Ancestral Musings

The census suggests a lot of things, but this one was not something I expected.  I was browsing Ancestry which suggested a hint from the 1930 census for my great-grandparents (my maternal grandmother's parents, northern European ancestry).  I love looking at the census records and I am getting better at reading them for maximum information.  On this particular page, my eye was caught by the oddity that there was only one veteran marked out of all the people on the page, and this veteran, Sanford England, seemed to have served in the Spanish American War, not the Great War as you might have expected.  My great-grandfather was too old to have participated so I wasn't too worried about him but this other fellow who lived five doors down from him on Pacific Highway in the precinct of Tumwater Washington. . . Sanford England was living as a boarder in the home of Edward Scott and his wife and mother-in-law.   He was 59, born in Indiana, while both of his parents...

This prompt has come up in previous years which is kind of a gift really because there are a bunch of favorite photos in my possession and I'm happy to have the opportunity to share them!  This year I am especially happy revisit my photographs because just before Christmas a distant, previously unknown, cousin, sent me a bunch of pictures of people in my branch of our family.   These are amazingly high quality, high resolution, black and white, mostly studio portraits plus some more informal photographs.  The absolutely most remarkable thing about them was that nearly all of them were labeled with the names of the subjects.  Putting faces to names I knew, in some cases, since childhood or learned in the course of researching my family history was a true gift. I haven't scanned these photos yet:  I've just photographed a few of them with my phone camera, but I will try to share a couple of them here.  Thank you Cousin K! This adorable tea party is compr...