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

I Survived Vacation and The Bears !

I arrived back home in Nebraska on Monday after 11 days of wilderness camping in the beautiful state of Wyoming. Bears? Well this year, there were none to be found around our camp. How lucky can I be? Maybe they just didn't like the smell of this granny genealogist!

Our vacation was awesome. The weather was mostly nice and sunny with a couple afternoon rain showers and about 75-80 degrees each day. It did get down to 30 one night in the high Medicine Bows, telling us that winter would soon show its face. YGGG #2 never left the camp site for the whole time except for our daily wildlife drives and exploring of the countryside. My time was spent preparing food, cooking, feeding the campfire or reading. For some unknown reason, I did not get in as much reading and study as I had hoped, but I did spend some quality time with my Swedish books and documents. The quiet time to study was nice-- no phone, tv, computer, knocking at the door or other such intrusions! We were 50 miles from the nearest town and 40 miles just to get cell service. Go Hubby did make the town trip a couple times for ice, adult beverages, checking on work and to check in with and report to YGGG #1. The latter was recovering from her knee surgery while I was out vacationing. We had to keep tabs on her health and, she, being a "town" girl would not have survived the 11 days of no internet anyway! She did say she missed me and our several a day communications while I was gone. Getting back home and to my computer, I had some juicy tidbits of genealogy information from her and others while I was gone. I must have missed that computer more than I thought!

We saw several moose and other wildlife on our daily jaunts into the back country. The highlight of our days were our back country drives and hikes. One of the other neat discoveries was several very old hand hewn log cabins that were scattered throughout many stream bottoms and valleys. I took lots of photos of these and of course we scouted around them all. Most were built in the late 1800's and some into the early 1900's. We assume that most were early claims along the creeks seeking gold and probably many were used for trapping also, as there were and still are lots of beaver etc., in the area. There are old trash piles around nearly every cabin. We turned up broken pieces of pottery, glass, cans, square nails, an old copper boiler and even the front off of a cast iron stove. We couldn't help but to ponder the lives of those early settlers and what they must have gone through to survive in such wilderness. It is still remote and wild and one can only imagine what it was like to try and survive there well over a hundred years ago. Several of the sites are still fairly undisturbed which is amazing. Were there many women, and what about children? I found a tiny "blue willow" lid from a childs dishes set in one remote cabin spot and it was unbroken in the dump area. It is so hard to envision a child in what must have been harsh living conditions.(This area gets way below zero much of the winter, with up to 8 feet of snow at times.) Did these people even winter in the mountains? They must have in order to make a living. I have a new mystery to solve now, as I intend to dig into some records and find more information about the people who once settled this remote area. A genealogist's dream-- as if I didn't already have enough of my own family to find !!!!

The trip overall was great, the guys played horseshoes, we all had fun, ate like kings, read books for a week, and relaxed.

One small glitch in the whole trip--. We have a large sharpei/chow mix dog, Misty, which made the trip this year with us for the first time. She did pretty well as a traveler, and had a good time with us. She is ,however, afraid of the dark and shook each night when the coyotes started to howl. Go Hubby had to use the "Coleman lantern" for her before bed outings as she was afraid of the shadows that the ordinary flashlite made. Our last night there was unsettled as she had a diarrhea problem and on the way home we had to make a stop along the interstate to again get her outside. I am sure we were a funny site to the passers-by. I had to clean her up with the baby wipes as vehicles whizzed by before she could get back in the car. She adores YGGG#1 and should have stayed in North Platte with her and helped her on her way to recovery. They could have "babysat" one another. She for one was glad to be home and has slept the day away today!

The You Go Genealogy Girls now have a whole year of travel and fun together before YGGG #2 returns again to the wilderness.....with the bears!

You Go Genealogy Girls #2, Cheri