Charles Magnus Wibert -- Portland, Oregon

Charles Magnus Wiberg (also spelled Wyberg) was born circa 1820 in Norrkoping, Sweden. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker as a young man to learn a trade. In about 1841 he left Sweden for London and practiced his trade there for several years. In 1849 he set sail from Galloway, Ireland, to New York City, arriving 12 July 1849 on the C. Tottie. He is listed on the passenger manifest as Carl M. Wiberg, a shoemaker.

By his own account, he lived in Connecticut, New Orleans and Wisconsin, finally settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1851, where he opened a shoe store. His entire business was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1851. He remained in Milwaukee another year to repay his debts from the fire, and then left for Oregon by way of the Isthmus of Panama. He arrived in Portland on 06 July 1852, and promptly started the first boot and shoe store in Oregon.

In 1858, he married Paulina Ingram. They had 9 children, 8 of whom lived to adulthood. Charles was a highly regarded businessman, owning property worth over $45,000 in 1870. He was a member of the board of directors of the Willamette Iron Bridge Co., which built the Morrison Street bridge in Portland.

He died on 03 February 1897 in Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, of pneumonia following grippe [influenza] complicated by Bright's Disease [kidney disease]. He was buried on 6 Feb 1897, in River View Cemetery, Portland, Oregon, section 7, lot 95, plot13.

That is the short story of one man's life -- a collateral line to a line I am investigating in my Boones in Oregon project. This required research, of course: immigration lists, census information 1850-1920, death certificates, marriage certificates, a visit to River View Cemetery, consultation with available Polk's city directories for Portland, histories of prominent men in Portland, newspapers of the era, a medical dictionary -- just to name a few. Just Charles' narrative (not including his wife and children) generated over 20 footnotes, referencing 16 sources.

Ten years ago this project would have been impossible for me. I can't afford to travel to New York for instance, to look through several years of ship manifests. I would not have had access to indexed historical newspapers. The microfilm copies of old Portland death certificates would not have been available.

Now, I have the internet and a subscription to Ancestry, the site we all love to hate. As I have said before (and Dick Eastman has said better here), this subscription is worth every penny I pay for it. I also joined the Genealogical Forum of Portland (that's not free either, nor should it be).

I also have The Master Genealogist (TMG) program, which helps me properly format citations to my sources, and keep track of where to put the footnotes. Glory Be! I am old enough to remember typing term papers and putting in the footnotes by hand (and retyping them endless times to get the footnotes on the correct page), then having to make a bibliography by hand.

Using Elizabeth Shown Mills' book, "Evidence Explained, Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace," I can put in the format for a type of source only once -- first citation, subsequent citation and bibliography - and then be confident that the source will be printed out correctly. When I output my report to a word processor (and I prefer to use the free, open source OpenOffice), all of my footnotes are firmly attached to the text, and the bibliography prints correctly at the end.

I want to make it clear that I am no way affiliated with Ancestry, TMG, OpenOffice or any one or any software or book mentioned in this site. The blog is provided by Google, and that is the extent of my relationship. These are simply the best tools out there for doing genealogy.

Later this week I will share with you what I learned from a class taken at Lone Fir Cemetery in how to responsibly clean monuments and stones. Stay tuned.