From Soup To Nuts!

This last month has certainly been a busy one for this You Go Genealogy Girl. It seems that I am busy all the time with one project or another but not sure whether I have really accomplished much at all. I seem to flit from one thing to another. It is all great fun and of course all the additional tidbits have added to our rich family history.

In the pursuit for more information on my husbands Swedish ancestors I have worked through Genlines and found lots of great new information. One noted surprise was finding the information on the parents of his GGGrandmother. She was born in Loftahammar, Sweden in 1839 and along with her twin sister and other siblings was orphaned at the age 3 1/2 when both her parents drowned on the same day in 1842. Another mystery to be solved and I will be following the eventual journeys of the children. It should be exciting!

Next was another trip to Cheyenne, Wy., planning to house/dog sit for several days while my son was out of town. The poor dogs were kinda lonely by evening as this Go Girl took advantage of the time to do some research there. The Laramie County Library, which is very new, has a wonderful genealogy room for research. Mom and I spent one afternoon there perusing records.
Our next stop was the Wyoming state archives to order a divorce record. Once accomplished, we hurried home to her house to work on the computer and upload some photos to her tree on Ancestry. The next day brought a lunch date with a cousin who is a professional genealogist of note. We had a great visit, she gave me some useful tips on my Legacy program and then took us over to the archives. She showed us all around there and told us just how to use the facilities and records. It was great and she was so kind to take time to teach us! We stayed there all afternoon.

We have been working on a distant line connected to my husband and one of his cousins. The cousin requested some work from Mom and she has been diligently working on this for some time. We found lots of goodies in the archives of Wyoming. John "Posey" Ryan had murdered his second wife and grown step daughter in 1909. He had an extremely interesting history: Irish immigrant, civil war vet, teamster with the US Infantry into Indian country, part of the Carrington Expediton to establish forts along the Bozeman Trail and into the Dakotas, and was a well documented figure in Wyoming history. His first wife was a Native American with whom he had several children. These are the connections to our family. All of them went on to lead prominent lives within Wyoming and the Dakotas. "Posey" had been a fairly well to do man, having just purchased one of the first "new" autos in Platte Co., Wyoming at the time of the murders. His victims had some questionable dealings and backgrounds themselves before they supposedly cheated the old man out of his wealth and relocated to Cheyenne. We followed his life, trial in 1909, life conviction, governor's pardon after having served 10 years, and his death in 1929. He was really quite an interesting find and despite the murders, we couldn't help but have sympathy for the old man. He lived out his life in a nursing home in Buffalo, Wyoming and died while holding & caring for a baby while sitting in his car downtown. Despite the murders in his past, "Posey" Ryan had many friends and was actually quite well thought of by all accounts of his life.

Returning home, I have spent several days working in collaboration with Mom on some of our Hopkins lines that settled in Tippah Co., Mississippi. New discoveries there and many more mysteries yet to be solved. Silas Travis Hopkins and his wife Jane Salinas Buchanan were just some of the early family there. We discovered that present day Walnut, Miss., was first named "Hopkins", and another settlement very nearby went by" Hopkinsville". Roads are also named for the family in the area. A mix up in the delivery of and order of whiskey to a store owned by Silas Hopkins brought on the decision to change the name of Hopkins to "Walnut". Silas Hopkins and his wife were buried in the Mitchell Cemetery in Walnut, Mississippi in the late 1800's and during the 1920's or 30's this cemetery was plowed over to build a house and the graves were not known to have been moved. The stones were thought to have been thrown in a gully very near and some used in the construction of the home. There seems to be a project to try and recover this history so maybe we can get involved in that as it progresses. As a thought: How many of us would like to build our new home on top of a known cemetery?

You Go Genealogy Girl #1 is teaching a day long genealogy seminar in North Platte, Nebraska on Oct 10th, so I will hopefully be on the go again soon. I hope to attend the seminar to learn more and "the girls" have many more projects to tackle while I visit her home. We always have fun, learn a lot, laugh often, and of course eat a few of those lovely jelly beans that keep us fueled up and going!

It may be a long winter so we need to gear up soon with our projects. By the way, we have already planned our next 2 week long research trip for Salt Lake and the Family History Library for in the Spring.. We can't wait!

The You Go Genealogy Girl #2, Cheri