Over the last four or five weeks, I’ve teased a bit about some great project that’s on its way. Well, the teasing is over and our great project has begun! Here it is: we are headed to Missouri on a major research trip . . . but the deal is we are going via Amtrak [...]
Over the last few days, I’ve been examining the family of my great-grandfather James William Long (1866-1945). When I first described his parents and siblings from the 1870 census of Shawnee, Kansas, I identified his then-two year old sister as “Regetha.” I was reading the names from an image provided by a certain large Utah-based [...]
This week we resolved the question of whether I’d been researching “wrong Longs” as the parents of my great-grandfather, James William Long. I said that in an upcoming post we’d show how we did that. Out here in the hinterlands, the NGS NewsMagazine arrived a couple of days ago. As usual, it’s got a number [...]
A few days ago, I wondered if I’d been pursuing the wrong set of parents and siblings for my great-grandfather, James William Long. The catalyst for this musing was information on my great-grandfather’s death certificate which I had just received. Now I have concluded that I was following the “wrong Longs.” In a upcoming post, [...]
The discovery of my great-grandfather’s death certificate has raised a number of issues, the first of which is that I may have been researching the wrong family as my great-grandfather’s parents and siblings. How could that happen? Easy. Just watch this. My great-grandfather’s name was James William Long. I assumed for my initial research purposes [...]
The Missouri Death Certificate Project, that is! With no fanfare, Missouri has now posted images for the years 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, and 1949. That leaves 1933-1944 without images. Congratulations to the Missouri State Archives, the Friends of the State Archives, and all the volunteers who are working on the project! UPDATE (5/14/07, 10:04 PM [...]
I’ve mentioned that the Summer 2007 Research Trip might be to Northwest Missouri. At the moment, the matter of such a trip is on hold for a variety of reasons; however, I thought it would be a useful exercise. My maternal Gines ancestors moved to Kansas City from Shreveport about a hundred years ago. Some [...]
Back in cyber-Kansas today, I run into a couple of intriguing issues. To understand them, we need to go back a little bit. Harriet Mitchell Sometime ago, we were looking for the parents of Ezekiel Johnson. And we found a death certificate which listed his parents as Dan Carpenter and Harriet Mitchell. We subsequently discovered [...]
Continue reading about Kansas: Rise Above the Noise and Confusion . . .
Abelard Guthrie was a Kansas “Free-stater” and key founder of the historic town of Quindaro. He was the first Congressional Delegate from Nebraska Territory after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The following is a biographical and genealogical sketch of Guthrie from The Provisional Government of Nebraska Territory and The Journals of William Walker, [...]
A few days ago we reviewed our Fifth Grade history about the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and its de facto repeal with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. These two pieces of legislation effectively turned Kansas into the first battlefield of the Civil War long before the secession of the Southern states. People [...]
