Woke up early Saturday and the rain and thunder had quit. First class was by Judy Russell on That First Trip to the Courthouse. When I saw that in the list of sessions I was not sure if I wanted to spend the six days away and all the other costs associated with attending the conference, but I had read that Judy was an excellent teacher and at the banquet last night that was very evident. For anyone that has never been to a courthouse this is a great session, and Judy uses local laws and local sources to illustrate the power of courthouse research. I started volunteering at our Spokane courthouse in 1998 and still get there a few times each year doing research. My first trip to the Spokane courthouse was on jury duty in 1973 in August and there was no air conditioning in the courthouse then, and it was very hot in the courtroom and even hotter in the jury room. I did not take another picture of Judy so I will recycle the one from last night.
Photo deleted at request of NWGC
Judy joked about her different jacket on Saturday, instead of the red jacket she wore a pink jacket Saturday.
The next two breakout sessions are why I don’t really like breakout sessions a lot of times, I said yesterday one breakout session did not have a single one I was interested in, well on Saturday I wanted to go to THREE sessions in both the morning and afternoon breakouts. I picked Jean Wilcox Hibben’s session on America: Land of the Farm, Home of the Plow since I have so many farmer ancestors. My paternal grandfather and two uncles were farmers and when I was young and it was fun and a little scary to visit those farms. The session showed examples on how America was a land of farmers and so much of what we have today is because of farmers, so do not say your ancestors were just farmers, say proudly your ancestors were farmers. Jean uses music in her presentation, and when I got to the room for the session she was singing a song to loosen up her voice.
Photo deleted at request of NWGC
Judy Russell was next with her session Where There is – or isn’t – a Will. This was a great session with many examples of information in probate packets. I know probate packets can contain a lot of very interesting information. I looked up a probate packet for a researcher and even though the lady that died was a widow and no children she had a lot of small farms her husband had acquired during the depression, so a lot of land, implements and houses to inventory, and the packet contained two appraisals of all the properties and equipment, that took up 80 pages, then there was a lawsuit where the heirs had sued the trustees saying they had valued the property too high and that they had to pay too much inheritance tax. I don’t remember the exact amounts, but the federal tax was just over $100, and the state tax was less than $10. So appraisals of all the property twice more. Then a second lawsuit, the heirs now were suing the trustees saying that they appraised the property TOO LOW and they did not get a fair amount. So appraisals of the property twice more. The probate packet was 365 pages long. The estate had a value in 1940 of about $200,000, so to me seems like they wasted a lot of money on lawyers instead of just distributing the estate.
Next was lunch and it was a sack lunch, I had tuna, chips an apple and two small cookies.
After lunch Judy Russell was back with Order in the Court: Using Court Records in Genealogical Research. The after lunch session is usually hard to keep awake, but Judy did wonders keeping us awake. This was another great session on records found in a courthouse, and she also said to check the higher courts, like courts of appeal and even the supreme court in the state you are researching. Law libraries have those cases available to read. Our local law library was downtown in a rented space for years and years, but since the auditors archive was cleaned out and the original auditors records were sent to the regional state archives at Cheney they put the law library in that space. For a fun marriage record go to the Washington State Digital Archives, type in King for given name and Corn for surname. This was done for the agriculture fair in Spokane that year.
Breakout session I went to was Jean Wilcox Hibben on Fun With Citing Sources, and I should have gotten a balloon, but unless you were there you have no idea why I wanted a balloon. I have not used my computer programs method for citing sources and she stressed that we should. Reason I have not used that is that GEDCOM may not transfer any of those sources if I ever change programs, so I put my sources in the notes, they are harder to find, but will transfer with GEDCOM if I ever change programs.
Last session of the day was with Jean Wilcox Hibben on Field Dependency: A Way to Evaluate Genealogical Sources. A lot of people skipped this session, and it was pretty good, mainly just an extension of her previous session. The parking lot emptied very fast and I headed north to highway 530 as I wanted to go by the Oso slide area, and also it was a little shorter and I was hoping less traffic than going back on I-5.
This was the Oso slide area, it is cleaned up pretty well, and a lot of new trees planted and miles of pvc pipe to water the trees.
I told of the thunder and lightning Friday night, well when I started up the North Cascades
highway to the pass this smoke was two or three small fires burning on the very steep hill.
There was a sign on the road that it had been reported already. Not sure how anyone could get
up close to that fire as it was almost straight up.
Stopped at several overlooks on the way to the top, and took this photo of the road going down
the east side of the pass. Except for a little smoke uneventful trip home.
