George Murphy was a Marine in the Civil War, and since there were only 4000 Marines in the Civil War, so to have two Marines buried in Spokane, Washington is kind of rare. George did not have any kind of a military marker at Fairmount Cemetery and so Barbara Brazington tried to get a Civil War marker for him, but since she was not related they refused, so she contacted the local Marine League, and they got a marker donated by a local company and set up a wonderful memorial service. Go here to see the full story .

These “sponge rocks” have, for over 80 years, been important to my family. In the early 1930s, my mother lived with her parents in St.Louis, Missouri. (She always pronounced it St. Lois.) Her father, my grandfather, worked in a print shop and hated it; he hated being indoors all day long. Weekends, he would putter in his urban back yard and he built a fish pond there. He rimmed the edge with these large pieces of “sponge rock.”

Mom remembers going out to Rock Hollow (they called it) somewhere near but outside of the city. There they could spend a picnic day and gather rocks for the fishpond.

In the 1940s, my grandparents moved from St. Louis to near Kalamazoo, Michigan, to live on very small Pickerel Lake. Oh, did Grandpa enjoy living on that lake! They took the sponge rocks with them and they formed my grandmother’s flower bed.

Upon her death in 1987, my Mom hauled the rocks back to Spokane, Washington, and they’ve been around her favorite lilac bush for these past 28 years. Upon Mom’s passing in 2014, the rocks were mine and now they reside in a space near the garage entry where I walk past them several times a day. (The brown insulator was added to show the scale of the rocks.)

To this day I don’t know where “Rock Hollow” was, but doing a Google search I did find a Rock Hollow (bicycle) Trail as part of the Meremec River Greenway. I’m sure today it would be a tremendous legal offense to haul rocks from this spot but back in the 1930s it was wilderness and unprotected.

And my grandfather, then my mother, and now me, are committed to protecting these very special rocks.

Thought that since we started last week with some Big News from Ancestry, I would continue this week with more Big News from them.

Would you like to attend a free online lecture chosing from a dozen topics presented by Ancestry?

The Ancestry Academy is then the choice for you! Click to https://academy.ancestry.com/academy

There you will find the list of courses available to you. Most are 45-60 minutes in length, doable in one session (if you’ve been “down the hall” and have a water bottle and some snacks).

I could list all the topics but new topics are being added monthly so any list posted here would soon be incomplete.

Does it seem to you, like it does seem to me, that Ancestry is getting more and more worthwhile and worthy of our subscription? Yes, the Ancestor Discoveries ( explained last blog on May 11th) and this Ancestry Academy are free to us, but of course they all will point to using the Ancestry database. We cannot and we should not expect everything in genealogy to be free to us; some things are just worth the money.

Get started in using, understanding and appreciating Ancestry by sitting in your ‘jammies and watching an online presentation of your choice……. since they’re free, I advise taking two!