Labor Day - Jobs of our Ancestors - Dan Kelly: Stock Breeder

With my heritage primarily in Nebraska, it is not surprising that my ancestors were farmers and raised livestock. My great grandfather, Daniel Kelly, was a large scale stock breeder near Greenwood, Nebraska. He made many trips to Omaha to sell his stock at the Omaha stockyards.

He also had a butcher shop in Greenwood.

Daniel Kelly, Stockman

Daniel Kelly
Butcher Shop

Military Monday: They All Came Home

War seems to have always effected American families. Several men in the Petersen family served during World War II. The five Navy men below include one son and four grandsons, plus a Marine, a grandson-in-law, of Jens and Karoline Petersen of Hardy, Nebraska.

From the collection of Joan McAllister

From left to right: Jess Petersen, son of Jens and Karoline Petersen; Leslie Eugene (Gene) Petersen, son of Elmer Martinus Petersen and Hilda Petersen; Kenneth L. Petersen (my Dad), son of Otto and Ruby Petersen; Ralph (Lodie) Salyard, son of Ralph Salyard and Emma Petersen Salyard; Edwin C. Henry, son of Hubert and Katherine Petersen Henry; and Carl V. O'Grady, husband of Doris Salyard O'Grady, daughter of Ralph Salyard and Emma Petersen Salyard.


Our family was lucky - all of the boys came home.

My Dad has his clipping framed and on display.

Dad's medals and dog tags from World War II

Open Discussion Weekend - Social Networking or Defacing a Tombstone?

Today was a beautiful, much cooler, summer day and a friend suggested lunch and a cemetery walk. So we headed for Ashland Cemetery in Ashland, Nebraska. I have a few distant kin buried there and before leaving, I took down the names of the FindAGrave tombstone requests so I could give a little bit back to the FindAGrave community.

The afternoon was a bit like an Easter egg hunt, but low and behold, we found the relatives I was looking for, and six of the seven FindAGrave requests (the missing one was a person with the same name).

While walking the cemetery, we came upon this gravestone.

Harriet Jones
Ashland Cemetery
Ashland, Nebraska

Do you see the little white sticker on the gravestone? This warranted a closer look. Here's what we found:

This was a sticky label, fairly permanent, that had been left by a relative of the deceased.

So - what do you think? An effective method of contacting kin or the defacement of a cemetery marker? If you vote the latter, will you be contacting this person to let them know what you think?

It's Open Discussion Weekend - please post your thoughts about this in the Comments section below.

Around the Blogosphere: September 4, 2011

Fall means the return of our favorite television programs, football season (maybe for you, but not for me), and also marks the return of Around the Blogosphere here at LongLostRelatives.net.

Summer activities have made it difficult to keep up with all of the genealogy blogs, but here are a few of my favorite posts from recent blogs:

The story of Sarah Alexander Lawton from On the Trail of Hillhouse by Jan Eloise Morris. I'll admit I'm a bit prejudiced since Jan is a long time friend, but a new blogger. She's a gifted writer and photographer who melds the two into fascinating pictorial essays about her family.

Greta Koehl always manages to bring a smile to my face. She does it again with Things I Don't Care About in Genealogy on Greta's Genealogy Blog. I can also relate to Greta's post Sometimes You Just Need to Clean House.

Hmm. . . is a theme emerging from the posts I've bookmarked as favorites? James Tanner of Genealogy's Star writes about Dealing With the Piles and Boxes - Genealogy in Quantity.

Apparently, I'm in the mood for humor as I also loved Amy Coffin's take on If Genealogists Were in the Tabloids on her We Tree blog.

I posted this link to Facebook, and it bears repeating here. This is a nice video about memories of the North Platte (Nebraska) canteen during World War II - from the Nebraska Outback blog.

Barbara Poole from Life From the Roots has a knack for seeing things through her camera lens. I love the way she shared a painting done by her grandfather at age 80, along with a photograph of the subject of the painting. You must take a look!

I also suggest you take a look at another new blog by a new friend (and potential cousin) of mine, Evelyn Pecht. Evelyn is off to great start in her geneablogging career at IowaGirlMemories. If you're at least my age, you'll appreciate her story about the outhouse!

And . . . the post that has become my Favorite Blog Post of the Year: All I Really Need to Know About Genealogy I Learned in Kindergarten by Elizabeth O'Neal on Little Bytes of Life. This is one I know that I will re-read several times and have it permanently marked as a keeper.

Sports Center Saturday: Front Page News

Just when I thought today couldn't get any better for genealogy, look what was in the mailbox today! It's Vol. 32, Issue No. 3 of Nebraska Ancestree, the official publication of the Nebraska State Genealogical Society. Why so special? Because a photograph from my personal collection appears on the cover.

It's been hard for me to keep this a secret for all these months, knowing that the photograph of the 1911 Greenwood, Nebraska baseball team would be on the cover sometime during 2011.

This photo originally appeared on this blog last October. Shortly thereafter, the President of the Nebraska State Genealogical Society, Floyd Smith III, emailed me and asked if the society could use the photo on a future issue, to coincide with baseball season. Of course, I said yes! Thank you, Floyd!

1911 Greenwood, Nebraska Baseball Club
original photo from my collection

William L Kelly, Sr. (back row, left), Jimmy Mann, Henry Weideman (manager), Clay Hansen, John Kimberly, Walter Burke, Clarence Stokes, Evan Armstrong, Ben Howard, Carl Weideman Played 54 games; won 48, lost 6.

Visit the Nebraska State Genealogical Society's web site