Depression Era Cooking

This is a lovely set of videos posted by a grandson who taped his now 93 year old grandmother Clara cooking and talking about the Great Depression. As we are in a recession ourselves, it's something to keep in mind!
My own grandmother Laura experienced the Great Depression herself on the Hildebrand family farm in LaClede IL. Now that she is gone, I wished I had learned more about it. Grandma always said she was the "runt" being the youngest of 11 children. One of our favorite meals Grandma made was, of course, "Scrapple", but this was not the ordinary Scrapple that you can buy in the store. Hers was more of a firm cornmeal mush, almost like a fried polenta. Grandma said that during the Depression they ate a lot of scrapple. She died never leaving a recipe behind.
I have worked very hard to recreate Grandma's scrapple recipe, and my last batch was made at Christmas time last year as a gift for my dad. The Divinity candy I tried to make didn't come out so good, but the Scrapple was about as close as someone has gotten. This year's batch should be even closer. I think we've gotten a few of her meals recreated pretty well for her never working from a recipe.

Veterans Day

As today is Veterans Day, please take a moment to think of and thank your family Veterans for their service to our country.
In genealogy, there are lots of military veterans one comes across. As I find them, I take a moment to learn about the wars they served in, and try to think about what the times must have been like for people then. What calls a man to service in times like the times they lived in?
So bring out your poppy, and wear it to remember our veterans.

Philadelphia - part 2

On the other side of my family tree, on my dad's side, the Buechele's came into the country vis ship passage in 1864. They quickly settled in Phildelphia, and set up a Boarding House called the Weeping Willow. Now, I don't have many records yet to back this up. It's family tradition at this point that the Buechele's had an establishment called the Weeping Willow, with a Weeping Willow tree out front. My hope is to find some city directories and see what comes up. I know that in 1880, the family was already in the Chicago area, making shoes. Not a large timeframe, but long enough to apparently have had a child, and my great great grandfather left his sister behind, who married the Sondregger's, of which I am still trying to find record of.

Philadelphia

Last month, my husband and I took a trip to Philadelphia to visit his dad. While the boys were at the football game, I took the time to visit the sites of downtown Philly. For the family tree, there's lots going on in Philly.
First off, there's Christ Church. This church is very close to Independence Hall, and after walking there from the major sites, I can see why it had a significant role in Philadelphia life. A family of ancestors were members of the church, William Robinson, and his wife Susanna (nee Shead/See).
These Robinson's had all of their children baptized at the church, and records still survive. Their marriage record also survives. I have sent for these copies already.
In addition, the graveyard holds Susanna's grave. I was lucky to have access to go to the DAR library in Washington DC with my friend Janice a few times. What a wonderful genealogy library they have there. The book of graves was published in 1864, and I copied the pages I thought might be related to my family. Now going back to that research, yes indeed, that was hers. The graveyard is well kept, but the materials the grave markers were made from were poor, and her grave is unknown at this time. I am considering writing to the church to see if perhaps they know where it may be located approximately.
I did enjoy the cemetery for it's famous folks, and I may try to sort out at what time period the Robinson's would have been at the church, and what famous folks may have been their parishioner friends.

Finding old documents- Making His Mark

Part of working on the family tree is backing up info with real documents. It's one thing to say that someone was married on a particular day or year, but another thing to find that document in historical records. Record searching means writing a lot of letters, sending fees and paying postage, and a lot of waiting. Sometimes the waiting is to only have a letter returned as "no record found".
Another part of the hunt is: in what county or state did something happen in? Just because someone lived in one area at their death certainly doesn't mean that they were married or born there.
Records also include military service files, widows' pension files, newspaper accounts, and also US census records.
Part of what makes the search so fun is getting copies of very old documents back. Then the hard part begins, because old handwriting is very hard to read!
One thing I find interesting as time goes back, is how little our ancestors knew how to read and write. On many documents for Andrew Johnson, an ancestor in Illinois on my mother's side, he "made his mark". This was an "X" scratched in the presence of someone who could write, and they wrote his name around it. This was true of the affidavit he signed to marry his "minor" 20 year old son to Miss Elizabeth Yackey. Someone else wrote the document out, and his scribbly "X" signed it. Back then, many people didn't even know what they were signing, if the person who could read and write were unscrupulous.

Austin Flint- a recent discovery

This is Austin Flint, an ancestor who married into the Lucas family, and a American Civil War veteran. I researching this fellow, I found that he was part of a unit in Illinois, the 64th Illinois Infantry, which was also called "Yates' Sharpshooters". This was one of a very few regiments that had a name. They even had a special flag.

Life in the regiment was very hard, and they participated in several key Civil War battles. While no "Gettysburg" or anything like that, but other key battles, like "Shermans march to the sea" among them.

As a new found family member and I try to help piece together Austin Flint's life, through letters that this family member has of Austin's that he wrote home during the war, there is another group participating in civil war re-enactments of this particular unit.

Close to me out here in Will County is a re-enactment group who are living demonstartions of the 64th Illinois Infantry. Their next big battle re-enactment is October 17th in Minooka. I plan to be there to talk to the re-enactors and help understand life for my ancestor.

Civil War research

I have just begun a search on some of our Civil War ancestors. Some of them were quite "characters" and some were upright honest folks who became prominent in their towns after the war.
I recently made a connection to a researcher in Texas who has some exciting new things to share.
Most of them are on the Lucas side, and I will post little biographies soon.
I'm also getting my research together for my annual trip to Fort Wayne IN to go to a large genealogy library there.