Which County was that?

 

I found a link that has an index of lot of Oklahoma county court records from way back in state history. At least back to 1900 in many cases.

Oklahoma On Demand Court Records

The district court records are more recent.

The records are not detailed but I have successfully found the county that several of my ancestors were married in that I did not have before and can now apply for a copy of the marriage license from that county courthouse. It does not have the big counties (Oklahoma and Tulsa) but is very good outside that range.

Moved!

Well, our move to the new house is “completed”. If we can’t find anything we say “it’s in a box”. I don’t know how long it will take to get back to this but hopefully we can get our breath back early in ‘09.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Glue – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I have quite a few old pictures from some family albums. Some have come loose from the pages on their own but most stubbornly refuse to let go and when they do release they almost invariably take the black cardboard from the picture album with them. Of course that makes them impossible to read the captions on the back.

So for Glue:

The Good: They are in glued into an album so I have access to them. I am grateful that they are available in any form.

The Bad: I can’t read the back of the photo in many cases to see what may be written there.

The Ugly: I tried plain water. It worked, after a fashion, just a few drops softened the glue and I could scrape it off (hence the ugly). The picture appears to have come through fine although I hesitate to use this technique on all the photos.

One thing, upon reading the caption on a photo that I cleaned, I found that it was not the two people that I expected it to be. Sigh…. I guess I will be **carefully* cleaning more photo backs.

PS – If you know how to safely remove glued on cardboard from the backs of photos, please let me know.

Fact or Fiction?

It is fascinating to me how stories about ancestors can be treated as facts. And in many cases, as more than facts, it almost amounts to a religious experience that a certain story must be true.  Here are some stories and the facts (at least as far as I can determine them)

1. So-and-So, ancestor,  is full-blooded indian.  FICTION – This was a case of just looking at the names on the indian roll and assuming that the same-name meant the same-person.

2. So-and-So, ancestor, killed someone and fled to another state changing their identity. POSSIBLE but not proven. Some mysterious facts have changed on a couple of ancestors at particular times (such as place of birth, age, etc)

3. So-and-So, ancestor, was buried in a cave with treasure. FACT – if by treasure you mean several Demijohns of Peach Brandy. John Wilson was buried in Wilson cave in Miller county, Missouri in 1856 with Peach Brandy that he wanted his friends to come back in 7 years and drink. Unfortunately, vandals had broken into the cave and stolen the brandy before the 7 years were up.

The Flu Epidemic of 1929

I found one of my wife’s ancestors had died of Influenza in 1929. I knew that the great influenza pandemic of 1919 killed millions but didn’t know about the one in 1929. I found an interesting ,although fairly technical, article on this epidemic in the archives of the American Journal of Public Health (the link is here ) that gives some information about where the worst effects of the epidemic were felt and compares the size with the 1919 event.

(If the article doesn’t load automatically you may have to select the “Begin Manual Download” option. )

Moving Day

Not my physical move, that is not for another 59 days. I wanted to organize the information collected here a little differently and this site lent itself to that in a way that I liked better. So I am moving over here.