I am 100% positive that I-90 runs both east and west. 🙂
Seattle to Spokane – 4 1/2 hours, 270 miles
Yakima to Spokane – 3 hours, 200 miles
Kennewick to Spokane – 2 hours, 140 miles
Coeur d’Alene to Spokane – 38 minutes
And we here in Spokane have lots of motels!! Or ask a friend for a B&B (bunk and bathroom)!!
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.
Before Ellis Island in New York harbor, there was Castle Garden. Let’s look again:
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.
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?
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!
Honest, this postcard shows “Our Baked Big Potato Float” that appeared in a Spokane parade; no date on the image. A baked potato float in a parade? How wild is that? And the big-hatted bakers walking alongside? And pulled by horses? And the railroad logo??
Thank you Google: “Parade floats were first introduced in the Middle Ages. Churches used pageant wagons as movable scenery for passion plays and craftsmen with artisan guilds built pageant wagons for their specified craft.”
I confess to you that when I asked Google for unique or weird or crazy parade floats I wasted too much time laughing at the images that Google shared. I dare you to try it for yourself!
How about these:
Thankfully, there are more beautiful parade floats than crazy ones:
Here is the latest news regarding FamilySearch which I learned during RootsTech 2025 presented by Todd Powell, Tree Product Manger:
Todd smiled and said, “As each of us improves the documentation for each ancestor or person in our tree, we can increase the odds of folks making goofy changes….that does drive us crazy!” And he explained that they’re really concerned about and working on fixing wrong matches and “people changing stuff without documentation.”
He ended his lively presentation with this: “Quit complaining… learn to use the available tools to full advantage!!’
It’s back to learning time, back-to-school time, right? How about taking a deeper look at the Major Records Collections offered for free at FamilySearch.org?? Think you might oughta take a looksee??
Honoring my “teacher” ancestors today.
On the left is Efa Hope Carr, 1889-1980. She was a primary school teacher in Nashville, Washington County, Illinois. She wanted to marry Melville Potter but they delayed their marriage because once married, and “being a woman of carnal knowledge” she could no longer be a teacher. Needing that money to start their lives, they waited a year but finally did marry in 1917.
On the right is husband’s mother, Esther Mary Oswald, 1913-1998. She graduated from Cheney Normal School (now EWU) in 1930 and by age 18 was teaching in rural Newport, Washington. She remembered that some of the boys in her class were her same age. Still a teacher, she married Chuck Phillips in 1941. By start of the school year 1942 she was pregnant and assumed she’d have to quit teaching. But no, the war was on and too many male teachers had gone off to war, and, as she told me, “they said to just put on a smock and go to work.” So she did.
WHAT a difference between then and now! First, a 4-year Bachelor’s Degree is needed to become a teacher (plus more schooling for higher education). And, according to Google:
Moral requirements for teachers today center on ethical conduct, professional responsibility, and fostering a positive learning environment. These include prioritizing student well-being, maintaining confidentiality, demonstrating respect and fairness, and upholding honesty and integrity in all interactions. Teachers also need to be competent, accountable, and committed to ongoing professional development.
When my daughter, Jane, was in 5th grade, her young man teacher was Mr. Lannigan. He was married and they were expecting their first baby and Mr. Lannigan took the kids through all nine months of that journey. Jane loved it and never forgot Mr. Lannigan.
Perhaps an unfortunate ancestor spent time in a pest house? Why? What were “pest houses” anyway? (The above image spotlights a YouTube video.)
“Pest House,” is the sad term for an isolated hospital, often away from towns, often shoddily built and poorly maintained and the condition of those housed there was often quite awful.
Back in the day, people with contagious or communicable diseases such as leprosy, TB, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhus and many more, were shunted away from society for there was no effective treatment or cure. Such unfortunates were isolated until they either somehow recovered or died. “Municipalities in the day didn’t want to waste county money on caring for the walking dead.” (HereLiesAStory.com, 16 Jun 2023)
Arrival ocean ports often had quarantine areas…as did our own Washington:
(U.S. Marine Quarantine Hospital on Diamond Point, between Sequim and Port Townsend 1905.)
In the early 1900s, Spokane County had a “pest house” located in Riverside State Park, near the Bowl and Pitcher, to isolate those with contagious diseases.
Seattle’s “pest house” was on Beacon Hill, a location chosen “due to its proximity to a town dump and a gully used for waste disposal.” The description of this place reads like a horror movie script: “filthy floors, leaky roofs, lacking proper sanitation, totally dilapidated.” (The place was destroyed by fire in 1914 and the site became a golf course. HistoryLink.org, #2157.)
Blessedly, the need for such places disappeared with the advent of vaccines to cure many diseases.
Do watch that YouTube video.
Disclaimer: I snipped this from the James Bay Victoria Beacon newspaper in March 2025 when I visited Butchart Gardens. I thought it was SO GOOD that I had to share. Big thanks, Colin Couper.
Water is required to wipe away dirt, and to clean away the haze,
it only takes a little work and now I look on brighter days.
I can see right through you, I can see through your pane,
you’re really quite special, when we all can see again.
From in the house, you protect me, shield me from the rain and cold,
in the mirror you reflect my image that shows me getting old.
You can totally change my outlook, spectacles correct my outward vision,
You’re even on the Hubble telescope, where you’re grounded to precision.
Now you can hold your liquor, lots of whiskey, wine and beer,
you can be molded in beauty and can be made crystal clear.
You are strong but also you are brittle, both at the same time,
and your character can be shattered, broken at the scene of crime.
As a windshield on the open highway, you keep debris from our eyes,
and sadly, we take you for granted, no longer a bright surprise.
You are truly a unique specimen in society a needed touch of class,
so, to you we raise our drinking vessels as we thank, and toast you, Mr. Glass.
Thanks to Ice Storm ’96, the Moore-Turner Heritage Garden was rediscovered. Built between 1889 and 1932 as a residential garden but was largely abandoned in the 1930s and the historic home demolished in 1940. Although the Spokane Parks & Rec Dept acquired the property in 1945, most of what was once a beautiful garden (complete with pond–see above then and now) was lost to memory and time.
Fast forward to today when after extensive research and recovery (and clearing away of Ice Storm debris and plants gone wild), the garden is once again open for visiting. Tiz a small garden; in less than an hour you can walk all the paths (beware: they’re mostly uphill).Washington boasts many similar wonderful gardens. Let’s go and aren’t we lucky!!
* Seattle – Dunn Garden * Seattle – Highland SeaTac Botannical Garden* Seattle – Japanese Garden* Seattle – Chinese Garden* Spokane – Manito Park Garden* Yakima – Ohme Gardens* Federal Way – Powells Garden* Bainbridge Island – Bloedel Reserve Garden* Port Angeles – Port Angeles Fine Art Center (is a garden!)