week’s question is this: Where’d You Get Your Name? Do you know how you were named? Who named you? Also, did you have any nicknames...
I’m excited to be participating in this year’s “52 Ancestor Challenge” from “No Story Too Small.” Our ancestors are more than names, dates, & places. They lived and breathed; married and had children; celebrated births and grieved deaths. For the most part, our ancestors suffered more loss than we do. Wives often died in childbirth. Children often died while still children. Life was harsher. I’ve had very few deaths which were close to me. I lost my best childhood friend when I was 17, but I hadn’t seen her in years. I lost my grandmother about 10 years ago, but...
My husband’s favorite Christmas movie is A Christmas Story in which Ralphie wants a BB gun but the adults all tell him, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” It’s taken me years to appreciate this movie, but now I look forward to seeing it every year. A few months ago, I found a newspaper clipping at newspapers.com which was a “Dear Santa” letter from my husband’s grand uncle (his grandmother’s brother). I was amused to see that this 7-year-old was also asking for a BB gun. But, he was also asking for things my husband’s other grandparents talked about getting at...
I was ‘making’ mugs on Shutterfly this morning while thinking about last minute gift ideas. (You can still order them today and get them in time for Christmas with 2-day shipping!) I decided to use some of my heritage photos to see how they looked. I accidentally clicked on an obituary for my 2nd great grandmother’s brother, Emil Werther. While it’s kind of creepy to have a mug with an obituary, I think it looks really neat! Mug sample created with Shutterfly So, while you probably don’t want to order an obituary mug for your loved one, how about using...
Oops! Somehow I ended up on one of Randy’s challenges from last December on Genea-Musings. Oh, well! I’m going to go ahead and post it. It was fun! So, the challenge was to create a surname genealogy tree and share how you did it. I went to my RootsMagic and created a surname list based on frequency. I then started typing the names in Word while creating a tree shape. I added a star from the ‘drawing’ tools and then my husband helped me to save it in PowerPoint as I was lost as how to get the image on...
Among the hundreds of records I received from my family in Kansas a few weeks ago was a death certificate for my great, great grandmother’s sister. They were both born in Germany in the mid-1800’s and immigrated to the United States in 1869 at the ages of 23 (my 2x great grandmother) and 10 (her youngest sister). Wilhelminia (Werther) Heuszel’s death certificate The sister’s name was Wilhelmina Fredericka Augusta Werther, but she went by Minnie. The name recorded on her death certificate as reported by her son, Frank, threw me for a minute… and then I understood. She’s listed as...
I’ve continued to look into the family of C. R. Viney who was a son-in-law of my 3x great grandfather, Guenther Werther. C. R. married Guenther’s daughter, Augusta “Gussie” Werther. Yesterday I discovered that C. R., who was born in Canada, served on a steamboat in the Civil War. As I tried to learn more about C. R.’s story, my research at newspapers.com helped me to uncover several siblings. Through these siblings I was able to trace C. R. back to his roots in Canada using the 1851 and 1861 censuses. These records revealed his parents names, Joseph & Jane,...
Last week I read “Shiloh” by James Reasoner about the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War. I was particularly interested in this book of the series because one of my relatives fought as a Confederate soldier in this battle. This book of historical fiction, however, focused on a character who fought in the battle from a steamboat. Yes, my history background is weak, though I am actively making it stronger. But, I didn’t know that steamboats played a part in the Civil War. As I read about the character’s experience on the steamboat and then fighting in the battle,...
