Sunday, August 28, 2011

Walking With Ancestors 2011 Red Tour

I was not able to sneak away from the Blue Tour long enough to take the Red Tour, but I hope I got all the names correct with the pictures.
This is the first one Debra LeGrand as the Herman Family


This is Sidney Chittum in the Hat as Rose Wright


This is Donna Potter Phillips as the Austin J. Bender Family almost hidden by the Red Tour Guide.


This is Max Rice portraying David Ennis a small boy that died after a fire cracker went off in his hand causing an infection that eventually killed him. He was also interviewed by the reporter for KHQ TV and did a good job.


The next picture of Pat Bayonne-Johnson is a much better picture.
This is Pat Bayonne-Johnson as Elizabeth/Benjamin Bennett Family


This is Pat Bayonne-Johnson sitting and talking to Janice Bueckers. I almost did not get a picture of Janice as we were closing up when I took this picture.
Janice Bueckers was portraying the Hattie/Curtis Parson family.


My mom worked for the Buckley Department store in Hillyard when she got out of high school, but the Buckley's in this section are not related to the Buckley Department Store.
This is Actor Dean Ladd in the red cap as J. Edward Buckley


This was the last one on the Red Tour John Caskey from Fairmount Memorial Gardens as David P. Jenkins



Be sure to also check out Walking with Ancestors 2011, Walking with Ancestors 2011 Green Tour, and the Walking With Ancestors Blue Tour

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Walking With Ancestors 2011 Green Tour

I was able to sneak off of the Blue Tour long enough to take the Green Tour.
The first Actor was Jonathan Berridge as Seaton Mitchell a WWI soldier that died of influenza while in training camp seven days after WWI was over.
With Jonathan in this picture is tour guide Miriam Robbins. The other two Green Tour guides were Kristi Rice and Sarah Wasicek


The Second Actor was Bill Hire as John S. McWhorter.


The next actor was Carol Nettles as the Tanner family.


The next Actor was Jeanne Coe as Geraldine Critzer and a very interesting story about a murder.

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The next actor was Dolly Webb as Alice and Henry Benton, Alice was a doctor.


The last actor in this group was Sarah Hoover as Anna Edberg, but she had left by the time I was on the Green Tour.

Be sure to also check out Walking with Ancestors 2011, Walking with Ancestors 2011 Blue Tour, and Walking with Ancestors 2011 Red Tour

Walking With Ancestors 2011 Blue Tour

The Blue Tour had four guides, Barbara Brazington, Bette Butcher Topp, Margie Beldin and me (Charles Hansen).
This first picture is Catherine Armstead as Henry and Kezia Brook.


About half way between the Brook's headstones and our next actor was the tombstone of Samuel Pool Weaver, the first President of Eastern Washington Genealogical Society. He served for two years and never attended a single EWGS meeting.
The next actor was Pat Meilbrecht as The Chaffee Family.


The next actor was Clair Brazington as Richard Mills a Minnesota soldier who's unit fought the Dakota Sioux in 1862 before heading for the Civil War.


I am really sorry I did not get a picture of John Wilson as Andrew Hallender.

This actor is Michael Chandler as Simon McLean. He was very lucky as the day he went to the cemetery to look at the grave a car with British Columbia license drove up looking for the grave of Simon McLean, turned out to be a grandson of Simon's brother, and he sent a lot of pictures and family information on the McLean family to Michael.


The last actor in the Blue Tour was Pat Ewers as Amanda W. Nichols.


Be sure to also check out Walking with Ancestors 2011, Walking with Ancestors 2011 Green Tour, and Walking with Ancestors 2011 Red Tour

Walking With Ancestors 2011

The 2011 Walking with Ancestors started off at 8 a.m. with a group picture of all the guides and actors. I am in the back row.


This is the group from the Washington Civil War Association 1st Michigan Artillery Unit.


My dad had a Model A coupe like this one except his did not have the rumble seat. This was part of four cars from the local Hassie Auto Club.


The Eastern Washington Genealogical Society booth


Northeast Washington Genealogical Society Booth


Karen Struve from Colville demonstrating tombstone rubbing.


Two of the booths at Walking With Ancestors

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Miriam's Classes....... Sign Up NOW!

EWGS's very own Miriam Robbins (formerly Miriam Midkiff; new name, old smile) is again offering great genealogy classes through the IEL/Community Colleges of Spokane. There are three:

GENEALOGY-Military Records, 1 Nov, 6-9pm, $25, Centerplace (in the Valley); "Is there a veteran in your family tree or story about an ancestor who served in the Civil War or Revolutionary War?" Miriam will teach you how to find him and records about him. (Or her?)

GENEALOGY-Vital & Cemetery Records, 8 Nov, 6-9pm, $25, Centerplace; "Not sure how to go about tracing your family tree? Learn to use vital records and cemetery records for the basis of your research."

GENEALOGY-Who Do You Think You Are?, 4 Oct to 25 Oct, 6-8pm, $49, Centerplace; "What do you know about your ancestors or your heritage? In this beginning online genealogy class, learn to start your search, confirm family lore and use the different records along with Internet resources to trace your family tree."

Call 279-6030 to register for these classes or email Miriam with any questions (kidmiff@gmail.com). For the eager but timid beginner, Miriam will take you by the hand and you'll be confident in no time!

Monday, August 22, 2011

Good Reading: Civil War Diaries



In this, the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War, you may wish to hone up on your history of that time period. And what better way than by reading diaries written by people who actually lived in those days? Harold Holzer of The Wall Street Journal recently recommended five titles:
  • Mary Chesnut's Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981) - written in 48 notebooks by a Southern woman, whose father was a plantation-owning South Carolina governor, and whose husband was a pro-slavery U.S. senator from Virginia, later a military aide to Jefferson Davis. Often quoted in Ken Burn's classic PBS special, The Civil War, this title is available at the Spokane Public Library.
  • The Diary of George Templeton Strong, 1835-1875, edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (1952) - in four volumes, the third covering the Civil War period, it also is quoted by Ken Burns. Templeton was a lawyer who helped organize the U.S. Sanitary Commission.
  • Diary of Gideon Welles, edited by Howard K. Beale (1960) - As Secretary of the Navy, Welles was fondly referred to by Lincoln as "Father Neptune."
  • A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, by John B. Jones (1866) - a popular fiction writer who was too old to volunteer, he joined the Confederate War Department as a clerk. His accounts, unlike many others from the South, were never rewritten or sanitized later after the cause was lost.
  • My Diary North and South, by William Howard Russell (1863) - Russell was a celebrated London Times war correspondent traveling through both sections of the country, who ended up making enemies on both sides of the war after sparing "neither salve-owning Southerners nor incompetent Union officers." His press credentials were revoked in 1862, and his diary was published the following year.
Look for these books at your local bookstore, at online stores such as Amazon.com, or order them through Interlibrary Loan at your local library.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

1940 U.S. CENSUS TO BE FREE ON ANCESTRY.COM

PROVO, UTAH (August 17, 2011) - Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, today announced that both the images and indexes to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be made free to search, browse, and explore in the United States when this important collection commences streaming onto the website in mid-April 2012.

When complete, more than 3.8 million original document images containing 130 million plus records will be available to search by more than 45 fields, including name, gender, race, street address, county and state, and parents’ places of birth. It will be Ancestry.com’s most comprehensively indexed set of historical records to date.

Ancestry.com is committing to make the 1940 Census free from release through to the end of 2013, and by doing so hopes to help more people get started exploring their family history. As this census will be the most recent to be made publicly available, it represents the best chance for those new to family history to make that all-important first discovery.

“The release of the 1940 U.S. Census will be an exciting event for any American interested in learning more about their family history,” said Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan. “By making this hugely important collection free to the public for an extended period, we hope to inspire a whole new generation of Americans to start researching their family history.”

“Ancestry.com is working to make the 1940 Census a truly unique interactive search experience...as well as the starting point to help new users easily get started on the world’s leading online family history resource. After finding that first family connection in the 1940 Census, we believe new users will be able to make amazing discoveries by searching our 7 billion digitized historical records, exploring the 26 million family trees created on Ancestry, and collaborating with our nearly 1.7 million subscribing members. We think that 2012 is going to be a great year of discovery for all family historians.”

About Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com)
Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with nearly 1.7 million paying subscribers. More than 7 billion records have been added to the site in the past 14 years. Ancestry users have created more than 26 million family trees containing over 2.6 billion profiles. Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries that help people discover, preserve and share their family history, including its flagship Web site at www.ancestry.com.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Spokane Area Legacy Users Group to Meet Wednesday, August 17th

If you are a Legacy Family Tree genealogy software user, or are simply curious about this genealogy software program, you may be interested in the Legacy Users Group (LUG), which will meet next Wednesday, August 17th, from 1:30 to 3:30 PM in the meeting room of the Shadle Park Branch of the Spokane Public Library at 2111 W. Wellesley. This meeting is free and open to the public. Regular attendees will take turns in the role of moderator for each meeting.  If you have more questions, please contact Donna Potter Phillips here.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

World War I Memorial Museum

I spent last week in Kansas City, Missouri, visiting family. We went to the World War I Memorial Museum in downtown KC and it was just fabulous. This tall tower is visible for miles; see the two sphinxes with their wings covering their faces? And then inside is a field of 9000 orange silk poppies..... one for every 1000 men who died. I did not realize that there were 38 different countries that participated in this "war to end all wars." I took many pictures........ anybody interested in a program of a tour of this museum? (It was 103o to 110o in KC while we were there. Aren't you glad you live in Spokane?)