Hold de Mayo . . .

This is the "Cinco de Mayo" weekend. Growing up in the Midwest this is not a holiday that I ever recall hearing about. It was only after moving to the "West Coast" that I have become aware of it. It can be very festive and fun to see. I feel that it has lost some of the innocence of the celebration as it is celebrated sometimes aggressively in some towns. But never-the-less the weather is beautiful this weekend, and I might enjoy some Mariachi music . . .

The evidence of Springtime though is everywhere here in Healdsburg:

The white roses in front frame the garage and other parts of the house and they are abundant. The California Poppies are blooming all along the roadsides -- "Oh My" and Dino too.

We enjoyed the high 90 degree weather for two or three days along with the a/c. Most afternoons we played Quiddler, poolside while feeding Dino one of his favorite treats -- ice-cubes.

In the evenings we watched baseball that we had recorded which meant that when the last out in an inning was made -- four clicks of the remote started a new inning -- we love that feature. And the San Francisco Giants are doing fairly well so far this spring.

Follow - Up to the Seminar

Last Saturday I spent the day attending the all day Spring Seminar sponsored by the Sonoma County Genealogical Society -- and it was great!

The presenter, Donna, was extremely knowledgeable and a great presenter. She had four lectures that kept our attention for the whole time.

Not only did I learn much -- I won much too. I usually do not win things in raffles but that day I won one of the raffles awarding $25 to be used on Chartmasters ( a website that I enjoy and have purchased many things from in the past).  And then a few minutes later I won another raffle drawing good for $10 off a purchase from the exhibiting bookseller in the lobby . . . I purchased a genealogical dictionary that is excellent and it was on-sale for $10 (marked down from $14.95).

So I wound up netting out my expenses for the day and have a lot to show for it . . .

Dates for Next Week

A lot of important dates for a lot of important folks from the tree:

Best Wishes to all!

And Now --  From the Mailbox:

I received an inquiry from "a cousin" regarding a favorite Uncle of mine so I did some follow-up to "check-it-out":

My Uncle's Uncle . . .

Last post I shared some findings as a result of the 1862 Homestead Act and a land purchase by a HILES relative (Thomas). While searching the BLM site I entered several other surnames into their database to see what I could find and I turned up the following information:

First -- who is my Uncle's Uncle?  Above pictured is my Grandmother's sister, Elsa "Tada" Nelson and her husband Ken Winterscheid.  I always enjoyed being around Uncle Ken & Tada, but that didn't happen all that often. My folks actually in later life moved into their home after Ken's passing to assist Tada in everyday living.
I never knew much about Ken's side of the family until just this past week as I put the "Winterscheid" name into the BLM database.

Up popped "Augustus Winterscheid" who I did not know anything about nor did I know if he was a relative of Ken's. It turns out that he is Ken's Uncle. Above you can see the tree branch showing that.

Augustus was born about two years before Ken's father, George, in Hennepin, Illinois. But it seems that Augustus moved around a lot after growing up.  When Augustus was about 45 years old he was living in South Dakota with his wife and four of their five surviving children.

It was there, in Jordan (Tripp County) South Dakota that Augustus purchased 160 acres of land. The following land description and details came from the BLM site:

It looks like May 8, 1911 the land deal was concluded as described in the above with the legal description appearing in the following:

All under the authority of President William H Taft.

The federal censuses help us keep track of folks every ten years, for which we are so grateful:

Above, from Ancestry.com, is a snippet of the 1910 Federal Census for Jordan, South Dakota. It shows:
"Gust" Winterscheid, wife Nellie, and four children living on the land that was being purchased. Apparently the 160 acres provided a nice farm for them.

However, thanks to the 1920 Federal Census, we find "Gust" and family living on a farm in Manston, Wilkin County, Minnesota.

And then in 1930, Augustus is living with his youngest child, Clayton & family in Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa. Augustus is a widower, retired, and his son Clayton is working in a foundry.

It was an interesting peek into the WINTERSCHEID family branch.

Speaking of "Peeks"

Take a peek at these pups (from GDB):

During this week I attended two great webinars -- one on the details of "Google Glass" and the other on Legacy Family Tree Virtual User Group.

Google Glass looks to be an exciting product and has many applications for genealogists. They are not available as yet for purchase and hopefully they will be priced afford-ably (right now it looks like around $1500) when they are offered to the public.

When you think about the future of technology it is mind boggling. Just a few years ago we (me included) found ourselves in front of micro-film readers advancing pages on film for old documents and newspapers and for which we had to pay per page to copy . . .

The webinar on the Virtual User group was the first of many scheduled this year and tons of great ideas were shared as to how to utilize Legacy Family Tree software.

Upcoming Webinar

Next week the one webinar will be presented by someone that I have heard many times before and it is well worth the time -- Tom Kemp -- who will be sharing his experiences of climbing his tree for the last 50 years:

The webinar is free for live viewing and available for about a week after that to re-view if desired. I look forward to next Wednesday and had to make sure that NO appointments were made to do other things . . .


This being Saturday -- it is burgers tonight! See you all "in a few"!