Month: July 2010

There are few things as sacred to any nation than the mem­o­ry of its mil­i­tary dead. For the US, one of the most sacred places is Arling­ton Ceme­tery, which almost exclu­sive­ly con­tains the memo­ri­als of our mil­i­tary and high-rank­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers.

This site has been des­e­crat­ed, that it, it has been shorn of its sacred nature by incom­pe­tence, mis-man­age­ment.

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Ever­note, the note-tak­ing and “ele­phant-mem­o­ry” web­site has added a fea­ture they call The Trunk. Behind the Trunk link at the Ever­note web­site is a a list of tools and ven­dors that work with Ever­note.

Ever­note sports desk­top appli­ca­tions for the Mac and for PCs. Addi­tion­al­ly, when you install the Mac or PC ver­sion, you auto­mat­i­cal­ly get clip­pers for Safari and Inter­net Expor­er, respec­tive­ly. Oth­er brows­er exten­sions include:

• The Ever­note Google Chrome Exten­sion
• The Ever­note Fire­fox Add-on

But The Trunk goes way beyond sim­ply stan­dard brows­er plu­g­ins and desk­top apps. The Trunk includes links to mobile apps (Seesmic for iPhone and Android, apps for note tak­ing, and many oth­ers), hard­ware (scan­ners, wire­less SD pho­to cards), and gear (t‑shirts, books, actu­al phys­i­cal note­books).

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You know the peo­ple I’m talk­ing about.

You meet them all the time.

They say, “Oh, I’m not inter­est­ed in geneal­o­gy. What could you POSSIBLY find inter­est­ing in that?”

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This site, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly the “His­to­ry of the Gra­ham Fam­i­ly” (1899) by David Gra­ham, which is tran­scribed here, is being archived at the Library of Con­gress.

About the Library of Con­gress Web Archiv­ing pro­gram, the LOC writes: “The Library’s tra­di­tion­al func­tions of acquir­ing, cat­a­loging, pre­serv­ing and serv­ing col­lec­tion mate­ri­als of his­tor­i­cal impor­tance to the Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple to fos­ter edu­ca­tion and schol­ar­ship extend to dig­i­tal mate­ri­als, includ­ing Web sites.” They will be archiv­ing por­tions of this site for online (web) as well as offline (intranet) use.

We are pleased to be able to offer this con­tent to researchers free of cost, and to allow the infor­ma­tion to be dis­sem­i­nat­ed by a pub­lic insti­tu­tion as respect­ed and far reach­ing as the Library of Con­gress.

I hope every­one had a hap­py 4th of July, and that they spent some of the day hon­or­ing those who came before and made our free­doms pos­si­ble.

I am think­ing espe­cial­ly of a set of mil­i­tary broth­ers tonight:

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View Migra­tions of the Gregg and John­son Fam­i­ly in a larg­er map

I am plot­ting the migra­tion path of three gen­er­a­tions of my fam­i­ly on the attached Google map. This map will help me visu­al­ize the migra­tions. (I have allowed Google to use cur­rent road data, so the rout­ing is based on today’s roads, and not the rivers, canals, rail­roads, and wag­on roads of the past.)

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A while back, I cre­at­ed a Vital Records Check­list to cat­a­log all the obvi­ous records I had, and the ones I need­ed, to flesh out the most rudi­men­ta­ry data, the births, mar­riages, and deaths of my ances­tors.

This led to my send­ing out a request to the Clerk of the Val­ley Coun­ty, Nebras­ka Court (http://www.co.valley.ne.us/clerk.html) has sent my the mar­riage cer­tifi­cate for my grand­par­ents, Helen Kjer­s­tine JOHNSON and Ernest Melvin HILL.

The doc­u­ment con­firms the rela­tion­ship of Ernest Melvin HILL with Mary Jane SCOTT (his moth­er) and Alvin Leslie HILL (his father), and out­side of cen­sus records, is the ear­li­est doc­u­ment I have found that does this. (My grand­fa­ther was born in 1895, which was pri­or to birth reg­is­tra­tion in Nebras­ka, and he died in 1933, before Social Secu­ri­ty Reg­is­tra­tion required folks to get delayed birth cer­tifi­cates.

Wit­ness­es at the wed­ding includ­ed Helen’s mater­nal uncle, “W. B. Gregg” (William Blake­way GREGG) and Ernest’s broth­er Alfred L. HILL.

It’s curi­ous to me if there was a rea­son that none of the three liv­ing par­ents of the cou­ple (Nels JOHNSON, father of Helen, and Mary Jane and Alvin) were list­ed as wit­ness­es. Of course, the form only asks for two wit­ness­es. And these were an old­er cou­ple (Helen was 30 and Ernest 29) at their first mar­riage, but one won­ders.

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