My dad recently sent me this photo of my grandmother’s “Uncle Charlie & Uncle Ed Coppenbarger circa 1914.” I love seeing the old photos of these two uncles, but I am particularly happy to see them posing with this old Model T and Harley Davidson, both of which are about 100 years old! I also love Uncle Charlie’s riding outfit, and the way Uncle Ed is posed. “Uncle Charles & Uncle Ed Coppenbarger circa 1914” from the Stewart Family Photo Collection My dad did some research on these early Harley Davidsons. The 1914 to 1916 models looked very similar. He...
As part of Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo has created 31 blogging prompts which you can find on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist. If you’re participating in the Fearless Females blogging challenge this month, let me know & I’ll hop over & read your posts! March 6th prompt: Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestor. If you don’t have any, then write about a specific object you remember from your mother or grandmother or aunt. She Became a Painter at Age 72 My great grandmother, Myrtle Mae (Coppenbarger) Peters (1880-1970) was 72 years old when she started...
Growing up, the house we lived in had been built in the late 1800’s. Though it was two stories and had four bedrooms, it only had 1 1/2 bathrooms: a half bath under the staircase and a full bathroom upstairs. The full bath didn’t have a shower; it only had an antique, claw-footed tub. The tub was painted white, inside and out, but the outside paint had peeled off in places. Surprisingly I have many memories centered on that old tub. Me (age 2) & my baby brother in the antique tub My sister, brother, and I were 3 “stair...
In 1896, the new law firm of Biddle, Boyd, & Sheppard filed their first case. It was the case of Robert Stewart (son of my 4th great grandfather, also named Robert Stewart) vs the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company, otherwise known as “The Katy.” The suit was for damages of $5,000 based on the alleged personal injuries of Robert’s wife, Kate. Here is the story from the paper… Ad for the M. K. & T. Railway (image from Wikipedia) The petition alleges that Mrs. Kate M Stewart on April 20, 1894 purchased a ticket from this city to Boonville,...
Lisa Alzo has used the month of March for her “Fearless Females” blogging prompts for the past 6 years. She has posted her daily prompts and has also included free access to her “Tips and Tricks for Tracing Female Ancestors” Webinar for the month. March 3rd prompt: Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother. or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree. Origins of My Name My sister was not...
Randy’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge tonight is to see if you have any ancestors or cousins that share your birth date. You can find the “rules” on his blog, Genea-Musings. 1. What is your birth date? (Not the year… just the month & day) February 22nd Robert F Barnett’s headstone, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Salt Fork, Grant Co, OK (Image by bobetx1 posted at Find a Grave) 2. Do you have anyone in your tree who shares your birth date? (Randy’s post shows how to find this from your genealogy program) There is one person on my tree with my...
“His main occupation was a carpenter and cabinet maker finisher. He went to carpenter school in Wichita KS and helped build the first sky-scraper, the Schweiter Building at Douglas and Main.” [Beulah (Peters) Brewer, daughter of Emil Wilhelm Peters, in her genealogy notes] When I read those sentences, I wanted to learn more about this “first sky-scraper” in Wichita that my great grandfather helped to build. Emil must have been very proud of this building to have told this story to his daughter and for it to be one of the few things she wrote down about him. So, what...
At the age of 16, Emil (pronounced “Aim-uhl”) Peters had lived his entire life in the small town of Walton, Kansas. The largest nearby town was Arkansas City (pronounced “R-Kansas”) whose population was about 5,000. Emil must have been amazed as he watched Arkansas City swell to over 75,000 people. Street Scene in Arkansas City, Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, 14 Sep 1893, page 1, column 1, digital image newspapers.com, (http://newspapers.com), accessed 04 Feb 2015 Arkansas City was located just north of the Cherokee Strip, a narrow piece of land in Indian Territory just south of the Kansas border. This...
The name “Kansas” first appeared on maps in 1854 when the Territory of Nebraska was divided and the southern portion became “Kansas” under the Nebraska-Kansas Act. In May of the following year, 1855, Henry Bennett (my 3rd great grandfather) and his family arrived from Missouri and settled in the Allen County area shortly before it was named. 1855 first edition of Colton’s map of Nebraska and Kansas Territories (image from Wikipedia) This is the same year Henry Bennett and his family moved to Kansas Territory The First Settlers of Allen County Few white settlers reached this county before the Bennett...
I had a wonderful trip back to my childhood home in southern Kansas last weekend. My family has lived in the area (Cowley & Sumner Counties) since about 1870. My grand aunt, Beulah (Peters) Brewer, got me started in genealogy back in 1998 and, when she passed away in 2009, my aunt and uncle inherited boxes and boxes of her research. They are also the ones who have collected many family photos and other family heirlooms over the years. So, I was in genealogy paradise! It was incredible! A friend of the family, Cheryl, is a retired librarian who has...
