Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Wordless Wednesday Source of the Mississippi

The pictures of Lake George and this one of the source of the Mississippi are pretty interesting to me. Latisha Vanderpool was on my mom's side of the family. My dad was born near Sebeka in Minnesota which is just south of Lake George Minnesota. Pop's family left Minnesota in 1910 so way before these pictures were taken.

Anna & Mrs. May at the source of the Mississippi 194(_). The last number was cut off.

In July of 2002 we went to a reunion at Sebeka, Minnesota, and since we were close we also went to the source of the Mississippi River. They have a small park there and a little museum with a lot of pictures. It was raining when we were there so did not stay very long.

Tombstone Tuesday John B. Keith

Another picture I took in the Spickard-Trenton Missouri area. Sadly they are not related to me.


John B. Keith 1859-1931 Leota A. Keith 1863-1940

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Saturday Night Fun Games

Calling all Genea-philes - it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

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

1) Think about the games that your whole family would play when you were a child.


2) Tell us about one (or more) of them - what was it called, what were the rules (as you remember them), who played the game, where did you play the game, who usually won?


I don't ever remember my father playing any games, when he was working he got up very early and so went to bed early. But my sister and occasionally my mom would play Crazy Eights cards, or pinochle. We also had a lot of board games, like monopoly, Parcheesi, etc. In the summer on Saturday nights we got together with our neighbors and played Crazy Eights a lot.
Who usually won? All of us took turns winning. Depended on who was lucky that night.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving


Happy Thanksgiving to all my followers. This is a postcard from my dad's postcard book. It is blank on the back, but most all of the cards are from 1915-1920 so I assume it is about that old.

1996 Ice Storm

Today in Spokane we are having a deep freeze, after a couple of days of snow, but these picture were taken in 1996 after an ice storm in Spokane. Nearly all of Spokane was without power some for up to 8 days, and so Thanksgiving was an adventure on how to have Thanksgiving dinner without power. People got out camp stoves to cook on, fired up fireplaces, and generally froze waiting for the power company to reconnect the power.

These locust trees were in a long row in front of my dad's house and they lost about 2/3s of their limbs due to the ice buildup on the trees. Pop also had another locust tree near the back of his lot and one limb was leaning on the power line, but it did not break and his power never went out.

This was a willow tree in pop's yard, it lost a lot of limbs, but not nearly as many as the locust trees.

This linden tree is in my front yard, and while it did not lose many limbs they never straightened up after the ice melted.
I was at my dad's house when the rain was coming, and it built up about a quarter of an inch of ice everywhere. When I left his house I was walking home and it sounded like shotguns going off all around, but it was actually limbs breaking off on the trees in the neighborhood as I walked home. When I got home the power was off, but my gas stove was still working, so I was warm. The circulating fan did not work without electricity so the back part of the kitchen was pretty cold. I was working on proofreading the Mayflower Digest that had been OCR to a CD, and I was supposed to send so many pages each week back to them, but my computer needed electricity. If you have that CD I proofread volume 20. The next morning the lights across the street were on, but not mine. Mine was out 3 and a half days, but that was better than a lot of people.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Wordless Wednesday Swimming at Lake George Minnesota

Two pictures from my great aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.

Lake George Minn Aug 1942 Velta, Anna, myself (Tish) & Ruth Hire. I don't know who Velta, Anna or Ruth Hire are.

Tish ready to get wet Lake George 1942

Monday, November 22, 2010

Tombstone Tuesday Minnie L. Hurt

This is one of several tombstone pictures I took in the Spickard-Trenton Missouri area. When I took this picture I did not know if they were related to me or not, and sad to say this one is not related to me.



Minnie L. Hurt 1877-1956?

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Saturday Night Fun Thanksgiving

Hey Genea-Musings readers, it's Saturday Night (again) -- time for more Genealogy Fun (again!).

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

1) Make a list of Genealogy-oriented people or things that you are thankful for. Any number -- 1, 10, 100, whatever.

2) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook comment or Note.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!


1. All my friends at EWGS and WSGS

2. Washington State Library and Terri Huntley

3. Secretary of State Sam Reed and Spokane County Auditor Vicki Dalton

4. Washington State Digital Archives

5. Spokane Public Library and director Pat Partovi and the library board.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge 46 Volunteering

Volunteering for Eastern Washington Genealogical Society started soon after my sister and I joined, we were gene helpers in the library on the second Thursday. The library was in temporary quarters in an old JC Pennys building and the gene section was just inside the door. On cold nights a lot of homeless people came into the library to keep warm and so they were asking for as many men as possible to volunteer in the evenings. While I liked being a gene helper, I really liked doing research so when the societies researcher retired due to health, I applied, and that was the job I really liked, being in the library almost all alone with all the records. I also got to research in the courthouse archives, that was a lot of work, but the archives were very quiet and peaceful.
I have also volunteered with other jobs in EWGS, helping with some of the programs and seminars, being on the budget committee, and many times on the auditing committee, I am also the Registered Agent for EWGS with the state of Washington, and have prepared the 990 form for the IRS for EWGS. I have helped at the Rest Stop Fund raisers, both manning the rest stop and baking cookies.
When I started doing the research for EWGS I did a lot of census lookups, and looking for someone in the Spokane County Territorial Census was a lot of work, so I started indexing the 1887 census, I copied ten pages, took them home and indexed them in Ski Index. Took me most of a year to finish, but it sure saved me a lot of time in looking for someone in that census. Since then I have done a lot of indexing, both for EWGS and also for the Washington State Library which sends the results to the Washington State Digital Archives.
I also have written many articles for the EWGS Bulletin, and that is probably my least favorite volunteering, guess I should have paid more attention in English classes in school.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Wordless Wednesday After Finn Bath Lake George

Two pictures from my great aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.

Mrs. May - Tish after our Finn bath Aug 1942 Lake George Minn

Some guests after Finn bath Lake George Aug 1942

Monday, November 15, 2010

Tombstone Tuesday William Hurt

This is one of several tombstone pictures I took in the Spickard-Trenton Missouri area. When I took this picture I did not know if they were related to me or not, and sad to say this one is not related to me.




William A. Hurt 1874-1929

Nellie Hurt 1906-1927

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Carnival of Genealogy #100

This is a picture of my grandfather Charles Rupert Kelly and his wife Cleo (Travis) Kelly. He was the son of Robert Forsyth Kelly and his first wife Vada Belle Hert. He was born in Trenton, Missouri in August of 1890 a couple of weeks after Cleo was born in Mill Grove Missouri about 20 miles or so north of Trenton. While grandma was rather short at 5 foot 3 or 4 inches, grandpa was about 6 foot 4 four inches and while not fat he was pretty well filled out. His father was a farmer and a carpenter and grandpa followed him as a carpenter, and he worked first worked as a carpenter for the Rock Island Railroad. He married Cleo Travis in Trenton and they had one daughter Margaret, my mom.
 
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Soon after getting married grandpa and his family moved first to Billings, Montana where grandpa worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad for a while, and then the moved to Spokane, Washington and grandpa got a job with the Great Northern Railroad as a switch man. In 1924 he bought the house in the picture above and continued to work for the railroad until about 1947 when he started having health problems and went off on sick leave.
Grandpa was big and never shied away from a fight, mom said he would come home from work all battered up occasionally. He loved baseball and coached the Great Northern team for years, and win or lose they came to his house for beer after the game. (Note this was during prohibition and grandpa made the beer in the bathtub and bottled it, I saved a few of the bottles and rubber caps, now hard as iron). As a switch man his job was to deliver the railroad cars to the various buildings along the railroad tracks, each car had a long number to identify the car and he got a manifest where to deliver each car, he would look at the list once and deliver each car to the correct building without ever looking again.
He like practical jokes, and one of the things I found in his house after he died was a button that says "Charles Kelly for Grundy County Sheriff", now I really do not think he ran for sheriff, he was pretty young when he left Missouri, so a couple of possibilities; one he had that button made up as a joke, or it might have been from his uncle Charles Kelly, younger brother of his dad Robert Kelly.
He was a good carpenter, and after working for the railroad as a carpenter he built everything strong enough to hold up a locomotive. He also loved fishing and bought a lot on a lake north of Spokane and was going to build a cabin when he got sick, so he sold the lot and then after that he just went fishing on his front porch. He caught a lot of fish there, and we had fried fish many times. It was a big front porch all the way across the house, and he landed quite a few fish there. I never caught a single fish there, even though grandpa showed me how to bait the hook and hold it over the railing for hours waiting for the fish to bite.
I was not quite six when he died, and so I don't have a lot of memories of him, but I have heard a lot of stories on him over the years.
The picture above he is sitting in his favorite chair, by the front window with his smoking stand next to the chair. He rolled his own cigarettes, so that is probably why he died so young. He would wave at the bus as it passed his house, and when he died there was a nice article in the newspaper from the bus drivers, missing the waves from my grandpa as they passed his house.

Friday, November 12, 2010

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy Genealogical Societies

Well I joined Eastern Washington Genealogical Society in 1991 and that is the largest genealogical society in the area. I am also a member of another close by genealogical society, the Whitman County Genealogical Society. The last Washington genealogical society close by is the Northeast Washington Genealogical Society. Actually closer to me than either of these Washington societies is the Kootenai County Genealogical Society, in Hayden, Idaho. I could not find a website for them, and they are kind of odd for our area as they are snowbirds and close in the winter and meet all summer. EWGS is just the opposite, closed in the summer and meets all winter. All of these have excellent education classes, but I seldom get to any but those that EWGS does.
I also belong to a couple of other genealogical societies, the Great River Genealogical Society in Quincy, Illinois, and the Grundy County Genealogical Society in Trenton, Missouri. Both of these are from areas where I still have some research to do.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Veteran Tribute

This picture we found in my Uncle Leigh Hansen's house after he died in December 2007 at age 94. He was my dad's younger brother. He was a farmer in the 1930s and 1940s, and when the war started he tried to get a deferment as a farmer and the only son of his aged parents, but they were going to draft him anyway. He went an enlisted in the Army Air Corps in hopes to be with my dad, but they never even got close to each other during the war. Leigh was kind of small about 5 foot 8 and slender so they sent him to Arizona for training as a tail gunner in a B-17. As a farm boy he did good with the guns, but the last part of the training was a flight in the B-17, and as soon as they took off Leigh got air sick and stayed that way till they landed. The Army Air Corps decided he would never be a tail gunner and so they retrained him as an air craft mechanic and he worked on the engines of the B-17, B-24 and at the end the B-29s. Below is a picture of him (in the front) working on an engine. After becoming a mechanic he was sent to Panama and spent the whole WWII there. They were sure the Germans or Japanese would bomb the Panama Canal or the ships using it, so the US sent the bombers to patrol looking for submarines. We know now they never did attack the canal and maybe my Uncle Leigh helped to stop that from happening.

 
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Wordless Wednesday Lake George Minnesota fish

Two pictures from my great aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.

Mrs. May and Tish Lake George Minnesota. Oh! What a Catch Jul 1942.
Don't know who Mrs. May is.

Oh you fish---- Tish, July 1942 Looks like the fishing was pretty good on Lake George in 1942.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Tombstone Tuesday John Keith

This is one of several tombstone pictures I took in the Spickard-Trenton Missouri area. I did not know if they were related to me or not, and sad to say this one is not related to me.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Saturday Night Fun ONE WISH

Hey genea-philes, it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

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

1) If you found a bottle on the shore, and it had a genea-genie in it, and rubbed it and you had ONE WISH to make about your genealogy and family history research, what would it be?


Well as Randy said it is hard to pick just one wish, but here it goes: I think I will wish to find the parents of Richard Hellenbolt and his wife Rhoda (Preston) Hellenbolt. When I have found them in the census I know Richard was born about 1815 in New York and Rhoda was born in Canada. Soon after Richard was born all the Hellenbolts left New York and headed for Canada where I found them near Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. I found some of his cousins there also and later they went to Wisconsin and Minnesota and finally to Montana. I had surmised since Hellenbolt sounded German and they left for Canada that they might have been part of the Hessians that fought for England in the Revolution, but I found 3 Hellenbolts in the New York Militia during the Revolution and I think one of these three men was the father of Richard Hellenbolt.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Wordless Wednesday Lake George Minnesota Cabin

Two pictures from my great aunt Latisha Vanderpool's photo album.


Anna's Cabin Lake George Minn July 1942

Ann and Tish Anna's Cabin Lake George 1942
I don't know who Anna is, but Tish is Latisha Vanderpool.

Tuesday Tips Searching Spokane Daily Chronicle

A while back I copied an article form the Spokane Public Library blog on searching the Spokane Daily Chronicle on the Google News, but Google has changed the way to get there, so now click here. One last thing, make sure you enter “Spokane” in the source box to get only local newspapers.

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