Organizing Historical and Genealogical Research

This is all of the research for the book I am writing, with the exception of maps. Notebooks are the backbone of my organizational system. I started out by keeping everything in one notebook, but when the newspaper articles filled the notebook I divided it into two notebooks.

The Newspaper Notebook on the right contains copies of newspaper articles gleaned from hours of staring at the microfilm reader at the Salida Regional Library and at home from the Digitized Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection. Each article is placed in a page protector and arranged in chronological order.

I also have a computer database sorted by date, name, place, event and source. Each article and court event is documented in the database.

The Biographical Notebook contains photographs and genealogical information on all of the people involved in the story. This includes my great-great-uncle, his partner who was lynched, the widow, the cattlemen behind the lynching, the judges, and the lawyers. Census records, land records, cattle brands, obituaries, anything that could be used to glean more information is included in this notebook and organized alphabetically by name.

Because the story involves more than twelve court cases, trying to make sense of the records and organize them was key. I discovered legal-size expanding wallet files in various colors and began using them. I gave each county a color. In the upper-left corner, I wrote the county and the court (county or district) and the case numbers included in the file. The name of the case is in the center - The People vs. Ernest Christison et. al. In the upper-right corner, a short description of the documents in the file helps me locate important documents.

Inside the court case files, I typed up a brief for each case that includes the date, the type of document or court action, and where the copy of the document can be found. Some of the documents are in the research notebook and not in the file.

Notes and other information that didn't necessarily belong in the categories of one of the notebooks are now contained in a clear plastic box. Also early drafts of some chapters are here.

Finally, I have a purple Research Notebook that has the photo of my great-great-uncle Ernest Christison on the front. This is the notebook I take with me when I do research. It is divided into sections.

• Section 1 is a bibliography of every book, manuscript and court case I've researched.
• Section 2 contains addresses of archives, museums, and libraries along with operating hours, phone numbers, and a map of how to get there.
• Section 3 is a print-out of the events from my historical research database.
• Section 4 contains a page for each research repository and what information I am looking for there. Sometimes I can find information on-line through card catalogs or databases that give me an idea of what to search for there. This also keeps me from looking again for information I've already attempted to find.

Genealogy and Writing Be-Attitudes for 2013

Fireworks on Pikes Peak January 1, 2013

On January 1, 2010, I wrote these "non-resolutions" for the type of genealogist I wanted to be. When I looked at them today, I realized they are exactly who I want to be in 2013 as a genealogist and writer.   

• Be curious and see where the next computer click, phone call, e-mail, turn in the road will take me.
• Be courageous and follow up on what I find. Make the phone call, set the date, make the drive, meet new people.
• Be faithful and stay on track. Write the book, do the research, enter the data.
• Be true to myself. Write the way I write, research the way I research, and don't compare myself to others. 
• Be open to new opportunities, new people, new ideas. 
• Be courteous to others and respect their stories. Remember that the pioneers I research and write about have family today who may not know the whole story and who have their own family stories.

Finding Cookbooks in the West

Today I welcome guest blogger Gena Philbert-Ortega! Gena has a new book out - From The Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes. I met Gena a couple of years ago at the Colorado Family History Expo and we have kept in contact through Facebook. I've also enjoyed her blog Food. Family. Ephemera.

Social history helps to make family history research more interesting. However, social history, specifically food history is not something that can be easily incorporated into every genealogist’s research. What if you don’t have any recipes handed down from your family? How can you incorporate food history into your family history? One way is to explore cookbooks from the era or place that your ancestor lived in.

There are different types of cookbooks and while perusing any vintage cookbook will provide you with ideas about what foods were available and cooking methods, community cookbooks might provide you with a better idea of what your ancestor may have actually ate. Community cookbooks also referred to as church or fundraising cookbooks will be your best bet for finding recipes. Cookbooks were published by religious, benevolent and membership groups to raise money. In many cases being included in a community cookbook might be one of the only times a woman’s name would appear in print. It stands to reason that the recipes a woman contributed would be among her best. Recipes that she actually cooked for her family and friends and that she may have even been known for.

The other benefit of community cookbooks is that they contain so much more than just recipes. They often include advertisements from local businesses. These ads helped finance the publishing of the cookbook. Together these advertisements are like having a business directory within the cookbook. While most community cookbooks provide standardized information, there are ones that provide histories of the organization, provide street addresses, photos and more.

So where can you find community cookbooks for women in the west? While community cookbooks have not always been archived because they weren’t seen as having research value, there are libraries and archives that do have collections of them. As you begin your search look for online catalogs of public, private, and academic libraries, archives and museums. Make sure to also consult manuscript collections. These collections can include recipes, cookbooks, menus and food related ephemera.

Some websites  to consider are:

The Library of Congress has a bibliography of community cookbooks, complete with links to digitized copies. American Church, Club, and Community Cookbooks: Selected Titles from the General Collection  http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/SciRefGuides/americancookbooks.html;  is not a comprehensive list but is a place to start.  Make sure to look at the Library of Congress catalog as well for additional titles. One of the cookbooks listed is a Colorado cookbook from 1883 that starts off with the admonition “You can’t cook in Colorado like you did [in the] East.”; http://archive.org/stream/coloradocookbook00denv#page/n1/mode/2up

It’s always a good idea to start with a local public library. Denver Public Library has a few community cookbooks including the 1943 West Side Christian Church Cookbook (Denver) and the 1985 cookbook, A Book of Favorite Recipes by Christian Laity Fellowship. First Christian Church (Loveland). The Los Angeles Public Library has a culinary collection that includes community cookbooks and digitized  menus.

In some cases libraries and archives have worked together to place their catalogs on one website, making it easier for the researcher to search many catalogs at once. Online Archive of California includes 200 academic and public libraries, museums, and archive catalogs. In some of the manuscript collections found in this catalog you will  find community cookbooks as well as family cookbooks. Another similar library catalog is the Mountain West Digital Library.

Texas Women’s University has a Cookbook Collection made up of donations and manuscript collections from cookbook and food ephemera collectors. According to the website, one of the donated collections includes community cookbooks primarily from the northwest. Baylor University in Texas has a collection of community cookbooks from that state.

Some community cookbooks can also be found on digitized book websites like Google Books and InternetArchive. They are not typically categorized by the phrase “community cookbook” so make sure you use other keywords in your search like the city or church name and the word cookbook.

Outside of the Internet there are other places to keep your eye out for community cookbooks. Thrift and antique stores, used and  library bookstores are great places to find these works. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on eBay. By using  search keywords like “church cookbook” or “community cookbook” you will see listings for cookbooks from all over the United States. Try saving a search on the name of the place your ancestor was from to find cookbooks and genealogically relevant documents for that area. However, in some cases the cookbook listings don’t include the place so it might be a good idea to also conduct generic keyword searches using phrases like “community cookbook.”

I write more about using community cookbooks and finding them in my new book, From the Family Kitchen  http://www.shopfamilytree.com/from-the-family-kitchen.

What are some places that you have found community cookbooks? Do you know of any local collections? Have you found your ancestor in a community cookbook?

Family Search Adds Colorado Statewide Marriage Index

Just in time for Valentines Day, Family Search added the Colorado Statewide Marriage Index 1900-1939 to its battery of databases and indexes this week. The index was a WPA Project in the late 1930's and early 1940's. The cards are arranged by the groom's last name.

Go to http://familysearch.org Scroll down the home page to "Browse By Location" and click on "United States." In the left column of this page, click on "Colorado" and "Colorado, Statewide Marriage Index 1900-1939" will appear. Despite the title, marriage records dated before 1900 are in the index as you can see in my great-grandparents index card above.

This collection isn't indexed. Click "Browse Collection" and pick the name range the surname of the groom falls under. You may browse card by card or you can skip to images using the image number box at the top. The image above is number 1753 under Chavez, Jose Abel - Clayton, Bertram T., Jr.

More information about the original card index and the database can be found on the Western History and Genealogy Blog of the Denver Library.

Have fun and good luck!

Dinosaur Bones

 In 1989, I flew to California with my 1 year-old daughter to introduce her to her great-grandparents and family in California and Oregon. While visiting my Grandpa, Ken Christison Sr., at his home in Oregon, he gave me a photograph of dinosaur bones and a wonderful story to go along with it. When Grandpa was sophomore in high school in 1931, a couple of boys on a hike with their teacher, Prof Kessler, and found a section of a dinosaur vertebrae at Garden Park. Garden Park is an area where many dinosaur excavations have taken place since 1877. On October 17, 1931 Prof Kessler returned to the site with his World History class to instruct and demonstrate the proper methods of excavation. My Grandpa was in this class and, therefore, in the photographs taken that day by L.B. Stewart, the art teacher. The story of the discovery and the pictures were published in the Denver Post on November 8, 1931.


Dinosaur Vertebrae Discovered in 1931 by Canon City Students



Canon City World History Class 1931 with Dinosaur Bones
Top Row: (Left to Right) Earl Ford, Kenneth Christison, Rusty Goodman
Next Row: Frances Easton, Willard Morris
Next Row: Opal Darndary, Margaret Akeley
Next Row: Billie Friend, Billie Lee, Lenora Countryman, Marie Knauf
Front Row: Prof Kessler




World History Class in the School Bus
Prof Kessler in front seat with Kenneth Christison

 

This photograph was featured in Monday's Canon City Daily Record on Monday October 3, 2011 with an article titled "The Great Dinosaur Race." Today, Saturday, is National Fossil Day and the Dinosaur Depot celebrated with various activities. June Hines, director of the museum, called me and invited me to come. So, this morning my friends, the Courtrights, and I left Elbert in the snow to drive to Canon City. We were especially looking forward to a walking tour through the Marsh Felch Quarry where the 1931 class found the vertebrae, but the tour was rained out. Instead, tour guide Dan Grenard met us and gave us a fascinating lecture about the history of the Marsh Felch Quarry. Then, he and his wife invited us to her office to show us pictures and maps. 

Prof. Kessler had thought the vertebrae belonged to a Diplodocus, however, Dan Grenard told us today it is believed to be a Camarasaurus (Terry Courtirght told me it's pronounced almost like the car - Camaro). After the bones were found, Prof Kessler contacted the Denver Museum of Natural History. In January of 1933, he wrote again saying was concerned about the decomposition of the bones. J.D. Figgins, Director of the museum, responded and told Prof Kessler to "shovel over the entire specimen 1 1/2 to 2 feet of dirt. Leave the canvas in place and carefully shovel over the entire thing." 

Today I learned the experts believe the segment of vertebrae was never recovered and is still buried with its canvas and dirt covering.If you are interested in learning more about Garden Park, please visit the Hands On The Land website.

My Search for Inez by Guest Blogger Ann Parker

Today I welcome author Ann Parker to Colorado Reflections! Ann is the author of The Silver Rush mystery series set in Leadville, Colorado. I met Ann in Women Writing The West and soon discovered a kindred spirit with central Colorado family ties and a love for researching the history.

Please leave a comment on this post for a chance
to win a book of your choice from Ann's Silver Rush mystery series! 

My Search For Inez

I may be a Californian, born and bred, but my family history reaches into Colorado. It was that history--and a bit of a family mystery as well--that led me to write a historical series set in 1880's Colorado, specifically Leadville.

                                                            Now I shall explain...

My mother and father were both raised in Colorado, and we regularly traveled back as a family for summer vacations, holidays, and so on. I recall Granny (my paternal grandmother, Inez Stannert Parker) telling stories of her life as a young woman in Denver--meeting Grandpa at Elitch Gardens (which were really gardens back then), raising her children: my father, Uncle Walt, and Aunt Dorothy, and so on. But it wasn't until long after she died that my Uncle    Walt told me she had been raised in Leadville.

My first reaction: She what?

Granny had never mentioned Leadville. No stories, nothing. So this was news to me.

My second reaction: What the heck is Leadville?                        

My Uncle Walt, being an engineer in addition to being the family genealogist, immediately began to was enthusiastic about Leadville: "Why it is just the biggest, most amazing mining town in the world! Silver, gold, tin, molybdenum! Oh, Leadville was quite a place, quite a rough town in those days." I was intrigued. Tell me more, I said. Instead, Uncle Walt instructed me to go research Leadville. "I'll bet," he said, "that you could write a story based in Leadville.

Thus instructed, I started to dig into Leadville's past and the rest, as they is history. I did indeed write a "story based in Leadville"--in fact, three of them so far: Silver Lies, Iron Ties, and Leaden Skies. (The fourth, Mercury's Rise, is coming out in November, and although

it has key scenes in Leadville, most of the action takes place in
another Colorado town with a fascinating history: Manitou Springs.)

But, even as I penned my tales, I didn't forget Granny. In fact, I      
named my protagonist after her (with the blessings of the family). I
also continued to wonder about her mysterious life in Leadville.
Where did she live? What was her life like back then? What were
her circumstances? What was the town like in the late 1800's/
early 1900's, when she was growing from a child to a young
woman?

So, even as I researched for fiction, I also mined Leadville's considerable historical and genealogical resources for information 

about the real Inez. (Thank you, Lake County Public Library!)

Over the years, I have uncovered some small bits about her Leadville life. From my Uncle Walt's efforts, I knew she was born in
1886, the eldest daughter of Mary E. Stannert and Lawrence
Stannert, who himself was born in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and
was the eldest of six children (as far as I could tell). Inez had "half-
brother, Harry (the "half" is part of the family legend, but I've been
unable to verify this), and a sister Mary (who, again according to
family legend, was quite a, shall we say, "heck"-raiser in her days).
Thanks to Leadville's collection of city directories and various
 census records, I verified that they lived at 610 West 3rd Street.

Thanks to a cousin, I have a copy of Inez's "Certificate of Attainment," certifying that she satisfactorily completed the Course of Study prescribed for the Grammar Department of the Leadville Public Schools and that she was thus admitted to high school. The certificate is dated January 31, 1902, and is signed by the principal of Central School. Yet, I know well that one of the things she lamented late in life was never graduating from high school. What happened to stop her education? We don't know. We do know sh valued education highly, and made sure that her children "stayed the course." My Uncle Walt became an engineer, my aunt became a legal secretary (this would hav been in the 1930's...well before women were common such fields), and my father became a physician.

Another fascinating tidbit I uncovered was a listing in the 1905 directory that indicated that Inez Stannert was working at the Herald Democrat bindery. Did she leave school for employment? Seems likely. To help support the family? She was living at the same address as her father (and we assume the rest of the clan was there as well). At the same time, Lawrence Stannert is listed as a blacksmith working at the Arkansas Valley Smelter, so it's not as if he was unemployed.

The Stannerts disappear from the Leadville directories after 1906, and Granny met her future husband in 1907 in Denver, and got married in Denver in 1908.

And that's about it. Photos from her time in Leadville are few and far between. I looked through my collection of old family photos and didn't spot any, although I found some dandy ones of other female ancestors. (Or female friends of ancestors. Without names, who knows?) Much of Inez's early life remains a mystery, despite my attempts to glean more about her. So, I did what I could to honor her by giving my character her name. As time goes on, though, I hope I can find out more about the real Inez, even as I continue to create stories for the fictional Inez, spun from my research and my imagination.

Switching From Nonfiction to Fiction

Jane Kirkpatrick sent these salt and pepper shakers to me. They arrived yesterday. Aren't they a hoot? Jane has been a special encourager to me in writing my book. And the first person I turned to when I seriously considered changing the genre of my book. I know I can trust Jane's advice. I have struggled for three years attempting to write a creative nonfiction book with Ernest Christison as the main character. When I finished the rough draft, I felt like I had two books - one nonfiction and one fiction. It was disjointed; it had too many holes that didn't fit into literary nonfiction and I had too many questions to make a judgement for nonfiction.

Ernest's story wouldn't let me go, but another story began to overpower his story. Mary Watkins, a Quaker schoolteacher from Ohio takes on the cattlemen who hanged her husband. What a powerful story! I wrote a part of Mary's story as a short story a couple of years ago and started a novel about Mary last November during NaNoWriMo (write a novel in a month). As I struggled with how to fix the nonfiction book, I opened up the file of the novel I had started. Guess what? It was good. And I seriously considered what the book would look like as fiction. After talking with Jane, I had no qualms about putting the creative nonfiction behind me and writing a historical fiction novel with Mary Watkins as the protagonist. Ernest will also be a main character, so his story will be told, too. The story is true, the events are true and the dialogue and additional scenes will all point to the truth while adding depth to the characters.

Fiction is a new world to me. Now I am reading Writing Fiction For Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and using his Snowflake method for writing a book. I am also reading books on characters and making them come alive. The only thing I don't have to learn about is the plot, that's already set!

P.S. If you haven't read any of Jane Kirkpatrick's books, run to the nearest bookstore or library! Jane writes historical fiction based on real women's lives. Her latest book is A Daughter's Walk based on the true story of a mother and daughter walking across the country in 1896. For more information, visit her website http://jkbooks.com