2012 Year in Review

Well according to Google Analytic 1887 people visited my blog this year and by far the pictures of the Seattle Worlds Fair of 1962 I posted over the last two years are the most popular posts I did.
Here is the list of most popular:
Seattle Space Needle
Carnival of Genealogy Scrapbooking (This was on the Seattle Worlds Fair)
Bubbleator and the Sky Ride Seattle Worlds Fair
Seattle Worlds Fair Day 7
1962 Seattle Worlds Fair
Rest in Peace King Forrest Cole (This one is on EXPO 74 in Spokane)
For December one post jumped into that group:
Wordless Wednesday Kababeka Falls and Port Williams.

Note only two posts on the above list were from this year, all the rest from 2010 or 2011, so here is the list for 2012 with the pageviews:

915  Seattle Space Needle
175  Bubbleator and Sky-ride Seattle Worlds Fair
98 Electric Power Pavilion Seattle Worlds Fair
89 Wordless Wednesday Space Needle
53 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy How To Books
51  1940 Census for Carnival of Genealogy #117
51  Wordless Wednesday The Highest Stack
44  Carnival of Genealogy #119 Swimsuit Edition
40  Missing Locker for the 122nd Carnival of Genealogy
38  Carnival of Genealogy #104 iGene Awards

So it looks like people like the pictures I post more than my ramblings.

Wordless Wednesday Seasons Greetings

Another post card from my dad's collection, about 1915, the back is blank.

Wordless Wednesday A Joyful Christmas

Another postcard from my dad's collection, the back is blank, probably from about 1915.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Washington Death Index

Week #50 – Genealogy Database

Week 50: Genealogy Database. Which individual database has been most helpful in your genealogy research and why? Is this database available for free or is it behind a subscription wall? What does this database include and how can it benefit other genealogy researchers?

 I started doing research for others in 1998 and the Washington Death index was one of the databases I used all the time. I was lucky as the library had a microfilm copy, and I was given the old copy from the library. The database was soundexed and then microfilmed, and parts were very hard to read. It was interesting that the copy the library had was easier to read in places than the copy I had.
The death index started in July of 1907, and my copy goes to 2001, the library copy goes to 2004.
The Washington State Digital Archives and Family Search have the death index online for free from July of 1907 through 1960, and even more exciting Family Search has the actual death certificates on microfilm, and the film number is listed in the index on Family Search for each person in the index.

Ancestry also has the Washington Death Index in their pay for view area from 1940 to I think about 2000, I am not sure about the ending date. There seems to be a lot of people missed in the Ancestry database and we have tried to figure out why. I think they missed a bunch of people that died in October, November and December. Most of the deaths list the death month as a number (1-12), but some of the microfilm uses the numbers 1-9 and then the letters O, N, and D. Easy for a human to see this is October, November and December, but when a computer is looking for 10, 11 or 12 and finds O, N, and D it skips those.

Wordless Wednesday Christmas Greetings

This is another postcard from my dad's collection.

probably from around 1915.

The back says it is from Fay.

Fay DeRemer Hansen was a 

first cousin to my dad.

 

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Research Location

Week #49 – Research Location

Week 49: Research Location. Which genealogy research location or city brings a smile to your face? What makes this place special to you? What family history treasures does it hold for you? Why should others visit this place?

Well there is two places I really like to research, one is the Spokane Main Library that has the genealogy records, newspapers, genealogy books and of course the Northwest room.
The second place is the Spokane  Courthouse, I used to spend a lot of time there, but do not get there much anymore. I used to spend a lot of time in the auditors archives, when I started she had early birth and death records from 1891 to July of 1907 when the state took over, marriage records from 1880 to the present and land records from 1880 to the present. The archives was packed and the space between the shelves was very small and so when the Washington State Archives Eastern Branch opened nearly all the original records were transferred there and today most all of them are online and easily re searchable at home. The largest group not online yet is the land records, but they are all digitized now at the courthouse and slowly appearing online at the digital archives.
The other fun records at the courthouse is the superior court records, criminal and civil records. The civil records include divorces, probates, and adoptions. The only problem is that adoptions are sealed by the courts forever, and it takes a court order to open those records. But divorces and probates are open and the things you find in those records are amazing. I remember years ago being asked to get a probate for a man that died in 1932, he was pretty well off, but no kids. He had given $10,000 to about15 people and all the rest to his wife, and his probate was about 80 pages long since he owned a lot of real estate and they had appraised it twice before closing. Every one of the people that was to receive the $10,000 refused it and gave it back to the wife. I thought this was interesting for people to refuse money in 1932 in the worst part of the depression. A month or so later I was asked to look for the probate for his wife and she had died in 1941. I went to the archives and they found the microfilm with this probate and it took up almost the whole microfilm, 365 pages, and at that time they charged a dollar a page for the copies (it is 50 cents a page today). I did not have 300 dollars with me. Why so many pages? The file included TWO lawsuits. The heirs sued the trustees saying they had appraised the property too low and they did not get a fair share, so they reappraised all the property two more times. The second lawsuit the heirs sued the trustees saying they had to pay too much inheritance tax because the appraisals were too big. The tax they paid I think was about $500 federal and less than $10 to Washington State on an estate of over $300,000.
They are in the process of putting the court records online and so sometime in the future we can access those records at home.

Wordless Wednesday Christmas Wishes

Another postcard from my dad's collection from the 1910s.

The back says from Grandma, so Eliza (Hellenbolt) Dillingham, since his other grandma Karen Jorgensen had died before he was even born.

2012 Advent Calendar Christmas Foods

My mom  would make fudge every year from the recipe on the marshmallow cream jar, and my sister and I always liked licking the pan after it was made. While I like that chocolate fudge, chocolate does not like me very well, so for years I have tried different fudge recipes and this one is my favorite, Lemon Fudge
 
The actual recipe was actually called Black Cherry Swirl Fudge, and I changed two items from the original recipe:

2 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup evaporated milk (small can)
1/2 cup butter or margarine (1 cube)
1 package (10 or 12 oz) white or vanilla baking chips
1 jar (7 ounces) marshmallow creme
2 envelopes unsweetened black cherry Kool Aid (I used lemon Kool aid instead)

Line a 13x9x2 inch pan with foil and grease the foil with butter, (I used pam instead), set aside. In a heavy sauce pan combine the sugar, evaporated milk and butter. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook and stir for 4 minutes.
Remove from heat; stir in vanilla chips and marshmallow cream. The vanilla chips did not melt very well every time I used them so I stirred in the vanilla chips while still on the heat and when melted I turned off stove and stirred in the marshmallow creme. Next they want you to put a cup aside and then stir in the Kool Aid to the remaining fudge and then swirl the two together so you have ribbons of white and color. I just stirred the Kool Aid into all fudge and the poured it into the pan to cool. I first made this last Christmas and it was very lemony, and while I like lemony most people said it was too much lemon, so this batch only had 1 package lemon Kool Aid, and that is still very good. What other Kool Aid flavors would make good fudge?

2012 Advent Calendar The Christmas Tree

This is a copy of the 2011 Advent Calendar
In 2009 and 2010 I wrote about the trees we had and also those my grandparents had, so this tree is one I won at the raffle at our Eastern Washington Genealogical Society a few years ago. It is about 2 foot high and has a Santa hat on top.







If you look close you can see an eye staring at you, but the real surprise is when someone walks close to the tree it springs to life and and sings Jingle Bell Rock or Up on a Housetop, and then four sayings like Happy New Year

Bon Marche Christmas Decoration

This is a picture of the Christmas Decoration on the front of the Bon Marche building, and even though it is now Macy's the BM above the Christmas Decoration is still there.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Genealogy Society Members

Week #48 – Genealogy Society Member

Week 48: Genealogy Society Member. Genealogy society members are a vital part of the family history community. We’ve made many acquaintances this way and we all benefit from their friendship, support and expertise. Share with us a genealogy society member that has left a memorable impression on you.

Well this one is pretty hard to pick out just one Eastern Washington Genealogical Society member that made a memorable impression on me. So lets start at the beginning, The first EWGS memorable member was Donna Potter Phillips, She was teaching the beginning class at the community college and got both me and my sister to join EWGS. The next person that had a memorable impression was Ray Fisher, he was passing out Prodigy floppy disks and told everyone to join the Prodigy Genealogy Bulletin Board. On Prodigy I was in awe of the people that knew so much about researching their ancestors and I knew so little, but I read and read and learned a lot. Next was Carolyn Weidner, she was the volunteer coordinator for the library volunteers and talked me and my sister into volunteering at the library in the genealogy section. Ray Fisher and Carolyn gave us the grand tour and then we were the volunteers on the second Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. We did that for 5 years, until Ray Fisher decided to retire from his job as EWGS researcher for others and I switched to that job which I continue to do today. There are a couple of more memorable EWGS members, Bette Topp and Doris Woodward. Bette is a cousin and has probably done more for EWGS and held more offices than any other living member of EWGS. Doris was the Bulletin editor when I joined EWGS and a wonderful editor. Doris helped me to write articles for the Bulletin, which was and is hard for me, I was never good at writing and spelling is always a challenge, glad we have spell checkers today, but she encouraged me to write and she corrected  my grammar and made me look like a good writer. Doris and I co-authored a reply to Family Search when they were looking for help with their Washington Resource Guide, and you can still see parts of what we wrote in the current Washington Resource Guide.

Wordless Wednesday Fixing the Christmas Tree

Another postcard from my dad's collection, this one postmarked December 21, 1914 at Bisbee, Arizona.

Really wished I knew who Minnie and Milton Anderson are?

Saturday Night Fun Baby Names

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (where's my Mission Impossible music...drat, lost it), is:

This SNGF is based on the Baby Name Wizard at www.babynamewizard.com.  

1)  Go to the Baby Name Wizard site and see how popular your name was over the 20th century, and how popular a baby name it is today.  Check out your spouse, your children and your grandchildren (if you have some!) also.  

2)  What does your name mean (find out on http://www.babynamewizard.com/baby-name)?

Well Charles is from Germanic Karl (full grown, a man)

Michael (my middle name) from Hebrew (Who is like god)

My parents Claude from the Latin Claudius an old Roman family name.

Margaret from the Greek (A pearl)

Wordless Wednesday Thanksgiving Greetings

Another postcard from my dad's collection, the back is blank.

Saturday Night Fun 100 Word Challenge

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (where's my Mission Impossible music...drat, lost it), is:

This SNGF is based on the 100 Word Challenge (http://100wc.net/) that school children are participating in around the world.  They are given a word or phrase to write a story about in exactly one hundred words.  Last week, it was "Grandparents are important because..."  We all know that gran

1)  Write a story using the phrase "Grandparents are important because" in 100 words.  [Hint:  If you write it in a word processor, you can use Tools > Word Count (or similar) to count words]




Grandparents are important as we would not be here without grandparents. I did not know three of my grandparents much, my moms father died when I was five years old and I hardly remember him, but I did inherit his tools and those of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Both of my fathers parents died when I was 12, but since they did not live very close (30+ miles) we did not get to see them a lot. They lived on a farm and I did like to visit the farm.

My moms mother lived longer than all my other grandparents as I was 34 when she died although for the last four years she hardly knew anybody. She was the family historian, a wonderful baker, a great gardener, good at canning, and sewing. I learned a lot from her, just wished I had listened to her family stories more.

Yellowstone Park Buffalo

Another of my dad's postcards from his collection. The back is blank.

Veterans Day 2012

The last three years I have posted tributes to my dad and my uncle Leigh, both WWII vets and a picture of a bunch of men marching in 1917 some in uniform in Columbus Montana, so you can find them here.

Early today my sister picked me up and we headed for Priest River, Idaho to the cemetery there to make sure my Uncle Leigh Hansen had a flag by his grave for Veterans Day. It had snowed Friday night, but since the ground was still pretty warm it had not stuck on any of the gravestones.

Saturday Night Fun TMRUA

1) Who is your TMRUA - your Third Most Recent Unknown Ancestor? This is the person with the third lowest number in your Pedigree Chart or Ahnentafel List that you have not identified a last name for, or a first name if you know a surname but not a first name. 

2) Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently? Why don't you scan it again just to see if there's something you have missed? 

3) What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your TMRUA?

Well I have 7 brick wall ancestors in my great-great grandparents so I picked by birth date of the seven. The closest is Sadie Jane Selsor born 1832, second closest is her husband Joseph Hert, and third is Thomas D. Kelly born April 25, 1827 near Louisville, Kentucky.
Thomas  is one of my earliest brick walls, and trying to find his parents is frustrating due to so many Kellys in the area Thomas was born. While I have not checked Family Search in years that is probably where I need to start looking again.

Wordless Wednesday Yellowstone Bears

Another postcard from my dad's collection, back is blank.

Saturday Night Fun Great Grandma Roulett

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 

1) What year was one of your great-grandmothers born?  Divide this number by 90 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel" - your software will create this - use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital information?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

1) Karen Jorgensen  1840
Eliza Mineva Hellenbolt  1845
Vada Belle Hert  1871
Dona Vanderpool  1873

Divide any of these numbers by 90 and they all come out 20 and a fraction more, so #20 is Enos Dillingham

2) Enos was the son of Melatiah and Elizabeth "Betsey" (Chandler) Dillingham. Betsey was a descendant of George Soule of the Mayflower

3) Enos married twice: Clarissa Virgin first and when she died Elizabeth Benjamin

4) Enos was a cabinet maker and lived most of his life in Dixfield, Maine
 

Wordless Wednesday College Campus Bozeman Montana

Another postcard from my dad's collection.

Postmark is February 1, 1917, and is from my dad's older brother Ralph.

Wordless Wednesday Mt. Helena (Montana)

Another postcard from my dad's collection, this one dated 1914, I can not read the month, just the first letter "M".

My dad would have been 7 years old when his dad mail this postcard.

Saturday Night Fun Genealogy Meme

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Go to the www.memegenerator.net website and choose one or more poster pictures.

2)  Channel your inner genealogist and create one or more posters with a genealogy oriented saying on it.  Be creative!!  Be brave!  Make it funny, or happy, or sad. 

3)  Save or clip your creation, then show us your creation(s) in your own blog post, in a Facebook status, or a Google Plus stream post.  

Well here is a person I think is funny and I slightly look like him.

Wordless Wednesday Crooked Falls Great Falls Montana

Another postcard from my dad's collection, back is blank.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Biggest Accomplishment

Week #42 - Biggest Genealogy Accomplishment

Week 42: Biggest Genealogy Accomplishment. What do you feel is your biggest genealogy accomplishment? What were the steps you took to get there, and what was the end result?

I guess my biggest accomplishment was becoming the genealogy researcher for Eastern Washington Genealogical Society, so how did I get there?
I started doing genealogy in 1991 with a beginners class at our local community college. Soon after that I became a volunteer at the local library a gene helper, helping people that came to the library find their ancestors in the books, or microfilm that EWGS had collected over the years. About the same time I got interested in the genealogy bulletin board on Prodigy, and read everything I could find on the bulletin board, and some of the books in the library. People would occasionally ask for look up help on Prodigy, and so since I was at the library, and most of the time we never had a single person come in for help, I would do some of those look ups. I got pretty good at them, so in 1998 when Ray Fisher the previous researcher for EWGS decided to retire because of his health, I asked if I could replace Ray. I was told no one could ever replace Ray, but I could try the job for a while on probation.
Well Ray showed me the library and I knew it pretty well by then anyway, and then we went to the courthouse to look at the archives there and meet the clerks I would be contacting for records. Soon I was getting queries, and while many were similar to those I had helped on Prodigy, many took this new comer a lot of time to research, and so I was wondering what I had gotten into, was it more than I could handle, but with a few calls to Ray and a lot of time in the library and courthouse I finally got familiar enough with the records so I did not spend so much time anymore. One of the records I used a lot was the 1887 Spokane County Auditors Census, and it had no index, so with a little free time I copied ten pages of this census and indexed them, then ten more, etc till I had indexed all 260 or so pages.
In 2003 the county Auditor sent a query to the library looking for a genealogist to help them with record searches in the auditors records, she had marriage records for Spokane county from 1880 to the present, but from 1970 to then was on computer and they could search those easily, the old records were paper and there was about 135,000 of those and the early ones were in real poor shape. She also had early Spokane county birth and death certificates from 1891 to 1907 when the state took over recording births and deaths. The last major records were the county land records and there were shelf after shelf of land records. So for about five or six years I did all the queries that came into the courthouse for marriage, birth, death and land records and those that came to EWGS also.
In October 2004 the Washington State Digital Archives opened, and the auditor had started to move the records from her archives to the state archives, and so now many were appearing online. At first I was even busier as many people researching their ancestors found out their ancestor had stopped in Spokane for a while and had found them on the digital archives, but slowly it slowed to a trickle and now I have only been to the auditors archives once this year. I still get queries for the library, but fewer and fewer each year, as everyone knows everything is on the internet now. :) I started helping the archives index records before it even opened and so I was a guest at the grand opening and I  continue to index records today.

Saturday Night Fun Ancestral Gravestones

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Determine what is your longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones - how many generations can you go back in time?  Do you have photographs of them?

2)  Tell us and/or show us in a blog post of your own, or in a comment to this blog, or in a Facebook status or a Google+ stream post.


Well I have not collected a lot of tombstone pictures, but this one of Thomas and his wife Margaret (Forsyth) Kelly are the longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones. Robert Forsyth Kelly below was one of their sons.

 This one for Robert Forsyth Kelly and his wife Vada Belle (Hert) Kelly. They are the parents of my grandfather Charles Rupert Kelly. The son Robert Lester Kelly was my grandfathers only sibling, so he was almost an only child. I do have pictures of my parents and grandparents, both buried in Fairmount Cemetery here in Spokane, so that is my longest unbroken line. My Sister and I bought this gravestone as Robert Forsyth Kelly did not have one. We also bought the one for his parents Thomas and Margaret (Forsyth) Kelly.

 

This is a picture of the church in Cottesbach, England where my Reverend Henry Dillingham is buried about 1600, probably my oldest burial site.

Wordless Wednesday Black Eagle Dam Great Falls Montana

Another postcard from my dad's collection, this one cancelled June 29, 1914.

Anton was my grandfather

B & M Copper Smelter Great Falls Montana

Another postcard from my dad's collection, from the 1910s.

Missing Locker for the 122nd Carnival of Genealogy

Missing Locker

I attended John Rogers High School from the fall of 1963 to June of 1966. Rogers was an old building built in the early 1930s opening in 1932. It is a three story brick building which had by the 1960s had a few additions, a cafeteria, a wing to the east which mainly housed home economics, and the big field house on the south which had the boys and girls gymnasiums. Since the baby boom had hit high schools we also had a row of portables out back. In fact my homeroom was in the second portable.

Each floor had a row of lockers along the halls outside of the classrooms built into the walls, but there was not enough for everyone, so we had to share. My neighbor had gotten a locker near the middle of the east hall on the first floor and asked me if I wanted to share and I said yes. First floor lockers were prized possessions and at that time you kept the locker till you left school hopefully when you graduated. So I had a locker in a great location for my sophomore and junior year.

When I came back for my senior year I headed for my locker and when I got down the hall counting the locker numbers and my locker was missing. During the summer the classroom on the other side of the wall my locker was on, had a folding door placed in the middle of the very long classroom that was there before so it could be used as a big classroom or split into two smaller classrooms, but they needed a new door for the second classroom, and so they removed about seven or eight lockers and added a door, my locker was in the middle of those removed. So where is my locker?

They had a locker window where you went if you needed a locker, lost your combination, or were looking for a partner, so I went there and asked where my locker was? A very small boy looked on his maps and said it was right down this hall, so I asked him to show me. Down the hall we went counting locker numbers to the new door! He stood there with his mouth wide open looking at the door, no locker. He goes back to the locker window and talks to the faculty adviser, and he came down the hall and looked at the door also. Then he said they did not know where our locker went and we would have to find it on our own. I was nearly late for my first class so did not get to look till after school and by then my neighbor had found our locker in the back hall.

The back hall was a long narrow hall that led to the band room the stage for the auditorium, and the old gym that was not used much when we were there, it was tiny and with the school bursting at the seams with kids we used the bigger gyms in the field house. So here was my locker near the east end of that hall, just past it was three doors and a stairway to the second floor. One door went to the home economics wing, one door went to the outside and the row of portables and one to the east hall, I think the busiest corner of the whole school, and so very hard to get into my locker on that long narrow hall.

Think that was the end of the missing locker? Not yet. I was in the band that year and the band room was off the back hall, and because we came back late sometimes from playing or marching at various football or basket ball games the band director wanted all the band to have a locker just outside of the band room and he had arranged for a row of lockers outside of the band room and we were all to go to the locker window and get one of those lockers, I raised my hand and said I already had a locker outside of the band room. He asked how I got it, and I said it was a long story, but I had to go show him my locker.

 A few years ago the school district passed a bond issue to remodel Rogers High School, and they removed the band room, the old gym and the field house and built two huge new gyms, a commons area with the cafeteria at one end and a bunch of new classrooms between the new gyms and the old building. When that new section was done they went into the old building and gutted it and rebuilt it with new windows, new wiring and better heating and insulation that the old building had needed for a long time. Part of the money was to restore the front to look like it did in 1932 when it opened. When they finished they tore off the 1950s home economics wing, the 1960s cafeteria and removed all the portables and so now it looks like the 1932 building on the front and they matched the look of the old building on the east and west sides. At the grand opening they invited the public and so I went to see if my locker had survived, all the lockers on the back hall were gone, and all the lockers on the first floor are gone also, but the door in the middle of the first floor hall is still there.

Wordless Wednesday The Highest Stack

This is another postcard from my dad's collection, probably from mid 1910s.

Wordless Wednesday Middle Creek

This is another post card from my dad's collection, not sure where Middle Creek is, but it looks like the same creek as in the last wordless Wednesday post. The back on this one is blank also.

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy State Archives

Week #37 – State Archives

Week 37: State Archives. Which state archives repository is your favorite? Have you been there in person? What does their website offer to visitors? Share any advice you can to potential visitors who may visit the archives in the future.

Well maybe I am a little prejudiced but I think the best state archives is the  Eastern Branch of the Washington State Archives located in Cheney, Washington. Besides having the records generated by the seven counties of Eastern Washington it also houses the first Digital Archives in the world. I do look ups at the Spokane County Courthouse, and I hated looking in the very old and fragile records, so when they moved those records to Cheney and digitized and indexed most all of them I did not have to search in the old records anymore, just go online and search.
Many archives have a wildcard search, but I have not seen one here, but you can search with just a few letters. so if you search for Hansen, you might want to also search for Hanson, so just put Hans in the surname box and it will search for both spellings. Works for given names also. You can also do a soundex search.
They also have several other special collections you can search, one I like is the pictures from the Ritzville library the A M Kendrick Collection. Mr. Kendrick worked for a farm implement firm and took pictures of those farm implements working on the farms he had sold the equipment to. So you see farms all over Eastern Washington and how they used to farm using the old equipment.

Wordless Wednesday Falls of the Brook in Montana

This is another of my dad's postcard collection, this one says copyright 1908 Billings, Montana. The back is blank.

Wordless Wednesday Chas. Russell Great Falls, Montana

Another post card from my dad's collection, probably from the mid 1910s.

This one has a note on the back: Do you think you can go down and feed the cats at the elevator? Dady Pop's dad owned the grain elevator at Columbus, Montana and so that is probably the elevator he was talking about.

Carnival of Genealogy #121 Discovery

I have kind of felt left out with all the people researching their Civil War ancestors for the 150 year anniversary of the start of the Civil War, as I have until last night not found a single Civil War ancestor. I know that none of my grandfather Hansen's ancestors were in the Civil War as he did not leave Denmark till 1887 and arrived in New York on St. Patrick's Day. He did tell of watching the St. Patrick's Day parade from the ship in the harbor. He did marry a lady whose family came to New England in 1632 the Dillingham's, and so I have ancestors in all the wars after 1632 till the Civil War. So why was her father Stanislaus Dillingham not in the Civil War? He had bad legs and could not stand for long nor march, so I guess he was exempted medically. So how about my mom's family the Kellys? They were in Illinois when the Civil War started, and according to the "Kelly" Bible they got on a wagon train to California, stayed till 1865, then went to Sacramento and then San Francisco, caught a ship to Panama, crossed the isthmus caught another ship to New York, and then back to Ursa, Illinois where her parents were still living. Her father had been in the War of 1812 in the battle for Fort Miegs, and he was one of the few survivors of the Kentucky riflemen that went to help William Henry Harrison retake Detroit. Still have some others on this side to find, so it is possible I will find another Civil War ancestor. The other line I know a lot about is the Vanderpools, and I have Vanderpools in the Mexican War as teamsters hauling supplies to the troops, I even had a Vanderpool in the Blackhawk War, he volunteered, marched to Illinois for training and before the training ended BlackHawk surrendered, so he never fired a shot. So that brings me to Joseph Vanderpool, my great great grandfather, his obit says he was a Civil War soldier, but both he and his widow applied for a Civil War pension and they were turned down saying he was never in the Civil War, so I assumed he was in the home guard in northern Missouri, so last night I was playing on Ancestry in their free census look-ups, and I put in Joseph Vanderpool, and I found his 1850, 1870 and 1880 census and then it said the 1890 Special Civil War Census, so I clicked and this is what I found, he did serve a whole month in the 35th Missouri Infantry and was discharged due to getting measles. I had measles as a child, but I know it is much worse in an adult and very contagious so I see why he was discharged.

So this was a surprising discovery, but it looks like Robert Forsyth who served in the War of 1812 was my last ancestor that actually fought in a war. The Dillinghams were Quakers and so shied away from conflicts, but a few did fight in the Revolution. My dad was in WWII but not in a fighting unit, his service squadron serviced the B-17s and B-24s in England, Africa and finally Italy, neither of my grandfathers served in WWI, one was too old and the other worked for the Great Northern Railroad and railroad workers were exempted.