There was a message on our voicemail from a gentleman who went to school in West Point. It was delightful to talk with him. I wasn’t aware that there was a West Point Iowa Facebook Group, and I have enjoyed reading bits of the West Point Bee and seeing pictures posted on the group.
I thought that a glimpse of the school picnic from 1934, taken at the Fairgrounds would be fun pictures to share this week.
Today we’re going to take a look at my engine lathe. It’s down in my basement shop, and it’s one of the most important tools I own. Let’s get to know its parts and what they do.
Every year for Walt’s birthday I make German Chocolate Cake. The recipe comes from the Iowa State Fair Cookbook from 1985.
My Grandma James was born on July 4, 1912. We always enjoyed celebrating her birthday, and as many of us as possible came to Watertown, South Dakota, every year.
Irene Belle Hodge was born to Clyde and Bessie May Trevettt Hodge in Emerson. Nebraska. She married Claude James and they had 7 children. She was a nurse in Watertown for many years.
I dislike sitting idly and doing nothing, so I often take small sewing projects along with me when I have appointments or I am traveling. It might be knitting, cross-stitch, a beading project, or a hand-pieced or appliqued quilting project.
I used to just toss the tools in a bag and go, but found myself hunting for the various things I needed. So I spent some time thinking about what I needed for my projects and sat down with pencil and paper to design a kit (or two) for travel. Stick on hook and loop tape keeps the kits closed.
Sometimes the challenge in genealogy is sorting out language differences, both in translation and in writing styles. In his post about the Bruegenhemke place, Walt mentioned high and low German. We will look at that and then look at writing patterns.
German language has several dialects, just like many other languages. High German is the official written language of Germany. It is based on the spoken languages of the highlands of southern Germany and is spoken in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Low German is based in old Saxon language and is not spoken much these days except in certain areas in northern Germany. It does not have an extensive amount of literature like high German does.
In my post about the challenge quilt Snow Goose, I mentioned paper piecing. There are plenty of tutorials about it out there, but I thought I would show you how I do it.
When you are researching family history, you often find that names have changed over the years. It can make the search for your family’s history challenging.
There are a number of reasons a name might change – immigration, transcription errors, translation, marriage, a desire to fit in the local community or a desire to hide from something in the past.
In our family history, we have a few names that have changed over time – most notably Hoel. Several of Walt’s ancestors spelled it Hole. It seems to have changed back and forth a couple of times, and it also depends on which document you are looking at for a few family members. Walt’s great-grandfather was listed as John Swisher Hole. His son, Walt’s grandfather, was William Henry Hoel.
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