HILES'/Kitchen/Dino Updates

So far the week has been somewhat of a whirlwind in many ways. For me, I have experimented with several new items working with genealogy -- tools that I hope will eventually lead me to make some literal and graphic sense out of the huge collection of names and data, for example, just this morning I found a new product that will be fun to illustrate parts of our tree:

If you click on the above you'll see what I mean -- a very attractive way to display the tree. I have just started to experiment so I'll share some more down the way. The program is from Progeny and is called 3D Family Tree -- Progeny has some great products and this is one of them.

Status of the Kitchen Project

I certainly began hearing "noises" again behind the enclosed doors -- and it certainly turned into progress. The worker bees starting bringing in their "fruits" of their labor and it was impressive. For some of the cabinetry it took three and four people to carefully ease them into the house:

You can see what I mean from the hauling to the placing of the cabinets -- they all look stunningly perfect. We are now getting anxious to see the completion, of course. We can tell already that there is going to be so much more room to store things in the kitchen -- which was not true when we moved in . . .

Apple Ellis Island Annie

Today, I listened to a absolutely fantastic webinar. It was presented by Legacy Webinars via their new web location:  www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com. The presenter is really well prepared and knows her subjects. I have read most of her books and look forward to hearing any presentation that she makes.

For many years the identity of the very first person who came through Ellis Island was somehow given to the "wrong" Annie -- Megan Smolenyak used her expertise and resources to uncover the real Annie and followed her through her life.
In the photo above there is a picture that is of Annie as she came through Ellis Island. There is also a picture of the grassy grave (as I have seen in our own family . . .) where eventually a proper marker has been installed.
A very satisfying story and presentation! You might like to check out more of the story at www.MeganSmolenyak.com.

A Tale of Two Cities

I read that book, but this is about having a town named from your surname. Several years ago I when our family was on vacation we were so fortunate to visit the town of HILES, Wisconsin. The waitress at our coffee shop had never met someone named Hiles and called the village historian and he came out and escorted us around -- including to his home which was pretty much like a museum.

But there is a dilemma --

We are lucky (?) enough to have two towns in Wisconsin that are named HILES, one in Wood County and one in Forest County. Above you can see some of the details of each town. The one in Wood County has about 200 residents and the one in Forest County has about 1500 residents.

TownOfHilesWoodCounty   and TownOfHilesForestCounty  so click on each to get all the interesting details. Both Towns were started about the turn of the 1900s by men that I have not been able to tie to our tree -- as yet.

Status of Dino

Well, they said "no-news" was good news and for awhile that was so . . . we did hear some news. Sadly Dino can not be a breeder dog for GDB nor can he be a GDB . . . he was diagnosed with cataracts which automatically removes him from the program . . . BUT we are happy to get him back and raise him past his 17 months of age . . .

We will get Dino back in the next 10 days or so -- we are very happy about that fact, now we just have to care for him . . . we are anxious to do that.

That's a part of our week -- see you all in a few!