Happy 87th Day -- Easter !

It is truly a surprise that 23.8% of 2016 has come and gone but it has happened. And it is Easter already. There are 279 more days to go this year and after 225 days we will have elected a new president.

Today, in Northern California it is clear, crisp, sunny and not too hot with just enough breeze to make it fresh. There are families throughout our neighborhood having friends and relatives "over" for dinner and it does feel like a holiday.

I had a feeling about this photo and it turns out that it is NOT who we thought it was -- but it is another relative instead.

I was so excited about getting this photo that I did not authenticate it but we now have.

Instead of being a photo of George Franklin Bumgardner, it is actually a photo of his son, George R Bumgardner.

Through the communication of a few cousins, it has now been determined that it is identified correctly.

George R (we haven't determined what the "R" stands for yet) Bumgardner was born in Muscatine, Iowa, served in the Civil War, had at least three children, died and was buried in Topeka, Kansas.

Over to the right is a relationship chart that you can click on and enlarge.

It shows how George R Bumgardner and his family is related to me.

George is a 2nd Great Uncle of mine. It shows one of his three kids (Bert Jay) who is a 1st cousin and then one of Bert's kids, Wretha Lillie Bumgardner, who is a 2nd cousin.

To me, all very interesting and we'll be looking for more information and folks to update this family.

Interestingly, George R joined the U.S. Army on 8 September 1862 and served for the duration of the war, mustering out just over 150 years ago on 2 June 1865, in Washington D.C. The photo of him in the uniform may be from that period.

My Mother always talked about her side of the family by mentioning the Butler -- Rankin -- Rider -- Bumgardner connections.

But I do not recall her mentioning the Hoopes -- but I'm finding out that the Hoopes are a major part of the family tree. And they are impressive (just like the Butlers) to say the least.

Martha Ann Bumgardner, daughter of George Franklin Bumgardner started branching out by marrying William L Butler.

Their daughter, Martha A, continued the branching out by marrying John Andrew Hoopes.

It turns out that the owner of the picture of George R Bumgardner came from a Hoopes -- a cousin that I did not know of before a couple of weeks ago. More about her in future posts.

Off to the right are just some of the 80 or so Hoopes that I have so far in our tree.

In the bottom right are Clarence and Lilly Hoopes, the parents of the cousin who provided the photo (and authenticated it) of George R Bumgardner.

To the left is a glimpse of a few "Butler" family members in the tree.

There are around 50 so far in this group, but I'm sure to expand that soon.

Both of these families are impressive and have some very interesting stories.



And now a dose of reality as characterized by a favorite comic strip of ours:

Sad, but so true . . .


But, what's for dinner on this Easter Sunday?

A spiral-sliced, honey flavored full half of ham, fresh broccoli and slow-roasted mini white potatoes.

Needless-to-say, we're looking for ham recipes for later this week . . .


That's a bit of our week. See you all "in a few"!

March Springness . . .

Here it is the very first day of spring, 2016 and it is already still raining. All day so far, light and constant. It is hard to juggle the times for Dino to run outside for his "business trips" so he gets minimal moisture exposure. But the day has brought about a sense of a different time of the year.

We've pretty much gotten used to the time-change now though it still brings moments of comparing time from two weeks ago to present time. The dogwood tree outback exploded in the last few days. It is covered with popcorn-like white blossoms.

Today, being Sunday, there is a natural break-in-the-action for us. In prior years this day would give us the break from career related stress to getting away from it for a few. Now, it mostly means no doctor visits nor many phone calls for a change.

And we had another taste of spring by watching a pre-season baseball game.

The Giants, currently our team of interest, walked all over the Padres 15 - 6 in a fun to watch slugfest.

Last season we watched almost every one of the Giants games, maybe not the whole game but at least part of every game -- it depended on how the game was going.

If the pattern holds true the Giants have won the World Series in alternating years for the last few years and this IS the alternating year -- we'll see.

And if you are caught-up in the "other" games
to the left are the brackets that are in play.

Millions of folks have made their selections that will all come to a close in early April

A "National Champion" will be decided. I wonder how long I will retain the name of that team . . .

I'm scratching my head to recall last year's.

You want more brackets? How about
the ones to the right.

First there is the Family Tree Bracket -- my particular favorite.

Then there is the "income Tax Bracket" my particular not-favorite one.

                                                                                And lastly there is the "political brackets" which are monopolizing most of the news these days.

There are just over 230 days until the election so the time will go fast and furious. It is hard to witness how the campaigning is going -- or not going as the case may be.

Where have I spent most of my time this week -- among the branches of the Bumgardners, the Hoopes, the Butlers and the Riders.

These families all tend to have a very large number of offspring as did most of the 19th century families. Very few had families the size of today's families, two or so.    

I'm continuing to work from the B(a)umgardner book, and as I enter names into Ancestry the hint or leaf population explodes -- just like their ads say.  

I have a long long way to go and I'll never be done.

                                                                                                              And, just what is currently on our nightstand -- "boys in the trees" by Carly Simon.

We saw Carly interviewed on one of the Late Night Shows (we record all three of the majors) and we knew that her book would be interesting to read.

And it is! We enjoy learning about the lives of living folks and how they grew up.

We are just part way into the book, and we find the style enjoyable and also the revelations.

For some reason I had not ever connected Carly with her father being half of the "Simon & Schuster" publishing name, but she is.


          
Actually the sun just peeked out a bit and the day takes on a different feeling.  But we planned a great "rainy-day" dinner menu and we'll stick with it, rain or shine.

Broccoli slaw, slow cooked pulled-pork, roasted new potatoes & fresh snap peas. Always something to look forward to on a rainy, at the moment, sunny Sunday.   That is a bit of our week.

See you all "in a few"!

It's About Time . . .

I woke up later this morning than I normally do, and it wasn't just about the time change. For some reason I was about one half hour later and so added to the Daylight Savings change I was already behind about and hour and a half . . . not a big deal really, but something that throws a crimp into the day.

And yes, we got rain, lots of rain and some more to come and then mostly sunny skies the rest of this week.

California is talking about eliminating the "time change" as a couple of other states have done.  I'm thinking that maybe leaving the time at Daylight Savings Time might be alright because having daylight into the evenings is a nice thing . . .

The "Time Magazine" cover above is the cover from the week of my birth, just in case you were wondering. I still get/got "Time". . .

A couple of posts ago I posted a picture of my Gr Gr Grandfather, George Franklin Bumgardner. I had never seen it before and wanted to see if I could find out where it came from. I still do not know that, but I did find out that it was in the possession of a couple of cousins of mine, that I had never met or known about before my search.

So, my searching this week started out roughly in the branches appearing above. In the top right you can see the picture of George Franklin Bumgardner. And then there are names from the Butler family, the Hoopes family and then way down to the bottom right, a new cousin family -- the Patrick family.

The Butler/Bumgardner branch started with Martha Ann Bumgardner (dau of George) marrying William L Butler. Martha & William had several children and one of those was Mary Butler.

Mary Butler married Benjamin Franklin West and from that union came Frances B West. Frances was born about the same time as my own mother and she was born in Ohio. Frances married William G Patrick and hence the Patrick family had it's origin.

I have been communicating with two of the sons of Frances & William and they have been very helpful  in providing names and other family information. I have started to link  our two branches in Ancestry.com and eventually to www.danhiles.com.

During the exchange of emails, it was suggested that the book shown to the right might be one in which I would be able to find some good "Bumgardner" information.

At first I was skeptical because of the spelling of "Baumgardner" which was not the way our branch spelled the name.

Fortunately, I was able to find and purchase a copy of the book on eBay. And so I now have it and have paged through it some and of course it IS about our Bumgardners, only they include an "a" in the spelling.

I have seen Dayton Bumgardner mentioned along with his children, including my mother and her siblings.

I am going to look more in-depth to connect other branches of this maternal related family.

As I have mentioned, the current search began with Martha & William.

In the book I found pictures of both of them and I have included them in the chart to the left.

There are several other photos in the book, none
of our immediate family but certainly of our extended family.

As I have often mentioned it is really nice to see a photo of one of our own.

I look forward to exploring the book to see what else I can uncover.

And actually, I was able to add another Bumgardner to our branch -- Charles Bumgardner.

There are many Charles' in the Bumgardner family and this one I had listed but did not really know much about.

I am pretty sure he was an officer in the Civil War -- but not from the side that we usually see for our family. He was a Confederate Captain . . .

It will be interesting to find out more information as I dig through the book and other sources.

It was nice that I found a picture of his wife as well. Genealogy is an activity that really there is no end-to.

There are always new folks to meet and to get to know.

Lastly, here is a chart showing the relationship to our new found cousin-family.

We look forward to getting to know them better. There are several geography related similarities and some other life experiences that are common.

There are a lot of B(a)umgardners to read about in the book. I try not to let the spelling of the surname make a difference.

We probably all come from the same family and for whatever reasons, some chose to spell them differently.



I suppose that might mean that we are related to Madison Bumgarner afterall . . . and that reminds me, baseball season is getting started again and the Giants are playing . . .

I have to say that this time change is seemingly affecting other things today. For example, my smart watch did automatically update the time (thank you very much) but it is showing a very low number of steps of the 10,000 recommended for each day. I've got to get busy on that.

We also were not hungry for lunch until about 3 pm . . . I think it is harder getting used to the time change as a retired person as opposed to when we were working.

That is a part of our week. See you all "in a few"!

A Bit of Sun, Out in the Back

Actually we had a bit of sun out in the front as well, but not too much. This was a promised week of el nino rain and it has delivered. Today there is a bit of morning sun but the weather report says a 100% chance of rain again today.

The floral display & the Dino display are soaking up the rays. We are enjoying the rain and the pool is being filled by mother nature for a change -- we love that.

We are slated to receive many more days of rain this month, we do not mind at all. The lawn too is repairing some of the many "brown holes" and that is fun to see.

What kept me busy this week? Well, besides the random searching through branches I did attend three webinars.

Off to the right are the "ads" for each. The first one that I participated in was in regard to the preservation of the 1812 Pension files which are in need of digitization due to their crumbling condition.

We have many ancestors who participated in that war and their records may be some of the ones needing preservation.

I did make a donation to that cause in memory of two of our ancestors who were active military in that war:  John Hiles Jr and his brother Christopher Hiles.

There was an attractive "matching" offer which doubled the donation twice making it really meaningful.

The second webinar had to do with dealing with YDNA and mtDNA data and making it more meaningful genealogically. I find the very subject of DNA very confusing and the results as they are given even more so.

This webinar really helped to understand better how to interpret the results and what "matches" stand the better chance of connecting to a living relative.

Lastly, I attended the Mini Boot Camp webinar presented by Lisa Alzo along with Thomas MacEntee. These Mini Boot Camps are quality webinars and this one gave us tons of leads on how to find the elusive female ancestors in our trees.

Now, back to my regular searching this week:

Above is a look at the geography/timeline for an elusive cousin of mine (ours). For many years I have tried to find the current location for a particularly close cousin to my brother, Marv, to no avail.

This cousin was born about one year before my brother and in the same city, and as a result they shared a lot of time together.

As the years went by, this cousin and his family moved to California and he even played football against the Healdsburg (where we currently live) team when he was in high school -- small world.

But -- due to a very common name the search to link up with him was almost impossible. Looking at the map above, Chicago was his birth city, two locations in California were where his two marriages took place, and then a city in Idaho turns out to be where he passed away and he was buried in Oregon.


Sadly, Frank Carter Johnson Jr passed away before we could find him.

As my brother pointed out -- he is the spitting image of his father. I did not know Frankie as well as Marv did so I might not have recognized him -- but I would have loved to have touch base with him about "family".

To the right is the Find-A-Grave memorial for Frank. There is a lot of interesting facts shared there.

I have updated the trees and our website with his information.

It would be nice to maybe connect with his two children and his grandchildren who are cousins of ours as well.

But the name "Johnson" is a huge wall to climb to find information.

Here is how we are related. We technically are
half cousins due to the fact that his mother and our grandmother were half-sisters.

But, cousin is the way we have always thought of Frankie.

When Frankie and his parents moved from Chicago, they moved to Ukiah, California.

I visited my 1/2 Great Aunt & Uncle during the 1980s and they were great to visit with. But of course, Frankie had already moved on with his life.


So, what is coming up this week on genealogically related TV:

Actually there are two new shows, "Relative Race" on Sunday evenings on BYU TV (which I found out we get . . .) which we saw the premiere episode last week. The show was fun in that couples race across the U.S. finding relatives that they did not know they had using DNA results . . .

We enjoyed that first episode and witnessed all four couples being surprised at the new relatives that they met.

The second new show premieres tonight on TLC and it is called "Long Lost Family". It sounds great and I guess that I just love anything "genealogical" . . .

And finally, "finding your roots" is on again Tuesday night on PBS. This week to feature Mia Farrow.

Sadly, we pay respect to Nancy Reagan who passed away today at 94 years of age. She represents a truly respectable period in U.S. history . . .

That is a bit of our week. See you all "in a few"!