Our family tree has increased by one today with the arrival of our new granddaughter Shelby Paige Wilkerson.  She was born just after lunch time and weighed 6 pounds 5.6 ounces and was 19 inches long.  As you can see from the photo taken just minutes after her birth, she has a lot of hair, just like her older sister Katrina did when she was born in 2001.  Older brother Garrett is going to have his hands full with two little sisters!

Wishing you all a very Happy 2009 tomorrow!

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As you may have noticed, I have not posted for a while. I have been on a genealogical journey of sorts, researching the Bordeaux family of Washington state. After I wrote my article A Visit to Old Bordeaux, to my surprise I was contacted by one of the Bordeaux family descendants and he and I are just getting to know each other via email at this present point. In a way, I feel like if I can share some of his family history with him, then I will be giving back. The Bordeaux family helped many people survive the Depression, including mine.

In my search for Bordeaux family information and documentation today, I did a search for Mason County Logging Company, the name of the Bordeaux family enterprise. Originally, it had been Bordeaux Brothers Logging Company, but as they set down roots in the Capitol Forest here in Washington, the brothers, Thomas, Joseph and Gilbert (along with their sister Virginia) settled in Shelton, Washington.

Getting to the point of this saga, I found a wonderful site named the Shadow Catchers where there were several old logging pictures, including some of the Bordeaux brothers logging with oxen. I would like to have some of those photos, but for me, it might be cost prohibitive. They do barter though, so maybe I might have something they would want?

Shadow Catchers doesn’t just have historic photos, they also sell modern and contemporary ones, as well as license them for publication.

Make sure you take a look at these fine galleries:

Popular Galleries

Native Americans

Logging and Lumbering

Oystering and the Seafood Industry

Those are just three of twenty-four topics covered. I suggest you prepare for a long spell at this site. Grab a cup of whatever you drink, and settle in to be immersed in history and fine photography. One thing I should mention, this site is still being built, so there might be a few links that don’t work quite yet. Visit often though, they are updating it all the time. Oh, and if you really, really like the site and its offerings, make sure you get on their mailing list. I did!

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I love this picture of my two Great Aunts, especially the hat Myra is wearing. Myra was born  28 Sep 1888 in Oregon County, MO. She passed away in 1940. Her younger sister Lydia was born 19 Sep 1895 in Howell County, MO and passed away in 1976 in Shelton, WA. Lydia and her husband John were some of the first of our Yates family to move to Bordeaux, WA and were there before 1920. I suspect this photo was taken in Missouri. That’s some fancy hat Myra is wearing, isn’t it?

This is my submission to 5th Edition Smile For The Camera – A Carnival Of Images – Crowning Glory

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After I posted Your Ancestor Might Have Been Recorded On Tape I got a reply from my local library via email saying the particular manuscript and audio recording wasn’t something the Oregon Historical Society loaned out. I was kind of expecting that, considering the fragility of the records.

What I was told I could do is to contact the Society directly and ask for a copy of the audio tape and a transcript of it as well; and as for the William Livingston Holmes documents, I will have to think about what I might want out of them, if anything.

In order to get any of the records it will cost me some money, which I will have to budget for over time.  At least I know where the records are, and that I will be able to get them if necessary. I’ll have to make sure I put it in my “to do” list. It’s already a pretty long list.

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I am very fortunate to be the caretaker of several high school yearbooks that belonged to my parents and grandparents. My family must have been genealogists at heart to have managed to save these old books for posterity. My collection isn’t all that large, but what I have is two Broadway High School yearbooks that belonged to my grandpa Elvin B. Moline who graduated from Broadway in Seattle in 1912. That’s him at the top of the page from the yearbook.

Click to join Yearbooks

For those of you who weren’t lucky enough to inherit yearbooks, there is still hope! I belong to a group on Yahoo that is just for those looking for old yearbooks. I have posted my yearbook holdings and volunteered to do lookups for anyone who asks. If you think this is something you would be interested in pursuing, all you have to do is click on the link I am inserting.

Some other links you might try:

Bill Cribbs’ Genealogy World (Yearbooks listed)

Current Yearbooks on Ebay

Dead Fred’s Genealogy Photo Archive

Old Yearbooks

There are 699 members in just this Yahoo group. Who knows what published information they might have, or what serendipity will lead you to a long lost cousin?

Note: My other yearbooks include: 1968 Tumwater, WA High School (my graduating year); Rochester High School, Rochester, WA years 1938 to 1941.

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