This and That

First a kind word for Dick Eastman and his Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: he really gets it right. In a new post, I Have a Complaint, he makes an excellent point about subscription genealogy sites such as Ancestry and Footnote. I urge you to read it.

I had a lot of fun yesterday, at the Genealogical Forum of Oregon (GFO) first and then a trip to Lone Fir Cemetery. This being a holiday weekend in Oregon, it was a slightly cool, overcast day, perfecting for hiking around a cemetery or spending some time indoors.

At GFO I found both the death returns and marriage records I was looking for. It is always a thrill to me to see a part of the past this way. One of the death returns I was looking for was for Chloe (Boone) Curry, wife of Oregon's last Provisional Governor, George Law Curry. The death returns are microfilmed, and somewhat difficult to read, but the date of death was very clear: 10 Feb 1899. Then I went to Lone Fir and found the Curry family marker. I found the full name and dates of birth for some of the family, but as I transcribed the inscriptions I got a huge shock -- Chloe's dates on the stone are given as 1822-1889. That's a ten year difference! Now I need to go back to the GFO library and look in the Portland city directories for 1880 to 1900, and find out when she stops being listed. Drat the fire that destroyed the 1890 census!

That trip will fit perfectly, because Lone Fir is sponsoring a class on how to clean stones safely on Saturday, and I am going to that. Watch next week for tips from the class.