Who Was Lena Burg?

As noted in past newspaper articles Lena Berg was one of the founders of the Scappoose Public Library in 1929. She worked with Rose Watts and Caroline Dorris in establishing the library in the second floor of the Price/Watts store. There they managed to collect hundreds of books and provided hours of service making those available to the community. They were involved in the rescue of the books from that building before it was destroyed by fire in 1932. The books were moved to the Watts house where they were open to the public until a formal public library was opened in 1959, at the then fire station building. That move occurred shortly after the death of Rose Watts, who was quoted as saying, “there were four to five thousand books at that time.”

Scappoose Library - Fabulous Opal Whiteley

My mother, Yvonne Olsen Barker, loved the book Opal by Opal Whiteley. She left two copies of the book in her large collection of books. The one I kept for myself is a 1976 edition arranged and adapted by Jane Boulton, with 181 pages. The cost of the book was $2.95 after being reduced from $6.95, probably found in a used book store. On the inside front page she left this inscription:

"This book reminds me so much of how your great grandmother was as a child from the stories she told me. I have this same book in my library so I thought you might enjoy reading this one.
Yvonne Olsen Barker 6/5/93."

SLIG 2017 Forensic Genealogy Course

Tricia Oberndorf and I attended the "The Coaching Lab: Forensic Genealogy from Inquiry to Affidavit"
Catherine B. W. Desmarais, CG and Amber Goodpaster Tauscher
were the lead instructors, teaching 14 sections individually and often together supporting the learning of how to use technology in the research process.

100,000 Page Views for Gopher Genealogy

At about 3:30 this afternoon the blog Gopher Genealogy reached 100,000 views. The blog began on April 24, 2011. Then in four years-time on February 28, 2015 it reached 50,000 page views. In less than two years it has now doubled the amount of page views. These views are from all around the world, but just over 59,000 come from the United States. When starting the blog it was a novelty and many other genealogists were doing the same. Geneabloggers has about 3,000 blogs listed at their website. Today the website posted an interview entitled, "May I Introduce You to Susan LeBlanc."

This is a short piece from the post:

Samuel Reed Civil War Soldier

                Samuel Reed is my fourth great grandfather. He fought in the Civil War and died on October 6, 1864 because of dysentery. I found information about him from his burial in Little Rock National Cemetery in Arkansas. Much of the information my family has about him came from his military records. (Military Service) Learning about him helps me to understand the Civil War on a personal level. Samuel Reed is significant to me because he was willing to leave his family and fight for his beliefs.

Reflections of 2016

The New Year is fast approaching and we will be soon writing 2017. This has been a good year for me. Here are some highlights for 2016. This year there have been several clients whose families came from the south. It is fascinating putting together their family history from the point of online records. Those families with African American backgrounds demonstrate the tenacity with which they moved forward after the Civil War. They were ambitious and strongly focused on providing for the advancement of their families. While many were farmers of some form or another, others were teachers or held other professional positions. As the pedigree charts filled in it became obvious that research beyond the Civil War would provide more challenges.

Christmas Memories - 2016

This Christmas seems very different. For the last couple of days I read through two collections of Christmas stories compiled by my sister over twenty years ago. At the time we were given these we were busy raising children and involved in many activities. The first little booklet was done with a children's book for each our three older children. The second is a notebook meant for our family. Between the books which are filled with twenty-five plus stories, meant to be read one story a night leading up to Christmas Day, there were only eight repeat stories.