Monday, February 11, 2019

Living on the Prairie


Hot summers, cold winters, dirt, bugs, mice, and snakes were an everyday part of living on the prairie during the expansion of our United States. Pioneers moving to the Great Plains soon realized that a log cabin was not going to be built on their homestead. Buffalo grass, a thick grass with heavily matted roots was to the prairie as trees were to the forest. Buffalo grass was the raw material available to build shelters for the new settlers. 
Many pioneers began their life on the prairie in a dugout cut into a hillside later to be expanded on several sides with sod to create a “cozy,” if not very clean, home. As time went on, the settlers would build an actual sod house with a door and windows. The laborious job of cutting sod with a spade was soon replaced with the use of the grasshopper plow that greatly eased the work of building a soddy. Strips cut approximately six inches deep and one foot wide by two feet long were used to build the walls. Laying the sod, grass side down and two to three rows wide, created a wall about three feet thick. A space was left for the door and windows were framed. Every few rows, the direction of the sod was changed to increase the strength of the wall. The roof was made in several ways most commonly by creating a wooden frame, sometimes covered with tar paper or straw, with a thinner layer of sod on top. Eventually, the roof might sprout a spring flower garden. Inside the house, the homeowner might hang cheese cloth from the ceiling to catch the bugs and grass that would drop down on the evening meal.
The sod house was cool in the summer and warm in the winter although susceptible to heavy rain. They lasted a long time, frequently becoming a storage room or barn when a newer home was built. Wood was sparse so most of the soddies were heated with buffalo or cow chips. Eventually the family got used to the smell. Water was precious and hard to come by. Fortunate settlers settled near a spring or stream otherwise it was necessary to dig a well, a chancy and dangerous activity. Winter brought long days of loneliness with the nearest neighbor miles away.
We might think that this life was unimaginable and wonder why anyone would choose to live in this way, but although failure was high, the sodbusters brought settlement to the Great Plains by the early twentieth century thereby helping to expand the United States.
Sources:
“There are no renters here,” Homesteading a Sod House.  Women of the West Museum. http://theautry.org/explore/exhibit/sod/daily.html. (accessed 15 June 2014).
Vick Fite and Nancy Hendrickson, Frontier Traveler, The Kansas Soddy, http://www.frontiertraveler.com/kansas/the-kansas-soddy/. (accessed 15 June 2014).
Sod house. n.d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_house (accessed 15 June 2014).
Homestead Act: The Challenges of Living on the Plains. Nebraskastudies.org, ,  http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0501_0108.html (accessed 15 June 2014).
Homestead National Monument of America. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/home/index.htm (accessed 15 June 2014).

Friday, March 9, 2018

Trying to understand triangulation

 
I am trying to discover how I am related to person M.  We have no surnames in common but have locations in Cheraws District, South Carolina and Woodville, Mississippi in common. 

I used Gedmatch to find all the kits that match Nikki, person M, and me and then painted chromosome 1 using the new DNA Painter (http://dnapainter.com ) These kits match from 113,140,172 to 159,942,204 or parts thereof.

Each of these people is in common with me and M.  This is the only in-common-with segment and it ranges from 13 to 25 cMgs. All of the data are from GEDMatch.  Part of this area is a common pile-up area, see the gray at the top. 

Using the Triangulation tool at GEdmatch, only B, N, M, and me form a triangulated group. M, I, and C are known cousins but are not in our triangulated group.

Why are there not more people who triangulate? Why would A, C, D, E, F, and G not be part of this group?  What about I, J, K, and L? Would this distribution indicate descent from different couples?

Looks like I have research to do. What steps should I take now?

Thursday, March 8, 2018

How are we related Nikki and I?

Over a year ago I was contacted by Nikki in an attempt to discover how we are related.  Nikki and I are not of the same race, she's Black and I'm White.  I've known for a long time that this would eventually happen.  All of my family, both sides, comes from North and South Carolina, through Georgia and into Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana, and Arkansas.  Some of my ancestors owned slaves.  It's a history that is hard to wrap your head around.  You want to respect and think well of your ancestors but the whole institution is hard to accept. 

Nikki and I must be related through slavery.

We have no ancestral names in common but we do have locations.  The Cheraws District of South Carolina and Woodville, Wilkinson, Mississippi. My father's family lived in Woodville and neighboring Amite County, Mississippi and East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.

This is our journey to discover how we are related. 


Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Roots Tech - The Experience

This was the first time I brought my husband to Roots Tech.

Bill has been to NGS, FGS and Jamboree. Usually he spends most of his time in the vender hall and attends a couple classes. He's been known to skip the classes entirely. And, he's been known to stay home. 

This time he decided to join me. 

We got to Salt Lake two days early to have time to work in the Library. I jumped on him for not taking advantage of the people at the Family History Library and what a difference it made. I took him down to the British floor to work on his Mayhew/Mayo line and he met some excellent helpers who lite a fire under him. 

How does this relate to Roots Tech? I wish I had a really good answer for that but it did make a difference in how he viewed the conference. Roots Tech is hard not to like even with zillions of people. The keynotes were a combination of pop culture and family history and definitely worth your time to watch. Remember that all the keynotes and about four classes each day are posted on the Roots Tech website. 

The vender area is the largest I've ever seen at a genealogy conference. It's full of small venders, innovators and book/photo scanners in addition to the normal suspects. We talked to the people at Excelsior College about their "Practicum in Genealogical Research." Also visited The Georgia Genealogical Society about IGHR. Bill's favorite is always American Ancestors. In reality, we visited just about everyone. 

Josh Taylor's class " Tracing Families Online, 15 amazing Tools" was his favorite class, at least the one where he took the most notes. Bill's been attending GSNOCC meetings for years and must not have listened very well, everything seemed new.

He loved the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Hammerstein program. Found the MyHeritage party great fun. Enjoyed meeting Peggy Lauritzen on our drive to Dear Myrtle's after Party and found plenty of people to talk to.

The final vote -- he wants to come back next year. Roots Tech success.

#roottech 





Saturday, February 11, 2017

Friday at RootsTech

LaVar Burton was the highlight of the morning. It's a good thing that this is one of the recorded offerings as we missed some of it. I'll have to catch up at home.

I attended Creating an Effective Research Plan with Angela McGie. She's a great presenter and has a thorough handout.

This time, several attendees asked if they could take pictures of her slides and received the expected, on my part, negative answer. I noticed, throughout the day, that more people asked about taking pictures than yesterday, which is good. There was a lengthy rant on Facebook about the  indiscriminate taking of pictures of slides. This seems to be a problem at RootsTech.  In my opinion it's because the attendees are not regular conference goers.  For many of them this is the only conference they attend. We need to make sure they understand the concept of intellectual property.

I spent lunch wondering the vendor hall. Even bought 10 AncestryDNA kits. It helps to have your husband along.

Military Pension Law with Rich Sayre was my one o'clock class.  That man is a wealth of knowledge.  I wish that I was closer to Washington DC so I could use NARA on a regular basis.

I was somewhat disappointed in Kip Sperry's Finding Your Ancestors in US Church Records. It was very basic. I have trouble finding church records for my ancestors and I need some magic lessons that I don't think exist. Church records are one area where on site research is necessary.

The MyHeritage after party was another unique experience at RootsTech. The  karaoke was fantastic.I wish I had the personality to get up there and sing and dance. I came home with a  souvenir bent spoon from one of the magicians. It's quite art piece. Picture attached. Talked to a number of genealogists.

Tomorrow I'm spending some time in the Library. Too much research...to little time.

#rootstech

Thursday, February 9, 2017

RootsTech Like No Other Conference You've Ever Attended.

Have you ever been to a genealogy conference--a local all day event, Jamboree, NGS, or FGS?

You've seen nothing yet until you've been to RootsTech. RootsTech is unique unto itself and I really do love it.

True, it has things in common with other conferences: keynotes, classes, workshops, luncheons, and a vender area but, where else do 30,000 genealogy enthuseists from beginner to professional get together to share their passion?  If you drop names like Tom Jones or Judy Russell you're just as likely to get a blank stare as an "I love him or her".

Where else do you start the day  with Alvin and the Chipmonks and end it with Rogers and Hammerstein's Climb Every Mountain?

In between I attended some fantastic sessions.

 I started the day with Kitty Cooper and How to Use DNA Triangulation to Confirm Ancestors. She began by asking how many had tested their DNA and invited those who had not to leave, no hurt feelings, this was an advanced class. The man sitting next to me chose to stay even though he said he knew very little about DNA. At the end,  I was delighted and he was totally confused.

I went to the Family Search Luncheon. Nice lunch, nice conversation and an interesting talk including the history and future of the Family History Library. Diane Loosle With her talk Who Moved My Microfilm? The truth behind the library you have always loved assuaged some of my concerns about the loss of books to digitizing.  She talked about the enormous number of linear feet of new books they receive each year and the problem of making decisions about what can stay and what can go - many become digitized.

For my next class I chose one I was sure I would like, Tom Jones' Writing About and Documenting DNA Test Results. Big take away, read all the sample NGSQ articles in the syllabus. Well that and follow all the steps for beginning, middle, and end ( notice the Oxford comma, Tom uses them a lot)

After that I decided to skip my 3 o'clock class and take a look at the vender hall. You can't make it through in an hour so I'll have to go back tomorrow.

My last class was another with Tom Jones Organizing Evidence to Reveal Lineages. Each time I hear him, I learn a little more. I've got two problems that this method could work really well with.

Tonight we topped the day off with the opening event, Music - It Runs in the Family.  

Nothing beats the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the music of Rogers and Hammerstein.

Now it's time for bed. Another big day tomorrow.

#rootstech

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Fathers

In honor of Father's day - pictures of my father and grandfathers.

This is a horrible picture of me on the left but a great picture of my dad holding my sister, Terri. He would be under 40 at this time, probably closer to 35. In the picture below he was about 20. I think this was an ROTC picture although it could be when he first joined the army.

Here is my grandfather, James H. McManus Sr., My father said he was about 25 when this picture was taken.


And my other grandfather, Dr.Milton Lee Orr.


If I had a chance I would talk to each of them about their lives. I know they told me many things but I just do not remember it was all so many years ago that they were gone.