This is my great great grandmother Tracy’s obituary. I love the last couple sentences here and hope someday people can say this about me.
“To her death had no terrors, and with a strong faith in Him she had served for years she passed away. Mrs. Tracy was an exceptionally kind and loving wife and mother.”
Mary Artlysia Boblett Tracy Forbes Obituary
I have recently been moving all of my genealogy pictures to my laptop iphoto program. Over the years I have somehow duplicated many of my pictures and they aren’t really in very good order, nor do they all have good titles, etc… Last summer I made slideshows for the reunion and it was much harder and took much longer than it could have been.
Iphoto has this “face” tagging system that I am trying to make you of. I have sorted all of my picture out by family group and now I am going through deleting duplicates, titling, and tagging each one. As there are over 6,ooo right now I is going to be a long process. But the hope is that when I am done I will be able to easily make slideshows, find pictures for the blog, attach them to ancestry, etc…
The funny thing about tagging family with iphoto is that it tries to guess the person after awhile and the people it chooses are sometimes very funny. I have to look closer to find the resemblance but it usually there. A couple time it even mistook my sister for me and I don’t think we look much alike. It really gets this confused with baby pictures. I think this is a fun aspect of an otherwise tedious chore. Of course I am also able to get more familiar with each picture which is helpful in remembering them later.
Last week I wrote about how important it was to digitize old photos and that is the first step. The next step, also very important, is to sort them and definitely title them! You don’t want some descendant deleting pictures because they have no idea who is in the photo or why you kept it. Just like the importance of writing a description on the back of the picture has always been, so too is it to now title and tag your digital pictures.
Along with my digital picture sorting project I am also integrating jpeg source files. I keep them in a separate event album but Title them to the person they are about so that when I research or write about that person I can use the find feature and not only see all the pictures they are in but also all the source documents I have on them. I have had several relatives ask me for copies of documents and this will make it easier to make CDs for those that want information – Pictures and sources together.
Here is a picture of my Grandpa Leo Gotcher’s class. They lived Omaha, Nebraska and from the ages of the children I think it was probably taken about 1923. My guess is that grandpa is 5th from the left on the front row but could also be 5th from the left on the second row. Actually, I have no idea which one he is I just looked at a picture of him as a young man and tried to find that face in the class picture. If you have a better idea please let me know.
Grandpa Leo’s school
My dad as a child (with his older brother). A photo we never would have seen if it hadn’t been digitized and shared.
Today I would like to express my thanks to those that digitize and share their old pictures. After my Grandma Gotcher died in 1998, I wondered what was going to happen to all of the old pictures that Grandma had collected and loved so dearly. All of us grandchildren well remember sitting with Grandma while she showed us pictures and told us stories about them.
I am very thankful that my cousin, Anita, took those pictures and scanned them into her computer, organized them and burned CDs for anybody in the family that wanted one. Since then, while visiting my maternal grandfather and also my husband’s grandparents I have spent many hours scanning and digitizing all of the old pictures I could find.
I love that I can link these pictures to my family tree on ancestry.com and that other descendants will find these pictures and love the visual identification. So many times I have received messages from other researchers thanking me because they found one of their direct ancestors on my site with a picture – and they had never seen that person before. I also love finding pictures of ancestors while I am searching online. I recently found a picture of my husband’s great grandparents who we had never seen.
I beseech everyone to please please digitize and share your old pictures. One of saddest things I see are forsaken pictures at flea markets. I am deeply saddened when I think of the boxes of pictures that either get left in attics, sold at auctions, trashed, or even the ones that get taken by one relative never to be seen by anyone else ever again! Share your pictures people! We love to see them.
Left to Right: Stephen, Lyman, Maria, Marshall, Hattie, and Mollie Parmenter
original in possession of Larry McConaughy
This gallery contains 9 photos.
For this Tombstone Tuesday I am sharing the Rusler Children Marker and tombstones from the Council Cemetery in York County, Nebraska. In the middle of the cemetery in the middle of an overgrown bush is a marker that reads Rusler Children. … Continue reading
Michael and Augusta Rusler Children
I have been working on the Rusler branch of my family for awhile now. Thursday I wrote about Frank E Rusler and today I am going to attempt to write what little I know about Charles August Rusler.
Charles August Rusler
Charles was the third child of Michael Anthony and Augusta Wilhemina Rusler. He was born February 21, 1879 in York County, Nebraska.
He married Laura Ellice McConnell July 17, 1901. They quickly had five children: Winnifred Gladys (1902), Grace “Goldie” (1904), Garland Lynn (1906), Lucille Virginia (1907), and Zelma Ellice (1909). In the 1910 Census the family is living in York County and Charles is a farmer.
Charles and Laura Rusler
Charles and Laura Ellice divorced in 1911. By 1920, Charles has remarried; a Grace O who is 17 years his junior. At this time they are living in Grand Island and he is a laborer at Kelley Wells (& something unintelligible). There is also a 9 year old stepson living with them. Laura Ellice has remarried as well to a Phillip Conant and they live in Thayer with one of his children and her five.
Charles August Rusler died just three years later on February 9, 1923 at the age of 43 in Ravenna, Buffalo, Nebraska and is buried at Council Cemetery in York County, Nebraska. Thanks to another researcher, Cindy Dodd, who sent me a newspaper clipping about his death I now know the horrific details of his death. While “working with a bridge gang on Beaver Creek he slipped on the ice and fell directly across a piling just as the 7,500 pound hammer descended. It caught him across the body and death was instantaneous. Eight fellow employees witnessed the fatal accident.” Gruesome indeed.
Laura Ellice McConnell Rusler Conant died September 25, 1963 in Glendale, California at the age of 80.
Their five children grew up, married and gave Laura 24 grandchildren and scads of great grandchildren. Many of whom I have had the pleasure to meet and keep in contact with via facebook.
Three of Charles and Laura’s five children
WWI Draft Registration for Charles August Rusler
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