Diana’s First Christmas, 1976


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].


Thirty years ago this month, this was the scene somewhere in Medina County, Ohio. According to the captions in my baby book:

July 4, 1976 was your first holiday but I am saving this place for Christmas.
[Page Title: “My First Holidays”]

You were 8 months old and you were in awe. On the 27th you got the croop and bronchitis and spent 11 days in the hospital.

Gifts: Raggedy Ann, dress and leotards [tights], two squeeky toys, and a teddy bear (at the hospital).

Santa was played by Butch’s brother Bill.

Mom also wrote about Christmas Eve in the baby diary:

December 24, 1976: Just got back from Gramma Dobbins. Took a picture of your dad and his girl got real mad. Gean got you a Raggedy Ann.

Later – Everyone was fussing over you saying how cute you are. Bonnie got you a little dress and leotards and she got Grannie [Memaw] and Mom a juice set. It was after midnight when you went to sleep so I’m tired. I was going to watch “The Blue Bird,” a Shirley Temple movie, but you have really worn me out.

I love you, good night.
Mom

In addition to all this, I’d just like to mention that the plastic Santa suit with the beard made of quilt batting is so trés 70’s. Way to go, Uncle Bill! 🙂

An Open Letter To My Father

Dear Butch,
Dear “Dad,”
Dear Robert,

Hello,

We’ve never officially met. Not that I could remember, anyway. I’m sure you know who I am, though.

You and my mom were an item back in 1975, until she got pregnant. From how I’ve heard it told, you offered to pay for her to have an abortion. I’m a little unclear as to whether that was before or after you two broke up. It doesn’t matter at this point, though, since she refused, and subsequently lost a paternity suit against you.

At any rate, you know who I am, even though we’ve never met. I honestly don’t know much about you, although your family is pretty cool and always accepted me as one of their own. Whatever. Like I said, it doesn’t matter at this point.

I’ve thought over the years about what I’d like to say to you, if I ever happened to be in the same room as you, or if I could ever get up the nerve to look you up in the phone book and find your address to write to you. Since I think I’m fairly safe here on the internet — since hundreds of friends and strangers will read this, but the likelihood of you actually finding it is slim to none — I choose to make this my venue to say what needs saying.
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Hooray For My Tax Dollars At Work

I’d just like to say that I am an incredible dork for not having signed up for a Lucas County library card sooner.

You know how I’ve been subscribing to the Ancestry.com U.S. Census collection for, like, $70 a year or something? Well… it turns out that HeritageQuest Online, available from the Toledo-Lucas County Libraries website, also has census images available. HeritageQuest also offers a search of PERSI, the PERiodical Source Index; books; Revolutionary War pensions and records, and others.

Apart from HeritageQuest, the library also subscribes to America’s Obituaries & Death Notices, various biography collections, several newspaper archives, Sanborn Maps (holy crap! sweet!), and WorldCat, of course.

*facepalm*

I totally need to cancel my Ancestry.com subscription. And go look for that Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Chipley, Florida in the 1930’s Sanborn maps from cities in the state of Ohio.

Help From the Genealogy Guys

I’ve left voicemails and e-mailed comments in to podcasts before, but I still go all a-squee when I hear MY E-MAIL being read on the air, so to speak.

Last week, I e-mailed the Genealogy Guys about finding Great-Aunt Phoebe’s service station. (Actually, she’s my great-great-aunt, but who’s counting?) Today, I listened to George and Drew give me (and hundreds of other genealogy buffs) some clues about where to go next:

  1. City directories? Establish the year it was founded and the year it went out of business or changed hands.
  2. Land and property records; perhaps a mortgage?
  3. Florida Secretary of State: Bureau of Measurements’ annual inspections, incorporations.
  4. Florida State Archives for archived gov’t records?
  5. Local genealogical society or historical societies
  6. Sanborn fire insurance maps? Chipley might not be large enough of a city to appear in one of those.

So, that gives me a pretty good start. The city directories were something I’d thought of myself, but I hadn’t considered going to the Secretary of State. Good idea, George!

Other fun things: Drew actually pronounced “Schnuth” correctly, and George started out by giving a mini-plug of my podcast, as I’d decided to sign my e-mail with my podcast’s name, as well as my own. Any publicity I can get is fine with me. 🙂

I’m off to go search for some Washington County libraries online…

Pictures To Prove It

As we were swapping family photos over e-mail, a newly-discovered relative of mine told me, “I love photos also. In fact, when I am doing work on a family, I like to have their photo to look at. I think it brings reality to the numbers.”

I took that to heart this week and decided to research one particular photo I’d found online a few years ago. My great-great-grandmother, Grannie Maudie, two of her sisters, and her daughter pose in front of a 1940’s era service station. From what I read, Maudie’s sister, Phoebe, actually owned the station, but the researcher who posted the information didn’t know where the station was located.

Luckily, I discovered this back in 2001, and had plenty of time to approach Memaw about it before she passed. Maudie was Memaw’s grandmother, and Memaw had spoken enough about “they was a bunch of girls in that family” that I figured she might know something about the service station. After all, she used to say that Aunt Miney (MY-knee) was the first person in the family to own a car, and I believe she said it was a Model T. (I’m still not sure who Aunt Miney is, but I’ll piece it together someday.) So, I wasn’t surprised when she knew exactly what I was talking about, and told me that the station had been out on Route 10.

After that, I didn’t think about the service station for quite some time. I always knew I’d come back to it eventually, though.

This week, as I was pulling out family photos to inspire me in my genealogical research, I came across a print of the service station picture, and decided that I wanted to make it the cornerstone of my current project. I want to get as much information as possible about the women in the photograph, the service station, and how it came to be.

In getting my facts straight, I realized that I’d had a couple people recorded in the wrong families entirely, and that I didn’t have much information on these ladies. I had dates, thanks to Mrs. Smith’s research, but no sources. And I’ve become a stickler for sources lately.

So, tonight, I’m requesting death certificates for three of the four women in the picture: Phoebe, Delia, and Ida. I already have Maudie’s. I’m hoping to see whether they had Social Security Numbers — if they did, I can order up their Social Security Applications. Those will tell me where they were employed, if anywhere, at the time they applied for the SSN; their home address; their places of birth and their parents’ names; and a few other random goodies. Unfortunately, I’m fairly positive that Maudie never had a SSN, as her death certificate lists none, and she died in 1950, before it became mandatory for all U.S. residents to have a SSN. Phoebe also died relatively young, in 1957, at the age of 64; however, she may have had to have a SSN, since she was the owner of the service station. I have high hopes for Ida and Delia having SSNs, as they seem to have survived a little longer, and I think I’ve found them both in the Social Security Death Index.

I think I’ve geeked out on genealogy long enough for one night. I’m off to write three $5 checks to the Florida Department of Vital Statistics, record the requests in my research log, and get them ready to go in the mail tomorrow.

I’m hoping that having some focus in my research will help me untangle this confusing web of multiple marriages and not-quite-legal adoptions and divorces and separations and step-children and OMG. Why couldn’t these women be a little less strong-willed and a little more marriageable? 😉