The Northwest Genealogy Conference is August 17-19 and features four major speakers, but also several other excellent speakers. Wednesday the 16th will be a free day for beginning genealogists and local society information. More information on that here.
Here are three of the speakers that will be at the Northwest Genealogy Conference in August:
Con su permisio (with your permission), I’d like to continue with snips from the M.W.A.K. Columbian, the newsletter of the Mason Walsh Atkinson Kier Company, builders of Grand Coulee Dam, for their employees housed in the company town of Mason City.
One issue featured a list of Ways To Keep From Growing Old:
(Remember, this is advice for the workers on the dam.)
This bit of sage advice was followed by jokes: Teacher: “Spell straight.” Johnny: “S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T.” Teacher: “Good! Now what does it mean?” Johnny, “Without Ginger Ale!”
Little Mary comes home from Sunday School and was asked by her mother what she had learned. Mary replied, “Oh, we learned all about King Solomon and his cucumber vines.”
THE GENEALOGICAL FORUM’s
Wednesday Evening
E-News
19 July 2017
For more information visit www.gfo.org, contact us at info@gfo.org, or call our library at 503-963-1932. We love hearing from you!
For a complete GFO CALENDAR click here.
Also, if you missed your free copy of our monthly Insider for July 2017, you’re in luck because we saved you a copy HERE. NOTE: The Insider issues are now located under the “Learn” > “Our Publications” menu at our new website (still gfo.org).
Curious about the status of your GFO Membership?? We’d love to have you as a GFO Member!
***
GFO’s July Star – Judith Leppert
Judith has worn many hats at the GFO and she is still wearing a few of them. (Thank goodness!) She has:
* Moved every book in the library at least four times,
* Served as Director at Large for the past four years,
* Sent cards to members who were ill or had lost a family member,
* Served as GFO Tour Coordinator,
* Coordinated the Treasures Raffle at our seminars,
* Acted as GFO hostess for Open House and other events,
* Taught classes for the Open House,
* Contributes articles for the Bulletin,
* Reviews donated books for the library committee,
* Spends many hours volunteering as an RA,
* Prepared and conducts a training program for new RAs.
She is also our “resident” singer. Many of your contributions will be missed, we’re grateful for the things you will continue doing, and we want to say: THANK YOU JUDITH!
Continue reading
Last Friday, I took some 90-year-old-nearly-blind friends on a road trip up to Newport, Washington, to see one last time where they had grown up. We had a delightful lunch in the Owen’s Grocery & Deli. There I spotted this:
How many of us remember begging Mom for a nickel (a Buffalo head nickel likely) to buy an icy-cold glass bottle of Coca-Cola from a big red tin box like this and then snap off the cap right there on the front of the machine? If you do have a memory of this, please share it!
Wheat. Other than eating it, what do you know about wheat, especially Washington’s wheat??
There was a big article titled “Growing Grains,” all about wheat farming in eastern Washington, in last Sunday’s SpokesmanReview newspaper. The article began: “Long before Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks or Amazon, Washington was known for world-class agriculture. Our soil’s ability to grow so many types of crops makes it one of the nation’s most important farming states.”
Here are some statistics: There are “hundreds of varieties of wheat but they can be classified into six categories: Hard Red Winter, Hard Red Spring, Soft Red Winter, Soft White, Hard White and Duram. The major difference is the protein content and the gluten toughness.” These differences make the difference in bread, bagels, pasta, etc.
Washington beats out the other Northwest states in the number of bushels produced; some 157,200,000 million bushels last year. Some 79% of our wheat is white; and we are fourth on the list of Top Ten Wheat producing states but we exceed nine of them in “average yield of bushels per acre.”
Picture a big semi-circle drawn around the southeastern corner of Washington, encompassing parts of 17 counties; that’s our Washington wheat growing area. This really is a big deal.
Our Washington wheat is exported to markets mainly in the far East….. to the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam and Guatemala and even Yemen.
As you peanut-butter your bread for lunch, do thank a Washington wheat farmer. We’re tops!
On Saturday, July 1st, NeWGS held a very special dedication ceremony at Evergreen Cemetery in Colville to honor and memorialize the burials of four American Civil War veterans. Extensive research by our Evergreen Cemetery Chairperson, Lora Rose, had turned up four Civil War soldiers who are definitely buried in Evergreen but the exact location is unknown since they have no headstones.With the assistance of our local monument maker, Colville Monument Works, a new headstone was created honoring those four soldiers. Emceeing the ceremony to dedicate that stone was Gordy Struve, a member of NeWGS and Sons of the Union Veterans of the CivilWar. Also participating in the ceremony were the Washington CivilWar Association, Artillery Division, and Boy Scout Troop #921. General Ulysses S. Grant (aka Don McConnell) was even in attendance. The stone was placed in the plot already dedicated to honoring our CivilWar soldiers highlighted by the Corse monument originally erected in 1912 through donations by the local school children.
Shucks. Nobody won a WSGS cupcake from answering last week’s mystery question. Nobody knew where the “Scrappy Sasquatch” was located. WELL! It’s in Elbe (near Mount Rainier, west side) and is in a personal roadside sculpture park on State Route 706 on your way to Paradise Lodge and the park. Google “En Nihilo Spirits of Iron Sculpture Park” to see all of Daniel Klennert’s creations.
Today I have a mystery for you of a totally different ilk. I found this wooden carved “thing” floating in Long Lake. This is the Spokane River where a lake has been formed (Long Lake) behind a dam (before continuing on its way into the Columbia River).
The blue glass is there for size comparison. Doing a bit of research, this is the ancient Hindu elephant god Ganesha, “one of the best known objects of devotion in the Hindu religion.” Notice especially the legs and feet positions. It’s carved from some very dark wood and must not have been in the water too long for it was not weathered or rotten a bit.
The mystery is how on earth did THAT get to be floating in Long Lake????? Especially in the lower end stretch, way past the houses and nearer to the dam, floating at lake’s edge amidst the weeds, plastic and driftwood. If you care to make up a story solving this mystery, I’d love to hear from you with said story!
The Northwest Genealogy Conference is August 17-19 and features four major speakers, but also several other excellent speakers. Wednesday the 16th will be a free day for beginning genealogists and local society information. More information on that here.
Here are three of the speakers that will be at the Northwest Genealogy Conference in August:
THE PATRIOT WAR OF 1837-1838
THE FORGOTTEN CONFLICT
Over time, we tend to remember the events that occur in our country based on how much publicity and attention they receive. If we make a point to revisit some of the lesser known times, there is a lot to learn. We are fortunate to have our Society Vice-President, Larry Turner, among folks who has investigated this time in history in conjunction with his genealogical research. He will be sharing his findings and several genealogical sources at our August meeting.
LOWER COLUMBIA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~walcolgs/
SOMERSET RETIREMENT APARTMENTS
2025 TIBBETTS DRIVE, LONGVIEW
DINING ROOM 7:00 PM
August 10, 2017
Visitors are welcome and encouraged to attend.
TIP OF THE WEEK –
USING LOCAL LIBRARIES TO FIND OBITUARIES
While on-line newspaper vendors like GenealogyBank.com and NewspaperArchive.com are terrific resources, these databases often do not have newspapers for the geographical area you are researching. When online sources fail to find an obituary, what is a person to do?
One excellent resource to check with is the local public library in the city, town, or county in which your ancestor died. Provide them with the name, the date of death, and ask them if they have newspapers for that period that they can search for you. Sometimes this query can be done via the local library’s web site. And some local libraries even have links to an obituary index that you can search.
Libraries might charge a nominal fee for this service, but some may provide it for free, especially when they can email you a scanned image of the obituary, rather than mailing it to you.
So don’t forget the local library in the area where your ancestor lived or died can be a valuable resource