Wordless Wednesday - Happy Thanksgiving!

Philip & Kate Bernays & Family
Dudley, Regula II, Regula, Will, Dorothy, Kate, Philip, Anna, Goodwin,
Ralph, Edith, Katherine, Charlie Guild, on porch: Philip and Eva.
The Bernays Home, Los Angeles, California
Thanksgiving Day, 1914

A Nice Surprise

My thanks to Denise Levenick, a.k.a. The Family Curator, for presenting me with the Kreativ Blogger Award. It was a bit exciting for me, and very kind of her. Having said that, onto the 'requirements.'

Seven Things You Might Not Know About Me:

• I am an eighth generation North Carolinian (though I'm not living there right now).
• I lived in Coventry, England for two and a half years and am quite an Anglophile.
• I absolutely adore dogs and almost everything having to do with them and one day hope to be called 'the dog lady'.
• I used to be a Certified Emergency Nurse.
• I love new technology - almost any kind - and love learning about them.
• I can bake a great chocolate cake.
• I love Indian food (lucky for me there are loads of Indian chefs and cooks where I'm living now!)

Blogs that Deserve This Award:

This part is consuming - but lucky for me there are so many good blogs to choose from - now if I can just pry myself away from them long enough to write about them!

• Jean Wilcox Hibben at Circlemending will teach you loads about all kinds of topics
• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star will keep you updated on the latest at FamilySearch (a special thanks for the Wiki article!)
• Free Genealogy Tools is exactly what you'd expect - a great resource
• Phyllis Matthews Ziller at Genwriters will challenge you to write what you know!
• Larry & Marlys make me laugh at Hesch History - and are helping me learn more about Germans in Bohemia.
• Amy at WeTree always has something interesting to read - her blog about Spinster Aunts made re re-evaluate some of my own family searches.
• And when I'm tired and just need a break, I read Chris's entertaining articles at Genealogue

I do know that almost all of these - if not all - have already been awarded the Kreativ Blogger Award too - but I believe they deserve it again! Thanks to all of them for helping me out!

What do you do if you receive the Kreativ Blogger Award?

Like most blogger tags and awards, The Kreativ Blogger Award asks you to tell your blog readers a bit about yourself and then "pass it on" to other blogs. Specifically, write a post announcing that you have been named a Kreativ Blogger by The Family Curator. In your post, list seven things about you that your readers might not know, and then name and link to seven other blogs that you feel are worthy of the Kreativ Blogger Award. You don't have to tell why you are naming these particular blogs, but it is nice to know why they stand out in your book.

Wordless Wednesday - E. Curtis Jones Jr.

Edward Curtis Jones, Jr.
Killed in Action, July 2, 1944

Wordless Wednesday

Nora Hussong Roark Asbell and Carolyn Jones Deller
at the University of Arkansas Graduation, June 3, 1950,
to watch Charles Franklin Deller receive his
Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration

Surname Saturday - Hussong

"Hussong is the Germanized spelling of the French name, Husson, from a pet form of the Old French personal name Hue or Hugh. Hugh is English: from the Old French personal name Hu(gh)e, introduced to Britain by the Normans. This is in origin a short form of any of the various Germanic compound names with the first element hug ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘spirit’... It was a popular personal name among the Normans in England, partly due to the fame of St. Hugh of Lincoln (1140–1200), who was born in Burgundy and who established the first Carthusian monastery in England."

So says Ancestry.com. This has been a difficult family branch to work on. I have a few hints, but nothing substantial. I wrote of Nora Hussong in a previous post. She is my husband's paternal Great-grandmother. I found her in each U.S. Federal Census, 1900 - 1930, and in the Kansas 1895 census. In the 1895 and 1900 census, she lived with George W. Hussong and Elizabeth Hussong, identified as their daughter in the 1900 census. In the 1910 census, she was the wife of George T. Roark, and in the 1920 census she was the wife of William T. Asbell. Her death certificate informant was her son, William T Asbell Jr., who listed her parents as George Husong and Elizabeth Gilbert. So, it would seem I have a positive ID on Nora's parents.

George and Elizabeth Hussong are listed together in the 1880, 1900, 1910 and 1920 U.S. Federal Census records. In every census, George's birthplace is listed as Illinois, his occupation is 'Miner' or 'Mining'. Elizabeth's birthplace is listed as Indiana, and by the 1910 Census, she indicated that she'd had 10 children, 5 of which were living, and they'd been married for 33 years .

I found Elizabeth Hussong's death certificate at the (wonderful) Missouri Digital Heritage website. Jane Hussong Land, Elizabeth's daughter, was the informant. She gave information that indicated Elizabeth's husband was George Hussong. Since Elizabeth Hussong was listed in the 1930 U.S. Federal Census as widowed, this would indicate that he died between 1920 and 1930. I can find George and Elizabeth in census records, but I can't find either one of them in records before they were married. Unfortunately, I can't find George's death certificate in this database. I believe I did say it wasn't a perfect website.

So, I'm having to wait until January and February to do some more sleuthing on this family. Looking for birth records in Galena, Kansas, and death records in either Joplin or Neosho, Missouri. Wish me luck!

Follow Friday - Missouri Digital Heritage

Personally I don't have any relatives from Missouri; in fact, few of my relatives ever left North Carolina once they arrived, so before I started researching my husband's family, I knew very little of other state's resources. Soon enough, I found the Missouri Digital Heritage website, and fell in love. It isn't perfect, no website is. But it certainly made me wish more ancestors had lived and died there. It was the first online web site I found that provided a digital copy of the death certificate that I could actually read and interpret for myself. I'm not downplaying transcribed copies, but we all know that people make mistakes, especially if they're transcribing hundreds of records. The family records are my favorite part of the website, but there's much more that I haven't begun to explore. An introductory paragraph reads,

"Through the Missouri Digital Heritage Initiative, the Missouri State Archives and the Missouri State Library, in partnership with the State Historical Society of Missouri, are assisting institutions across the state in digitizing their records and placing them online for easy access. We invite you to explore our website and to join with us in celebrating our collective past.

If you have any family from this state, you shouldn't miss this gem of a website.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Photographs

Photographs. We take them for granted today. They're everywhere - and considering the many sources for them - digital cameras, cell phones, computers, 'spycams', security cameras, old fashioned film cameras - we're in danger of being overwhelmed with images. But in generations past, they were something special.

When I asked my husband, what he would consider a 'treasure', his first response was this portrait of Dudley Emerson Jones, his Great-great Grandfather.

I admit - I like this photo too. I see the picture of the man who joined the Third Regiment Iowa Volunteer Calvary September 20th, 1861 in Keokuk, Iowa, leaving his wife and two children, one of them less than a year old. I see a man who served his time honorably, appointed First Battalion Quartermaster on entrance to service, promoted First Lieutenant of Company L, May 2, 1862, and mustered out August 9th, 1865.

The war changed Dudley and his family, as it was during their Company's occupation of Little Rock, Arkansas, that showed him the opportunities for business, and convinced him to move there after the war.

This picture is a copy of the original that now is stored in the University of Arkansas Special Collections. Many other pictures and personal papers, were donated in 1995 for the purpose of preservation and research. Now anyone studying a relevant topic, can, with permission, access those papers. [This picture is David in 1995 at the University of Arkansas, behind the portrait of Dudley E. Jones, surrounded by the other pictures and papers.]

Unlike a lot of family members, Dudley wrote a lot about his life. And though I didn't come along in time to look through those papers and pictures before they were donated to the University, I'm still glad they're there, being preserved for future generations.