Birding

The wait seemed forever until the migrating warblers would start coming through. That's my favorite time of the year (except for vacation!) The birds are here and they are beautiful! We spent a few hours on May 3, 5, and 6th walking the trails to see what would flutter around us. Without binoculars you probably wouldn't even notice those tiny little warblers hopping through the thickets and tree tops. They are ghostly movements that are gone before your eyes focus. But bring up a pair of good binoculars and they shine like gold. My favorite is the Magnolia Warbler. The Black Throated Green Warbler is gorgeous, too. Last year we saw lots of Black Throated Blue Warblers in Scott Park but I only saw one from a distance so far this year. We got serenaded by an American Redstart yesterday in Scott Park. What a beautiful bird they are, too. Next week is the Festival of Birds here in Erie. It is the one time we don't go to the peninsula. We like birding alone. We like quiet, just us and the birds. Each year, though, we are softening our stance on whether to go or not. The speakers would be very interesting. The one that is held in West Virginia has me interested, too, if it weren't for the rustic accommodations. We just aren't quite ready to do the festival thing. However, we did go to the Nature Pilgrimage in Allegany State Park in New York a few years ago. It was really interesting and we learned a lot. I saw my first Cuckoo bird there that day. Well here is the video that was salvageable from our outing showing some of the birds. The female Pileated was awesome. She really works the woods. The warblers are just horrible to try and film. They bop along and very seldom are still. The American Redstart was very cooperative, though.

The 1940 Census Results

The 1940s census did provide some surprises in my ancestry research. I got one last name of a child that was living with my grandfather and his new wife in Chicago. That last name gave me his new wife's last name before she married my grandfather and from there I found their marriage certificate using her name that I couldn't find before because it was indexed as Horman instead of Norman in the South Dakota marriage registry. And from there the information just came snowballing in. It looks like there was no children from that marriage and the only child was from the woman's previous marriage. There doesn't seem to be any half siblings to my dad and thus no new aunts or uncles in my family that I didn't know about. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I almost was excited that I may find some new relatives. There are still 4 years between 1940 and my grandfather's death (accidental shooting in a tavern when the bar owner was showing him his new gun in Chicago.) I guess those will be lost years. In 10 years when the 1950 census comes out, he won't be on it and his wife had remarried and moved. It will be hard to trace to see if there are some children with her. But I did find relatives from the ancestry.com message boards about my French Quebec roots that had moved to Bangor, NY and then to Wisconsin. They have photos. Lots of photos from the 1800s. My family had practically no photos. I'm going to meet one of my distant cousins when I take our vacation. We only have one day to visit and that includes the day I wanted to visit all the cemeteries Wahkon, Isle, Cove, Opstead, Princeton, Milaca and Hopkins, MN where my ancestors are buried. We'll be rushed for sure but it will be so great! Here is a photo of my sister and I on the front steps of my grandmother's (Grace Patterson McCuaig) house in Wahkon, MN back in the early 50s. My sister looks cute, I look extra chubby, the curse I fight every day of my life! At least I had shoes on. My mom told me I was a bean kid. I loved pork and beans and couldn't shovel them into my mouth fast enough. She said I'd scream for more as soon as the spoon came out of my mouth when I was a baby. That is all bean fat on that little body. Mothers, don't let your kids eat pork and beans! Maybe beans are the obesity problem in this nation. :-)

Hector High School 1945

This is another of my genealogy posts. Not of interest to locals, most likely, but to someone whose parents or grandparents graduated from Hector High School, Renville County, Minnesota, it may be the bees knees.

My late mom, Marjorie Seaman, graduated from Hector High School in 1945. We found her graduation photo in a box with other photos of which I have no idea who the people are. But I'm sure they are all from Minnesota and I'm determined to try and identify as many as I can so they are not lost to the ages. At least there are names under the students in this photo. I'm posting this photo because had I not had this photo I would have loved to come across it when researching my family.

This photo will be uploaded full size so you may need to scroll to see all of it. I put a watermark on it so Classmates dot com or that yearbook site don't steal it and try to profit from it. If you are a family member of one of the people in the photo just leave a comment and I'll email you the photo without the watermark on it to add to your ancestry tree. I did find some of the people in some of the records on ancestry dot com but I couldn't find but 2 family trees that had one of these students in them. Girls are hard to find because the maiden names are lost in the records.Some of the guys graduated and probably joined the military even after 1945 because the conflict was still going on against Japan. The Korean War then followed 1950 to 1953. All of these kids' high school years were wwII war years.

USE SCROLL BARS ON RIGHT SIDE AND BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO SEE FULL PHOTO BELOW.

USE SCROLL BAR AT BOTTOM OF PAGE TO SEE ALL OF THE PHOTO.

Tags: Ralph Wilkinson, Arvel Schafer, Arlyn Janke, W R Smythe, Lawrence Pfeil, Keith Duehn, Lloyd Broderius, Normandeane Johnson, Ruby Boss, Marjorie Seaman, Irene Hedberry, Eileen Johnson, Gloria Brede, Paul Wedin, Clinton Johnson, Ilo Mae Krueger or Krueyer, Robert Hanson, Marion Beske, LeRoy Taber, or Le'Roy Tabor, Arthur Newman, Lucille Peterson, Florence Precht, Lorraine Redmann, Donna Anderson, Frances Person, Phyllis Johnson, Inez Clark,

Presque Isle Bubbles

On our weekly drive around Presque Isle this past Sunday we visited the North Pier. Not one person on it. Not one fisherman. I think that is the first time we have been out there this winter where there wasn't someone braving the cold fishing.

It was a pretty dead day out there except for Mercyhurst girls running. It has to be hard running in the cold like that. Their lungs must hurt. Then we came upon some bubble makers. We stopped and watched a while. I think our blood pressure went down a few extra notches which normally happens anyway just getting out to Presque Isle. 

This is great! I love that we are almost having a non existent winter.

I volunteered for "Find A Grave" which is a website where volunteers take photo requests from people for photos of a relative's headstone. People that do genealogy can find these headstones full of information. You can often find birth dates, death dates, who they are married to and their children buried in the same plot by the headstone and the area and sometimes there aren't free accessible records with this info on it so it can be very helpful. Or if someone can't visit a grave for some reason or another, they can, maybe, find some kind of comfort looking at a photo. I think most are for genealogy records, though.

Some photo requests take some detective work. I tramped all over Laurel Hill the other day looking for a specific headstone. Snow covered everything and I left without a photo on my first attempt at photographing for Find A Grave. Rain melted the snow that night and I ran out again the next day. It was wet and slushy and I froze my feet off. The map they have online is hardly useful as it only shows sections, not rows or plots. There are hundreds of graves in a section. I made it my day's exercise. Find it, though, I did. I went home and immediately posted the photos and soon after got a very nice thank-you note from the person who requested it.

It will be a pleasant experience when the weather changes to summer and the birds and flowers are all out. Even in the winter it is an outing to walk and read the headstones. So much history!

Finley, He Just Fell Over Dead

These ancestry entries are just something extra right now. I'll be back to posting my about other things soon.
-------
As I said in my last post, I was set to cancel my free 14-day free trial of Ancestry dot com.  I couldn't do it. I am so hooked on it. I suppose it is just like the people playing that silly-looking farm game on Facebook that, thankfully, I never tried or those people that play for hours on end those X-box games.I love research.


Finley is the brother of my great grandfather. I couldn't find anything much but a listing in the census when he was younger. But then I found a clue. When Finley's father died only 5 of the 7 offspring were still alive to attend the funeral. The obituary listed the 5 still alive that attended. That gave me at least a smaller window of years to  search for Finley as he was not listed as one that was still alive. By his birth date he had to have been under 30 years old when he died. I narrowed the newspaper search and then started scanning just the front-page headlines of the archived online newspapers. I figured if he died under 30 years old it would have been front page news in that little town. And there is was! Yeah!  A 1902 headline that read,
"A Sudden Summons"
"Finley McCuaig Drops Dead at the
Home of His Parents in Greenbush
Monday Night."
"A Sudden Summons and His Untimely 
Death a Shock to His Folks 
and Many Friends."

The detail they go into in these old newspapers! The family gave a minute-by-minute report of his last minutes. The whole town probably wanted to hear all the details. The article goes on to tell of his trip out west where he contracted typhoid  and recovered earlier and how his travel mates had died of typhoid. It was just packed with info. Finley was no longer just a name without any info with it on my family tree. Here is the article. I know this doesn't interest most people. But for people doing ancestry this may be the tidbit they are looking for.

Ancestry and Archives

I took Ancestry.com up on their 14-day free trial. I have been working continuously for 12 of those days, literally all day and night, going to bed at 6 in the morning sometimes and I'll cancel tomorrow so I don't get stuck paying for a year.(editor's note: I went ahead and subscribed, I'm addicted!) I made big strides in my family tree. But there are so many dead ends because they won't release the Census after 1930. Whoever transcribes those records to digitize them has an awful job. I always look at the original record to see what I think it really says because the transcriptions are wrong about 30 percent of the time with my family. I mean, how many ways can you misspell McCuaig?  There are plenty!! Man, all my life people have misspelled my name. And the records online are no better, from M'cuaig, M'Quag to McQuiage, McQuaig, McCuaide, MacQuade, to Mackeg, Macuaig, Macaig one record even had McCusag. Going through archived newspapers up to 1922 from Mille Lacs, Princeton and Bemidji areas in Minnesota was the most fun and I pieced the pieces together and solved a huge part of the puzzle.

My grandmother and grandfather 1915

 

I so enjoyed reading about my grandmother's wedding write-up in the newspaper archive I found online and how my great grand-uncle was mayor of Bemidji for 3 terms. This photo was before that time as he was running for County Commissioner in this photo.It is funny because when I spotted this photo I knew our family still carries some of the characteristics of our ancestors. I see a resemblence. I emailed it to my sister who laughed and agreed. Something about the shape of the head.

I read he was not re-elected as mayor after 1916 because he was accused of being a prohibitionist (though he told the newspaper reporter he was not, just holding up the laws of the land, whatever they were.) Obviously, people wanted to drink and they didn't vote for him.  I was so into these generations of past families of mine that I couldn't stop searching for more information about them and hours went by.  One night it was 1 AM and I found some tidbit leads for more information and decided to search until 1:30 AM and call it a night and the next thing I knew a blast of wind shook the house and knocked me out of the spell and I looked at the clock and 3 hours had passed and I had no idea of it. It was like I was enthralled in a movie.

Then there was the little newspaper write-up making fun of one of my ancestors who sold his "ancient bronchos" to some poor unsuspecting guy who was clearing his land and needing a team of horses.Hmm, where they shysters?

I read about my dad at the age of 6, in 1922, taking what was probably his first ride in an automobile, a 1922 National with 10 people inside with the children. My dad's uncle bought it. What a car! I can picture them riding down the bumpy road, there were no seat belts! This would have been really a special outing because most people in those way-out towns still used horses and most roads in that area weren't paved. The newspaper used to even write about somebody visiting an aunt in another town or if someone came to town to conduct business. That was how everyone kept up with the goings-on back then. No social media needed. The guy delivering the milk often stopped and gave the newspaper the scoop of what people had told him during the day of deliveries.He knew whom was visiting whom and other gossip of the day. My 2-week journey back in time is almost over. I will miss it. My husband will be glad I'm back home.

1922 National

My relative with the National, trading it in for a Chevrolet Baby Grand.
He must have told the milkman because it was put in the paper.


Walter Patterson and his wife Lenora Steinmetz Patterson
Walt was recruited to play professional baseball but he chose Nora instead.
I don't know which team.
I was very young and they were very old but I remember
them. They were happy and laughed a lot.

1908

My Grandma's Crazy Quilt

I was given a crazy quilt.  My mom had given it to my sister who stored it for years and years but no longer had room for it. I said I would take it. It made its way from California to Erie, PA. At first glance it looked great. But upon closer inspection it does have problems.  Some of the silks have deteriorated and the wool ties are coming off. My late mother was very protective of this quilt checking on it from time to time when my sister had it. But something none of us four sisters asked was whose quilt was it?  My mother had said it was Grandma's quilt. Us kid's grandmother or Mom's grandmother?  We don't know, we never asked. So this may be my great-grandma's quilt. The date would be more correct for that, I think. I have searched the internet over and over and looked at literally hundreds of crazy quilts and only 2 I have seen that had similar satin and silks without the fancy embroidery. They both were from the 1880s to 1890s. I'm still searching.

My grandmother lived on a soybean farm near Hector, Minnesota. She had 9 children (my mother the baby of the family) so I doubt she had time to make the fancy version of the crazy quilt with all the embroidery needle work. She was very thrifty, though. She worked from sun-up to sun-down and I never remember her talking to us kids or even sitting down relaxing. She had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I would sit quietly and watch. I would watch her make homemade dark bread, she did her laundry with a wringer washer and hung her clothes on a clothes line. The farm was stuck in the olden days with one toilet in the cold, damp, dark basement.I was afraid of it as a child. They had a pair of draft horses that still worked on the farm in the 1950s.They had lost their first house to a tornado.

REVISED!
**hold the presses!! I just found out today from my dad that the quilt was HIS grandmother's, my great-grandmother Sophia, not my grandmother on my mom's side. Because my mom loved the quilt and was protective of it we assumed it was from her side.

Sophia was from Wahkon, MN and ran  a restaurant, bakery and the Rex Hotel in Wahkon after 1910 and before1925. It is no longer there. My great-grandmother Sophia (Miller or Mueller*) Patterson (Patnode or Patenaude*) was born in Wisconsin (1867)  died (1959.) Her parents came over from Germany (then called Prussia.) Sophia's mother, named (Henrietta) Etty Miller (maiden name of Baustian, born Mecklenburg Germany-Prussia 1830 or 31) was a cook for Prussia's Kaiser Wilhelm 1( b1797-d1888), King of Prussia (reigned-1861-1888.)
*Immigrants in those days wanted to be Americanized and would change their names to the American version. Patnode was changed to Patterson and Mueller was changed to Miller.

They immigrated to America on a sailing ship approx Nov or Dec of 1866 and Sophia was born shortly after they arrived in Wisconsin. Sophia's father was John (Adolphus) Miller (Mueller) (-1826 Mecklenburgh Germany-Prussia.) married Etty approx 1851. Sophia had 2 brothers named Louis Miller (b 1860) and Christopher Miller(b 1862) -both born in Mecklenburgh Germany-Prussia. She had two older brothers that died on the trip over to America and were buried at sea and are not listed on the American census.Sophia also had a younger sister, Vena Miller (born Wisconsin 1869.)


Sophia learned to be a great cook (my dad said, "Boy could she cook!") from her mother (who was one of the cooks for the King of Prussia as noted above) and opened a bakery and ran the Hotel Rex with her husband, Otis Patterson (Pascode-French Canadian she married in Wisconsin.) Otis has a story of his own I'll add at the end of this post after the quilt photos. She also weaved her own fabric and made quilts and rugs as many did in those days. My grandmother and her son, my dad, lived with Sophia at the hotel for a while to help Sophia run the hotel and bakery. She spoke German a lot but also English (her husband, Otis, spoke French and English) and Sophia would tell the many stories to my dad about Germany that her mother had told her. I have vague early childhood memories  of Sophia. My few memories of her were when she was in her 90s when we visited my grandmother. She lived with my grandmother. And that's who made the quilt.

Post continues below photos.
#**ancestry was included for those who may be searching the (Mueller ) Miller or (Patnode-Patenaude) Patterson family lines.

 

As I mentioned above, I'll add a little story about Otis Patterson. When he lived in Marshfield,Wisconsin before moving to Minnesota, he was a hoop barrel maker. He also wrestled. We had heard the story about him wrestling some champion growing up but I never knew who it was he wrestled. I finally found the information. He wrestled Friedrick Beell in Freddy's first professional wrestling debut in 1896. Otis lost but Friedrick Beell went on to become the champion lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight wrestler. He later became a police officer and was killed in the line of duty. This information was obtained off this website:

http://legacyofwrestling.com/Beell.html

So that was my great-grandpa's claim to fame. Another claim to fame was my cousin. A great-grandson of Otis Patterson, Jerry was one of  7 instructors that started Top Gun during the Vietnam war. His full name was Jerry Sawatzky. He died in 1999. His story is included in the book "Scream of Eagles" (not The Screaming Eagles, and not The Scream of Eagles, just Scream of Eagles) by Robert K Wilcox, a book about the special forces and Top Gun.I have read some excerpts from the book and it was really exciting. I'm ordering the book so I can get the whole story!

Yogurt Success

I'm on my um-teenth batch of homemade yogurt.  It turns out every time. Getting that yogurt maker was a great investment. I do strain my yogurt to get the as much whey out as I can because it contains lactose which I'm intolerant or sensitive to. I found that if I take a few tablespoons of my thick, strained yogurt and mix it with some dry, aged Parmesan cheese, a few bacon bits and a little aged cheddar it tastes delicious on a baked potato.  There is so much you can do with the homemade yogurt! Dressing for the salad, add nutra sweet for a desert, I can even make ice cream out of it. I haven't tried that yet but will give hints that I want an ice cream/frozen yogurt maker for Christmas.

Homemade Yogurt

I can't eat yogurt from the store. It has pectin (a plant-based thickener...and laxative) in it as well as artificial sweeteners that I get bloat from like sorbitol or sucralose (Splenda) or other sugar alcohols.* Plus, modern yogurt isn't cultured nearly as long as the old days. They make it more mild and add pectin to keep the whey from separating and make it artificially thicker. I want the whey gone out of my yogurt as the whey has most of the lactose in it and I'm pretty sure it bothers me. I love yogurt and used to make my own back when I had milk goats way back when. That yogurt never bothered me. It had nothing in it but milk and yogurt starter.
* I did find Foge brand yogurt that is just milk and yogurt culture but it was too expensive for me to buy regularly.

So I bought a yogurt maker. I ordered it from Amazon.com and I've had it almost 4 days now. I've made and eaten batch after batch of yogurt using 2% milk and then I bought some instant nonfat dry milk and made some from that. You almost can't tell the difference between the 2% and the instant. I make mine to incubate about 10 hours. I tried one 14 hours and it was very tart, edible but needed more nutrasweet than the other batches. Any less and I'm worried the lactose hasn't been broken down.

I strained it in cheese cloth (not the kind you get at Lowes but the kind you can find at Bed,Bath and Beyond in a small package by the kitchen timers) for a couple of hours and it becomes Greek yogurt. Nice and thick and most of the lactose is gone out of it when the whey was strained off. I beat it with a fork just before I eat it to fluff it up a bit. It has a cream cheese texture and taste after I add some nutrasweet. Just like having a cheese cake dessert. And the best part is I have no reaction at all to eating this homemade yogurt. No bloat, no stomach pain, unlike the store-bought yogurt.

There are lots of websites out there that teach you how to make your own yogurt even without a yogurt maker. They'll have great photos, etc. Google it or search YouTube.  But all you need is:

1. Milk, (quart, half gallon or whatever) heated to 180 degrees, then cooled to 110 degrees (temps are important. Too hot and you kill the yogurt culture.)
2. You have to have yogurt starter.  Buy a small plain yogurt from the store that has live, active culture. Add a couple of tablespoons to the 110 degree milk and mix well.
3. Pour milk into container(s.)
4. Wrap jars or containers of the warm mixture in towels to keep them warm. 
5. Put them in an ice chest and fill any empty spaces with jugs of hot water and put the lid on to keep the heat in. Let it set in a draft-free room for 6 to 8 hours. You don't want the temp to be over 110 degrees or under 90 degrees when incubating. Don't disturb it when incubating as movement can keep it from setting properly. Just relax, it's turning into yogurt.
6. When done you can gently place yogurt into a colander lined with  cheese cloth or coffee filters to drain the whey off. If you like the whey, just refrigerate your jars and enjoy with fruit or honey.
7. Before adding anything, take a couple of tablespoons out and freeze it for your starter of your next batch so you don't have to buy any more yogurt to use as the starter.
8. If it didn't set or turn into yogurt, the mixture was probably kept too hot or too cool and/or the starter culture wasn't live and active.