In a Spokane thrift store, I rescued this wonderful treasure! Inscribed: Property of Allene Robinson, who was a Junior that year. Besides pages of names of current students, this annual contains Alumni Lists dating back to 1890!!! There are also pages of class news bits, jokes, etc. What a find, I thought. If you want this, do let me know. It will not never go back to a thrift store! Donna
Remember the old TripTik Travel Planners offered by AAA? When you were planning a trip, you'd contact AAA and ask for a customized TripTik and a little flip-booklet of all the roads, attractions, lodging and eats was furnished to you. It became the "bible" for your trip.
I propose to you today that a Locality Guide for your genealogy research is parallel to the old TripTik. When you're "going to" (researching) in a particular place, don't you want to know the roads and places there????? And, F.Y.I., creating a Locality Guide is part of many how-to genealogical study courses.
So. What to include in a Locality Guide? For imaginary visual impact, picture creating a Locality Guide for Washington State or even better, a Washington State county. Here might be the chapters to include:
However, a closer look reveals that this expression was actually a 19th-century American creation. An 1873 edition of the Missouri newspaper The Daily Democrat called on "our temperance friends" to impose the "Dutch treat," in which "each man pays his reckoning," in local saloons as a means of combatting public drunkenness.
The etymology of this use of the word "Dutch" can be traced to a community of immigrants who were not, in fact, from the Netherlands at all, but Germany....also known as Deutschland, whose phonological similarity to "Dutch" led to the common American misnomer "Pennsylvania Dutch."
Here are some other Dutch-related idioms that have made their way into the English lexicon:
The rail lines across middle America differed from rail lines in the East. These lines fostered towns and communities. Between 1850 and 1871, railroad companies were given an estimated 185 million acres of land from individuals and from governments. The Federal Government offered 20 square miles of land for each mile of track laid in territories and 10 miles of land for each mile laid in states. These land grants were in alternate sections with the government holding every other section.
Much has been argued about the this land-granting method: who got rich? No question, the rail lines were built. Too many politicians in Washington felt that the land in the west was desolate or frozen and of little worth. By 1900, when James J. Hill took control of the Northern Pacific and greatly expanded the reach of the rail lines and fostered extensive publicity to bring in settlers. The immigrants flooding into Eastern ports came for the exact purpose of buying land and were not disappointed.
Another, lesser known, factor pushing development of rail lines across the plains and prairies was a sobering realization that America needed to consolidate her land holdings or possibly lose them to Texas or Mexico and maybe even to Britain and France. Washington politicians realized that the East could not afford to be cut off from the West.
So land grants acted as a form on non-cash subsidy, making the construction of extremely expensive rail lines across 1000 miles of unsettled land financially feasible for private companies. Ultimately this newly settled land would allow the creation of many thousands of new farms, ranches, mines and towns.
Legacy Family Tree Webinars will present German History For Genealogists on Wednesday, October 16th at 2:00ET. "Knowing the most important dates in German history can be helpful to your research." This webinar is free on the day it's presented; thereafter it goes into their vast library which you can access for a $49 annual membership fee. They have handouts too! To register, go to https://famlytreewebinars.com/webinar/luther-napoleon-and-the-kaiser-german-history-for-genealogists.
The Kentucky Genealogical Society will present Finding a German Parish Record on Tuesday, October 15th at 7:00ET. To register go to: https://kygs.org/event/finding-a-german-parish-and-online-parish-records.
The Sept-Oct 2024 issue of Family Tree Magazine features an article discussing the history of German civil registration, civil record formats, how to locate German civil records plus other tips. Many libraries carry this magazine or you can order a copy (or subscribe??) by clicking to Family Tree Magazine.
My maternal grandmother was 100% German. I remember visiting her and being treated to smerkase (probably got that wrong) but it was a toasted piece of dark bread, spread with cottage cheese and topped with jam. Mighty darn good, too, I do recall.
And did you know that the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that as a people, we are fully 1/4 of German ancestry. Interesting. I am, are you???
I've discovered that there are more genealogy-related movies available to me on my iPad that I'd have guessed! I just watched (for free on YouTube!!) Yesterday's Children, where Jane Seymour in today's time is driven to learn about a family 80 years ago in Ireland and reunite that family. It was SO good.
And of course there are more history-museums-archaeology type videos posted on YouTube than you'd have time to enjoy. There is the History Channel, Archaeology Channel, etc. All free!
So no need to watch dreary, depressing, or silly TV shows unless that's your thing. There are genealogy shows to enjoy!!!
