Tuesday Trivia

Prosper Church and the Prosper (Mound) Cemetery

The Prosper Presbyterian Church is located deep in the center of Richardson County, Nebraska about 6 miles southwest of Stella or 5 miles northeast of Humboldt in an area the locals had once hoped would be the town of Prosper. The land is laced with streams beds lined with trees, the farm ground is some of the best in the state. 



We were looking for the grave of our Equillar Hall, Mike's 4th Great-Grandfather who was said to have been a real gem of a man and well liked by all who met him.  Back in Illinois he was a Justis of the Peace with dark hair and eyes of the lightest blue in color.  He was the father of our William Alexandar "Alex" Hall by his first wife Rhoda O'Bannion.

As we came up on the location of the cemetery we were given what we genealogists call a BONUS!

The original church attached to the cemetery stood across the road.  Lonely in the adjacent corn field, the church was in great disrepair and had been used for storage of hay for a good many years.  It had been raped repeatedly by vandals.

Stately she stood.  We couldn't resist going inside just to stand in the room where Mike's great-grandfather stood to worship our God and Father.  We felt blessed and sure that this saint of a man had prayed for the generations to come after him that they would know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and indeed Mike and I fulfill that description even though we came to this revelation later than we had hoped (our late-20's).

The light was perfect and I found myself wishing that my Daughter-in-law, Kandi, was behind my camera instead of myself, but the camera was clicking as I shot a few pictures of this grand old church.

Monday This 'n That

Nebraska First Families and Pioneer Families

It looks like between Mike and I we have eight surnames that qualify as a Nebraska First Family or a Pioneer Family. I have eight months left in 2012 and I hope to be able to get all my proof together so that all eight families are ready for certificate applications before the end of the year.

I am currently working on the HALL family (Mike's Maternal Grandmother's line) who came to Nebraska with a 4 wagon, wagon train in September 1864, while the Civil War was still going on which made travel from Illinois a bit dangerous. William and Nancy (Thompson) HALL came with three small children and 2 wagons of their own. Joining them was Nancy's brother and another young man to the 'HALL' farm in extreme northern Richardson County, Nebraska near Stella. It appears that William Hall purchased this land prior to coming with his family. His father Aquilla (Equillar) came three years later. The HALL's were Baptists, the Elder HALL being a Preacher in a church in Illinois.

Corrections Have Been Made on the Slocum Photo from Photo Thursday last week.

Southeast Nebraska Genealogy Events This Week

via http://longlostrelatives-smp.blogspot.com/p/genealogy-events-in-nebraska.html

May 8, 2012, 7:15 pm

Dick Administration Building, Union College, 3800 S 48th St, Lincoln

Lincoln Lancaster County Genealogical Society monthly program: Genealogical Research Related to Cemeteries. Presented by Gail Blankenau. Pointers for genealogical research related to cemeteries encourage providing data and photos to help other genealogists.

May 9 and 16, 2012, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Southeast Community College Education Center, Room 405, 301 S. 68^th St Place, Lincoln, NE

Intermediate Genealogy: Research Your Family Tree.

Instructors: Marcia Stewart, Cynthia Monroe

$25 tuition

Page 21 course catalog

Organizing the Search - Setting Up Your File System

To set up and use file folders to organize your genealogy records you will need the following basic supplies:

1. A filing cabinet or file boxes with lids.  The boxes need to be strong, preferable plastic, with horizontal inner ridges or grooves for letter-size hanging files.
2. Colored, letter-size hanging file folders in blue, green, red and yellow.  Look for ones with large tabs.  You can also save a bit of money here by purchasing standard green hanging file-folders instead, and using colored labels for the color-coding.
3. Manila folders.  These should have slightly smaller tabls than the hanging file folders, and should have reinforced tops to last through heavy use.
4. Pens.  For best results, use a pen with an ultra fine point, felt time, and black, permanent, acid-free ink.
5. Highlighters.  Buy highlighters in light blue, light green, yellow and pink (don't use red because it is too dark).  Colored pencils also work.
6. Labels for file folders.  These labels should have blue, red, green, and yellow strips along the top and permanent adhesive on the back.

Once you've assembled your supplies, it's time to get started with the file folders.  Use different colored file folders for the lineages of each of your four grandparents - in other words, all folders created for the ancestors of one grandparent will be marked with the same color.  The colors you select are up to you, but the following color choices are the most common:

• BLUE - ancestors of your paternal grandfather (father's father)
• GREEN - ancestors of your paternal grandmother (father's mother)
• RED - ancestors of your maternal grandfather (mother's father)
• YELLOW - ancestors of your maternal grandmother (mother's mother)

Using the colors as outlined above, create a separate folder for each surname, writing names on the hanging file tab insert with the black permanent marker (or printing inserts on your printer).  Then hand the files in alphabetical order in your file box or cabinet by color (i.e. put the blues alphabetically in one group, the greens in another group, etc.).

If you're ne to genealogy research, this may be all you need to do.  If you have accumulated a lot of notes and photocopies, however, it is now time to subdivide.  Here is where you need to choose how you want to organize your files.  The two most popular methods are:

1. By Surname. Then further broken down as needed by locality and/or record type
2. By Family Group.

The basic filing instructions are the same for each, the difference is primarily in how they are organized.  If you aren't sure yet which method will work best for you, try using the Surname method for one surname and the Family Groups method for one or two families.  See which one suits you best, or develop your on combination of the two.

FAMILY GROUP METHOD

Create a family group sheet for each married couple listed on your pedigree chart.  Then set up manila folders for each of the families by putting a colored label on the file folder tab.  Match the label color to the color of the appropriate family line.  On each label, write the names of the couple (using the maiden name for the wife) and the numbers from your pedigree chart (using the ahnentafel numbering system).  Example:  James JONES and Nancy AVERY, 4/5.  Then place these manila family folders in the hanging folders for the appropriate surname and color, arranging in alphabetical order by the husband's firstname or in numerical order by the numbers from your pedigree chart.

In the front of each manila folder, attach the family group record of the family to serve as a table of contents.  If there was more thn one marriage, make a separate folder with a family group record for each other marriage.  Each family folder should include all documents and notes from the time of a couple's marriage.

Documents which pertain to events prior to their marriage should be filed in the folders of their parents, such as birth certificates and family census records.

SURNAME & RECORD TYPE METHOD

First sort your files by surname, and then create manila folders for each of the record types for which you have paperwork by putting a colored label on the file folder tab, matching the label color to the surname.  On each label, write the name of the surname, followed by the record type. 

Example:  CRISP:  Census; CRISP: Land Records

Then place these manila family folders in the hanging olders for the appropriate surname and color, arranging in alphabetical order by the type of record.

In the front of each manila folder, create and attach a table of the contents that indexes the contents of the folder.  Then add all documents and notes which correspond with the surname and type of record.

The Homestead Act of 1862

This information is found at Beatrice, Nebraska History. From the beginning, the west has exerted a pull on the American spirit. In colonial times, those who dreamed of family farms went from the coastal plain to the foothills, across the Appalachians to the Ohio Valley. George Washington's words in 1784 were prophetic: "The spirit for emigration is great." By the 1850s, huge land acquisitions had filled out the continental United States. The country's sheer vastness strengthened the conviction that the public domain rightfully belonged to the people. The grassy interior between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains was designated Indian Territory in the 1830s and was bypassed by emigrants on the Oregon Trail. But as the east and far west closed to settlement, expansionists pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened that territory to farmers.

Distributing land west of the Mississippi became an enormous project. The inability of small farmers to compete with larger concerns precipitated a series of anti-speculation laws. The Pre-emption Act, championed by Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton in 1841, legitimized squatting by letting farmers claim unsurveyed plots and later buy from the government. But didn't working people have a right to free land? Tennessee Congressman Andrew Johnson took up the cause in the 1840s. Southerners opposed Johnson's land giveaway as benefiting working-class whites who were unlikely to vote slavery into the new states. The bill was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 after the Southern states had left the Union.

The Homestead Act declared that any citizen or intended citizen could claim 160 acres - one quarter square mile - of surveyed government land. Claimants must "improve" the plot with a dwelling and grow crops. After five years, if the original filer was still on the land, it was his property, free and clear. One of the first takers was a Union scout from Iowa named Daniel Freeman. Daniel and his wife Agnes joined the post-Civil War wave of homesteaders who hailed mostly from the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. (editors note: Daniel Freeman's homestead was near what is now Brownville, Nebraska in Nemaha County) Later came European immigrants lured to America by railroad companies eager to sell off millions of acres of grant land and to provide farm-to-market transportation - at a price.

The Homestead Act's lenient terms proved the undoing of many settlers. Claimants need not own equipment or know anything about farming. The quarter sections, adequate land in humid regions, were too small to support plains settlers west of the 100th meridian where scarcity of water reduced yields. Newer laws allowed homesteaders additional land if they planted 40 acres of trees, a practical impossibility. Or they could buy cheap land in the arid high plains, requiring costly irrigation. Speculators still got hold of homestead land by hiring phony claimants or buying up abandoned farms.

Then there were the natural barriers. In the eastern reaches (where Homestead National Monument is today) there was water for timber. Not so toward the west, in the rain shadow of the Rockies. Settlers built homes of sod which they prayed might withstand hailstorms, drought, prairie fires, blizzards and relentless wind. From 1874 to 1877, swarms of locusts darkened the skies and consumed just about everything in sight, including leather boots. If natural disasters were not trouble enough, there were the human struggles. Cattlemen resisted the dividing up of the open range by farmers. In the end it was barbed wire - cheap fencing - that decided the war in favor of the homesteaders. Indian attacks were rare; nevertheless, Agnes Freeman kept the peace while her husband was away by giving visiting Indians food and goods. Farmers faced heavy debt, lack of cash, expensive rail transportation and grain storage, and market fluctuations.

Though never the paradise lauded in popular myth, the plains finally became home to that breed of settler willing to cope with adversity. "You must make up your mind to rough it," advised an English emigrants guide. Eventually frame and brick houses replaced the soddies, trees grew high to shield dwellings, windmills pumped water from deep underground, and a host of technological advances made farming profitable. Today the endless rows of corn along the roadways show how farms have survived; many are occupied by the descendants of the original homesteaders. Meanwhile, the patches of prairie remind us that only a century and a half ago this looked like a most unpromising place to make a home.

Tuesday Family Triva

On Family Triva Tuesday's we'll ask a Did You Know question on one of the ancestors in the family lines on the pages above. If you know the answer simply give your answer in the 'COMMENTS' section at the bottom of the post. We'll give the answer on the following Tuesday along with more information on the subject.


This weeks Trivia Question:

A number of our ancestors, and if you live in Nebraska probably yours, homesteaded in Nebraska.  Read our article on Homesteading in Nebraska then search through the pages at the top of this BLOG to see who might have homesteaded in Nebraska.

There are three categories for 'homesteaders' that qualify for certificates through the Nebraska State Genealogcial Society so see if you can name the possible homesteaders and which category you think they might belong in.  As always put your answers in the COMMENT section below.  The answer will be given in next weeks TUESDAY TRIVIA.

FIRST FAMILY	Settled in Nebraska by 1867
PIONEER FAMILY	Settled in Nebraska between 1868 & 1879
CENTURY FAMILY	Settled in Nebraska by 100 years prior to current date

Homesteading in Nebraska

In case you haven't alreay figured it out, your new hobby in Genealogy has naturally made you a historian.  You probably knew you had a natural bent or interest in history anyway.  This year our country is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the NATIONAL HOMESTEAD ACT.  In Nebraska the Homestead Monument in Beatrice, a National Park, is planning a series of activities.  Because so many of our personal ancestors took advantage of this opportunity I have made it a personal goal to get as many First Settlers and Pioneer Certificates as I can get this year.  I'm hoping that I can get all ----- of them. 

To commemorate this I'm also going to be doing a series of posts on Homesteading in Nebraska and offering some family activities that you and your families can participate in also.

HEADS UP!  This article and the ones following are leading up to our Tuesday Trivia Question coming next week.

This next week you have the opportunity to learn more at the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice, Nebraska as they beging the 150th year anniversary of the Homestead Act.

Wednesday, April 25

Original Document Display (Educational Opportunities)

10:00 am - Homestead National Monument Beatrice

Plan to go to Beatrice Ne to visit Homestead National Monument where the original Homestead Act document will be on display beginnig at 10:00 AM on Wednesday,April 25th. Later that same day there will be a Naturalization ceremony at 2:00 PM. For more information visit the website at www.nps.gov/HOME or call 402.223.3514.

THE HOMESTEAD ACT


Imagine yourself as a young person in a place where the land has all been taken. You might want to become a farmer, but there is no farmland available. Then imagine seeing advertisements for land, some for very little money, some for free! You face many unknowns. What is this new land really like? Will there be enough rainfall to grow your crops? Will you have neighbors? Who will they be? What about the people who are already on the land?

The Homestead Act, combined with other factors, unleashed a movement of people that lasted into the 20th Century. In this photo, emigrants arrive at the Gates Post Office in Custer County in 1886. Photo by Solomon Butcher. Wagon trains became the stuff of legends.

The reality of life and death on the wagon train was something different, as Dr. Robert Munkres explained in this video.

How did all this land become available? In the 1830s the federal government had said this area was Indian country — a place where Native Americans could live as independent nations. But with passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the government went back on that promise and opened the land to settlement. Newcomers came slowly and began to gradually create farms, towns, and industries.
To encourage this settlement throughout the West, the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act and President Lincoln pushed for the building of a railroad across the country. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres of public land to any head of household who lived on the land five years. The railroads were given huge tracts of land to encourage construction. They offered this land for sale to immigrants at low cost.
Thousands of settlers, many with families, did move to the Nebraska Territory from the eastern regions of the United States. Smaller numbers came from foreign nations. These settlers traveled westward across the country onto the Great Plains and played a key role in the settlement of Nebraska. Federal land policies set in motion great changes in the physical and cultural landscape.

The above article was taken from a great site called Nebraska Studies and has tons of other great information and activities for young and old alike to learn about homesteading in Nebraska.

Spend some time at the above site learning all you can about the lives of YOUR ancestors who homesteaded this great state of Nebraska.  Then plan some fun family time activities to celebrate!