A baseball story from Papa

Papa said that in the summer between his 11th and 12th grade years of high school he travelled to Texas and the mid-west to play baseball. He said that this was the first time that he had encountered discrimination of blacks. He said that when they travelled to the towns on the bus the black athletes were dropped off in the "colored" part of town and then the white players were taken to a different part of town to stay for the night. He also said that he was in a train station and he went to use a drinking fountain and a lady came over to him and said that it was for the "coloreds" you need to go over there for the drinking fountain for the "whites".
He had also heard people in California call people from the mid-west "Okies" and they were also discriminated against but when he went to Oklahoma and the area around it, he found that they were actually very nice people and the things he had heard were not true.

LeRoy Hardesty siblings

I was just wanting to report on some of the census information that I had found.
Fred Hardesty born in 1893 in Texas
Loyd Hardesty born in 1895 in Texas
Irene Hardesty born in 1901 in Texas
David Leroy Hardesy born in 1909 in Texas
Dorothy Hardesty born in 1914 in California
Cool hugh? I thought so. This was all found using census information on ancestry.com The picture above is a 1920 Los Angeles County Census.

Patriarchal Blessings

Patriarchal Blessings can teach us information about our ancestors and sometimes contain similar wording as our own personal blessings with similar promises blessings.
You may request copies of patriarchal blessings for:

* Yourself
* Your spouse
* A direct line descendant
* A deceased direct line ancestor

The instructions for obtaining copies of patriarchal blessings can be found on the Church History Web site at http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/archives/pbinfo

1. Go to www.lds.org
2. Select About the Church.
3. Select Church History.
4. Click Church History and Library Archives.
5. Click Services and Rules.
6. Click Copies of Patriarchal Blessings may be requested for mailing.
7. Follow the instructions on the screen.

We are currently in the process of digitizing our collection of 3.5 million patriarchal blessings. Once this project is completed in 2008, it will be much easier for members around the world to receive copies of blessings.
If you have any questions, please call the Church History Library customer service desk at 801-240-2745.

Some pointers...

Here are some places to start at home.

Home Sources: Ask living relatives for information.
Journals
Certificates
Photos
Family Bible
Passport
Tickets
Old Papers

It is recommended that you keep a research log including what you searched for and where you went even if you don't find anything, so that you don't waste time on that same search that you have already done. Also, when you find things you want to be able to get back to them so if you keep a research log you will know where you found the information.

Research Log
Date
Place
What source or Who
What are you looking for?
What did you find?
Document number

Other information...

There are tons of resources out there but you need to know where to look. A good place to start looking is in the information about where your ancestors are from. There is a great book called "The Handybook for Geneologists" (Published by Everton Publishers, 2006, ISBN: 1-890895-05-9) where you can look up information about any county in any state and when it was formed and things like that. It is a great place to start if you have access to a copy of it.

You can also look up the research outline for a county or state which will tell you where you can get vital records(like a birth certificates or a marraige liscence) at wiki.familysearch.org.

Also below is a research outline to get you started. It was made by Mark Tucker.

William George Rehkopf

I wrote this biography for my class. He is my great great grandfather.

William George Rehkopf - Biography

William George Rehkopf was born in Bentonsport, Iowa on February 22, 1895. He was raised in Bentonsport and there married Lola May Cupp in 1897. They moved out to Imperial Valley, California in about 1902. William helped to settle the desert area to help pay off the land that he had purchased. William and his brother Gus helped build canals that were to bring water to the desert from the Colorado River. During the day it would get so hot as they were digging that they would look back at the recently overturned dirt and see the tracks of sidewinders who used the moist dirt to cool themselves. There were many scorpions and snakes in the area at this time. It was so hot that William contracted typhoid fever and had to be sent to the hospital by train to Pasadena. He was in the hospital for a time and then he and his wife returned to Iowa for 8 years because his wife was very homesick for her family and friends. After they went back to California his wife was so homesick that she didn’t unpack the barrels for a long time.

After 8 years they returned to California because William had purchased land there. When they returned they built a transitory 2-story structure of a loosely-boarded up home. This is where my great grandmother (Lola Marion Rehkopf) was born. They used to tease her that she had been born in a barn because this house was very simple. William began farming things such as alfalpha, black eyed beans, and winter hay. Later he farmed melons and 2 types of walnuts. He also purchased some sheep and chickens. He eventually had up to 1,000 hens at one time.

William used mules to pull the plow in his fields. There were a lot of farmers and fields in the Chino area at the time and there was a loud whistle that would blow that could be heard throughout the valley to begin the lunch hour at 12 noon. William’s mules would stop dead in their tracks as soon as they heard the lunch whistle and they would not start again until the second whistle blew to signify the start of work again.

Their certificate of marriage

Bailing hay on what is now the bustling Mountain Avenue. The ever so smart mules. And below is William George Rehkopf and his wife Lola May Cupp in their older years.

Wolfe Family in Illinois

This is a fun image (just found it today on ancesrty.com) because I did not know that there were siblings in this family. Look for the Wolfe family, a little over half way down the page.

Here is the family history chart:

Claude Edward Wolfe(my grandfather) --- Claude Edward Wolfe Sr. --- John David Wolfe(who is listed as a child here) --- David Peter Wolfe (father in this census)