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Showing posts with the label cemetery

Tell All the Stories, Everywhere

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Research Workshop We had a full house at Friday's Research Workshop, which is what our superstar SKCGS Member Winona calls our Members-only monthly hours at the Kent FamilySearch Center.  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED by David Gurteen: "Research Workshop" Every person with whom I had time to talk, whether new to research or life-long genealogists, talked about the stories they have uncovered and their inner pressure to tell them. Some feel most comfortable telling them only to family members who are interested; others want to put those stories in our Auburn Library Vertical Files, and/or in the files at the White River Museum or other local archives.   Ideas which came up in our conversations included adding those memories, stories, photos and record images to profiles in the FamilySearch Family Tree, on Wikitree  profiles  and even in Ancestry, MyHeritage or other public (or private, but shared with family) trees. Not everyone is comfortable sharing their research onlin...

How Fleeting Life Can Be

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Early in our virtual meeting experiences of 2020 we began attracting visitors from around Washington State as well as other parts of the United States.  Among our visitors was Ron Sailer, a neighbor from the Sno-Isle Genealogical Society in Lynnwood, just north of Seattle. Ron shared information that his great grandfather was buried in the pioneer cemetery here in Auburn and gave us information regarding research that had been done. http://www.auburnpioneercemetery.net/biographies/hopkins.php#.YA9Id-hKiUl .  In February, 2021, we did a blog about the research that had been done, quite extensively, and that more newspaper articles had become available thus showing the progress of research possibilities. https://skcgs.blogspot.com/2021/02/newspaper-research-progress.html A few months ago MaryLynn made contact with Ron again when she found a common link at WikiTree.  Small world! Valorie received The StillyGen newsletter [1] in early January 2023, and read with shock: ...

Ravensdale Reflections, by Barbara Nilson

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  Review:  Ravensdale Reflections: An Oral History , by Barbara Nilson (2004), privately published, undated. In a recent Genealogy Chat, Michele Mattoon, who grew up in Black Diamond, mentioned the book Ravensdale Reflections,  of which I had never heard. It is no longer in print, but Abe Books had a copy. The town of Ravensdale, originally 'Leary' has a rich history beginning before Washington Statehood.  Mine Tragedy This historic photo shows the crowd waiting at the top of the shaft as the bodies are brought out after the Ravensdale mine explosion November 15, 1915, that killed 31 men. (Renton Historical Society collection). Ravensdale History Ravensdale inhabitants asked the Renton author Barbara Nilson to write a book about them and their history, which took her some years of interviews, site visits and extensive research and photographs. There is an interview with the author here:  Local icon reflects on a life of travel and history writing . In an ar...

Memorial Day

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Image by  Suzanne Morris  from  Pixabay   In Flanders Fields BY   JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,      That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw     The torch; be yours to hold it high.     If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow         In Flanders fields. Human need to honor The need to remember our dead seems to be part of our human psyche. From prehistoric and Viking burial mounds to Egyptian tombs and Roman coffins, from Victorian mausoleums to battleground burials and monuments, humans from the beginning hav...

Newspaper Research Progress

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Nearly hidden Pioneer Cemetery   Courtesy Google Maps If you are north bound on Auburn Way North, a main thoroughfare in Auburn, south King County, Washington, and stop for a traffic light, you may glimpse a small cemetery to your right at 8th Street NE.  This is the Auburn Pioneer Cemetery, on land donated for that purpose in 1878.  Grave of a Civil War veteran, M. P. Hopkins Courtesy Kristy Lommen "The marker commemorating the Auburn Pioneer Cemetery’s only Civil War veteran is disappointingly vague. It includes no dates, neither birth nor death. The soldier’s name is included, but in abbreviated form. And to add insult to injury, the sparse information that  is   displayed has been mis-transcribed and published incorrectly on several online genealogy sites. Fortunately, the stone does include the fact that Mr. Hopkins served in Company B of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry—and that single fact was enough information to discover much of his life story."1 Recently the...

Ravensdale Cemetery: Lost in Time (and Bushes)

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In October of 2020, a series of posts in the South King County Genealogical Society Groups mentioned the Ravensdale Cemetery.  Some photos were posted and it got my attention. It was clear that the old cemetery was sorely neglected. It had been vandalized in the 1950’s and stones had been encased by ground cover and other underbrush. I visited the cemetery for the first time, with my husband, on Saturday, 7 November 2020.  Its state was, to say the least, sad. There was evidence that people had been there. The paths were a bit trampled and burned down candles and an empty packet of cigarettes were sitting on the side of a broken and open sarcophagus. In spite of the fact that someone up to no good had recently been there, it was a peaceful place. Restoration? I was hooked.  Two days prior to my visit, I had made the suggestion to the group that restoring the cemetery might be a good project for SKCGS and I presented a hurriedly composed proposal to the Board. I was given...

Fulfilling a Promise

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By Janet O’Conor Camarata Farmland, Grundy County, Missouri Fulfilling a Promise Placing the Headstone for William Terry Myers  1861-1937 One sunny summer afternoon in 1986, two men and a young boy stood over an unmarked pauper’s grave in a small country cemetery south of Albany and north of Evona in Gentry County, Missouri. It was a drier year than usual, and the grass was already struggling with the heat, humidity and lack of rain. It was a little greener in the south western corner of the cemetery as the course, deep rooted grass was shaded by one lone elm tree on the knoll, next to the boundary fence.  The cemetery was surrounded by small farms in a chain of treeless rolling hills. In the distance could be seen a line of willows crowding the edges of Sampson Creek as it flows into the East Fork of the Grand River. Cemetery photo provided by Blair B. Carmichael. Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA Claude Fish, Lynn Myers and Lynn’s son, Brian stood qu...