Author Archives: Donna Phillips

Let’s Talk About: Carrousel Rings

by Donna Phillips

My son recently confessed to me. Back in about 1977, he stole some of the Spokane Carrousel rings and kept this one all these years. What was I to do but smile and grab the camera! 

Our Spokane merry-go-round opened in 1909. Besides riding round-and-round-and-up-and-down in wooden animals, a rider could stretch and reach for a ring with each circuit. If you got The Gold Ring, you won a free ride! If you plucked a dull-metal one, you tossed it into the clown’s face and tried with the next go-round. If your aim was good and you got it into the clown’s mouth, a bell would ring! 

Did you know that about 200 American towns have carrousels? The significant ones are listed in the National Register of Historic Places…. as is our Spokane Looff Carrousel. Binghamton, New York, is billed as the Carrousel Capitol of the World because they have SIX working wooden carrousels. 

There are still rings to grab for but nowadays they’re plastic (much safer for tossing) and are often colored for the season. 

Want to know more? Click to www.carrousels.org. 

Do you remember reaching for a gold ring on the Spokane carrousel? I’d love to hear your story!

As for my son and his ring; he’s put it safely in his keepsake box of treasures. Rightly so. 

Let’s Talk About: Thoughts On A Silversword

by Donna Phillips

The Silversword plant mirrors the human tale. At least to me.

The silvery hairs, fleshy leaves and low-growing rosette form the Haleakala Silversword (‘ahinahina in Hawaiian) and grows only in hot, dry cinder slopes……… like the Haleakala Crater on Maui. These plants live between 3 and 90 years. They flower once, sending up a spectacular flowering stalk and then soon die, scattering drying seeds to the wind.

We humans are rather like this magnificent plant. We start as seeds, we grow in special locations for an allotted span of years and then we die. Our progeny, like Silversword seeds, have scattered to the wind.

If you go to Maui, do drive the twisty road to the top of Haleakala and take a stroll on the cinder paths among these fantastic plants.

Let’s Talk About: Georgia’s Virtual Vault

by Donna Phillips

If you have Georgia research to do, you must investigate the Virtual Vault, an online feature of the Georgia State Archives. This is where records of interest to genealogists are digitized and made available for research. 

The masthead of the website states that this is “your portal to success to some of Georgia’s most important historical documents, 1733 to present. The Virtual Vault gives access to manuscripts, photographs, maps, and government records. 

My research interest lies in Troup County. When I entered that into the search box, some 600 entries appeared before my eyes! I also need info from Wilkes County; wouldn’t this make your fingers twitch??

How about this category (one of 53 collections/categories):

If you have Georgia ancestry, do check out the Virtual Vault!

Let’s Talk About: Archaeology Magazine

by Donna Phillips

Archaeology Magazine is the bi-monthly publication of the Archaeological Institute of America. Subscription cost is under $20 which is half what you’ll pay for the issues at a newsstand. I really enjoy this magazine and learn so much history from it!

The July-August 2025 issue had a bit, “Legend of the Crystal Brain.” This relates how in the 1960s the skeleton of a young man about 20 years old was found covered in ash lying on his wooden bed in the doomed city of Pompeii. In 2018, doing a more thorough study on this “man,” some “fragments resembling obsidian” were found in the man’s skull. The poor man’s brain had been turned into glass by the extremely high temperatures of that volcanic ash…. over 950o! The scientist was quoted as saying, “We were looking into the brain of that young Roman who lied 2000 years ago—a brain that, perhaps, held his last thoughts before dying.” How sad. 

Another fascinating bit was this:  “Cats curl up on couches in 1/3 of all American households. However, domesticated felines are not native to the New World but were introduced by Europeans. The earliest known cats in the present day U.S., an adult and a kitten, have been identified in the wreck of a Spanish ship that sank in Pensacola Bay in Florida at 1559. Cats were likely brought aboard to feast on rodents.”

This magazine has articles of historic and archaeologic interest from all over the world……… from where our ancestors lived and still live all over the world. Try it; you might just like it. 

Let’s Talk About: Civil War Research

by Donna Phillips

Tomorrow is the EWGS Fall Workshop with the spotlight on Civil War Research. F.Y.I. Family Tree Magazine offers this 8-page, laminated, Cheat Sheet to help you “find military records and study the history” of the Civil War. Cost for this is $14.95, + p/h. This Cheat Sheet offers

5 Steps to Trace Your Civil War Ancestor:

1. Search the Civil War Soldiers & Sailors (CWSS) Database…. a free National Park Service site which indexes over 6,000,000 soldiers and 18,000 African American sailors. 

2. Obtain service and pension records (explains how).

3. Find burial information. (National cemeteries were established in 1862 for the Civil War dead.) 

4. Seek additional records (explains what/where).

5. Broaden your knowledge (gives great ideas). 

This Cheat Sheet then gives two pages explaining in more detail what the records contain. Also a map of the U.S. during the Civil War (Did you know that Oregon remained loyal to the Union?) and a Civil War Timeline (helps greatly to understand that conflict). The final page of this Cheat Sheet lists 17 websites and 24 books for your further study. 

One resource listed was The Civil War, a film by Ken Burns. I’ve viewed this; it’s worth a second time around, especially if you have ancestors who participated in the Civil War.

Let’s Talk About: Legacy Family Tree Webinars

by Donna Phillips

Legacy Family Tree Webinars are one of The Best genealogical learning opportunities available to us these days. Why??

* Legacy Family Tree Webinars offer nearly 2500 presentations in their library.

* These presentations are from over 250 different presenters.

* These presentations span 26 different categories.

* These presentations are offered in 11 different languages.

* These presentations are FREE ON DAY OF and then go into the library.

* Membership is $49 annually which gives you access to the entire library, day or night, on your schedule.

There will be 10 presentations offered in October:

* Oct 1, 5:00am, EST, David Ryan, Irish Public Records Fire & Genealogy

* Oct 1, 2:00pm, EST, Blaine Bettinger, Understanding Ethnicity in DNA

* Oct 3, 2:00pm, EST, J.H. Fonkert, Ten Tantilizing Sources

* Oct 3, time TBA, Janice Nickerson, Ontario Genealogy

* Oct 8, 8:00pm, EST, James Biedler, German Genealogy

* Oct 10, 2:00pm, EST, Orice Jenkins, Betsy Grant: A Fight for Freedom

* Oct 14, 9:00pm, EST, Shauna Hicks, Australian Post Office Directories

* Oct 21, 2:00pm, EST, Gilkison & LaRue, A Coast to coast identity story

* Oct 22, 2:00pm, EST, Melissa Barker, Finding Females in Local Archives

* Oct 24, 2:00pm, EST, Art Taylor, Use AI to organize digital photos

* Oct 28, 2:00pm, EST, A MyHeritage Webinar

* Oct 29, 2:00pm, EST, Kory Meyerink, Colonial NY Research

Why not have a learning listen???

Let’s Talk About: Awesome Websites

by Donna Phillips

Few posts back I spotlighted Roxanne Low and her list of “Free Genealogy-Related Internet Sites.” Remember? Did you take time to looksee any of them?? Today I highlight some of those opportunities!

* www.abmc.gov  —  The American Battle Monuments Commission website features a database of nearly 218,000 American war dead from WWI and WWII who were buried in overseas cemeteries. The site also includes 94,000 more names commemorated on Tablets of the Missing.

* www.easycalculation.com  —  calculate how many years, months and days have elapsed between two dates. 

* www.deathindexes.com  —  A directory of links to websites with online death indexes, listed by state and county. (Get it? A listing of links to online death indexes!!!)

* www.genealogylinks.net  —  Over 50,000 links to resources in the US, the UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. (If you’ve stuck with the “tried and true” websites, why? Why not try this?)

* https://gravelocator.com/va/gov  —  A VA site, updated daily, offers searches of veterans and their family members buried in most any military cemetery.

* https://glorecords.blm.gov  —  Use this site to search through more than 5,000,000 federal land title records (1788 to present). (Did your ancestor homestead or buy land from the federal government?)

* https://digital.newberry.org/ahcb  — The Newberry Library in Chicago website is one of the best places to trace shifting county lines and the records that went with them.

* www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/national-map  —  Looking for an obscure ancestral locale? This website offers help to finding that “old” place with the “new” name.

Let’s Talk About: Look Again at Castle Garden

by Donna Phillips

Before Ellis Island in New York harbor, there was Castle Garden. Let’s look again:

  • Castle Garden as immigrant station opened in 1855
  • Certainly there were immigrant arrivals prior to that year
  • What became Castle Garden was a military fort from 1808-1855
  • After Castle Garden closed as an immigrant station, it became an entertainment center

New York officials realized by 1819 that “immigration was anything but organized.” There were several proposals for a solution; that solution was to use Castle Garden. Remember it was first a military fort and then entertainment venue and did not become an immigrant arrival station until 1855. It opened on 3 August 1855. 

  • Roughly 2 out of every 3 immigrants to the U.S. between 1855 and 1890 (approximately 8.5 million people) passed through Castle Garden.
  • But the place was not really equipped to handle such crowds; “overcrowding and understaffing led to scenes of confusion and congestion that became infamous in their own right.” 
  • By the 1880s it was obvious that a new solution must be found.
  • After much verbal wrangling among New York politicians, the Federal Government had had enough and in February 1890 New York officials were told the news. 

Castle Garden officially closed its doors on 18 April 1890; in its final years, it processed 364,086 immigrants. By year’s end, the building was transferred back to the city. The Barge Office was used as the immigrant arrival center between 18 April 1890 and 31 Dec 1891 while construction on Ellis Island was complete. The new facility on Ellis Island began receiving immigrants on January 1, 1892. Over the next 62 years, more than 12 million immigrants would arrive in the U.S. via Ellis Island.
Where are the Castle Garden records?

  • Unfortunately, some of the CG records were lost in a fire that burned Ellis Island to the ground in 1897 but many still exist. 
  • Check with FamilySearch.org
  • Check with Ancestry.com

If you type: Castle Garden Immigration: A Genealogist’s Guide, by Katharine Andrew, offered free on the FamilyTree Magazine website, you’ll get all your Qs answered!