Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

While I listen to the Husker-Badger game, I'll post my entry for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. GO BIG RED!

"List your matrilineal line - your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother."

1. Me
2. Grace Jones (1923 Ferguson, Nebraska-2009 Grand Island, Nebraska) married 1) George Ferguson 2) Hugh Russell
3. Elizabeth Wilmot Jones (1888 Loup County, Nebraska-1985 Sargent, Nebraska) married Frank Jones
4. Flora Lucinda Swift (1859 Macomb, Illinois-1927 Ferguson, Nebraska) married George Worth
5. Eunice Calista Robinson (1832 Ohio-1906 Westerville, Nebraska) married 1) Charles Swift 2) Alanson Hurlburt
6. Rachel Walker (1807 Hudson, Ohio-after 1880 Illinois) married Aaron Robinson
7. Rachel Cochran (1768 Virginia-1847 Hudson, Ohio) married John Walker

Since my kids might read this, thought I'd do the same for their dad.

1. Jim
2. Dorothy (living)
3. Bertha Wilhelmina Johanna Noffke (1895 Hall County, Nebraska-1984 Grand Island, Nebraska)
4. Auguste Fredricke Emelia Teichmeier (1862 Falkenburg, Pomerania, Germany - 1951 Grand Island, Nebraska)
5. Albertine Karoline Konn (1831 Germany - 1893 Nebraska)

The land of our ancestors

Our Worth, Angel and Dugdale ancestors lived in Devon for many decades -- probably for centuries. This article from the BBC2 tells about some very early residents of the area now known as Devon, England.

"A chance discovery of coins has led to the bigger find of a Roman town, further west than it was previously thought Romans had settled in England."

I love to read about archeology. I think it would be fun to work on a site. Genealogy is like archeology, isn't it? Unearthing the facts about our ancestors, piecing together the stories from the things they left behind.

Tapes Return

Last week I received the tapes and copies of them on DVD. They've been copied and cleaned up and sound ok, considering the shape they were in. The 1978 tape was cheap to begin with and I think I recorded music on it first and recorded the interview over it. Add to that the fact that I didn't have a microphone and used the built-in one...it's no wonder it's still, after being treated by an "audio doctor", almost impossible to hear 50% of the words. As I listen, though, the conversation we had that day comes back to me and I'm able to recall a lot of what dad said.

The 1983 tape comes with a bonus...or really, two bonuses. I taped it at my parent's house while I was visiting them with my two oldest kids. In the background I can hear Liz talking and I can hear Ben making baby sounds...she was about 3 and he was less than 1 year old. If I knew how to imbed an audio clip, I would include one here.

Oh well.

I'm just glad they are home safe and sound (no pun intended!). Now to transcribe and work on a book I've had in mind for a while now about dad.

Precious tapes

Today I Fed-Ex'd two cassette tapes to a man in Canada who will work digital magic on them, turning rumbling and roaring noises and broken tapes once again into the clear steady voice of my dad. These are two of five or six tapes I recorded of conversations with my day in the 1970s through 1990s. I've been meaning to get this done for four years and today I did it. I hope all goes well.

on the 99th anniversary of dad's birth

A photo from almost every decade. Some weren't dated. The top right may have been taken in his teens, and the one where he's holding me is in his 40s. I included it to show that he lived over half his life before I was born. The bottom center is my favorite photo of him which I took in 1983.

Still miss you, dad.

Who Do You Think You Are? Season 2

Wonderful episode about Vanessa Williams. Love how it relied mostly on going to the records, instead of finding everything on ancestry.com or the Internet.

Christmas Past

Our Christmas tree in 1958 when I was 6 months old. That's me at the bottom, the bald headed baby gazing up at the tree.

In memory of mom

Mom passed away a year ago today. This is a collage I put together last night with a photo from every decade of her life, 1920s through 2000s.

scanning scanning scanning

I just finished scanning 753 of mom's photos. Now I need to be sure all ancestor photos are scanned, then make cd or dvd copies for my brothers and sisters, and be done by Thanksgiving day. The 753 photos are just a fraction of the photos she took in her life. One of the things we will do Thanksgiving day is give each brother and sister a box full of photos of their families that she took. I have only scanned the photos that have members of two or more families in them. So yeah! One part done. Now to figure out how many dvds it will take to copy them!

Halloween in Sargent

I subscribe to the Nebraska State Historical Society blog and their post today included a photo of Sargent, with buggies on top of the roof of "Ottun and Martin". I remember dad talking about this particular type of Halloween prank and wondering how they got them up there! I wonder where the Ottun and Martin business was located in Sargent. According to the Sargent Centennial book, J. N. Ottun and/or the Ottun Brothers had a general store in the 1900s.