Gravestones, Book sharing and family

This summer is going by quickly!  We've gone on three road trips all involving family history and genealogy.  Two trips involved photographing family gravestones, which we plan on adding to the www.findagrave.com website.  One trip was to the National Archives near San Francisco to go through files to help us know more about my ancestors via their business associates interview/interrogations.  We went through 30 files and found some usable information and got some pretty amazing photos, too!

One of the highlights of going to the San Francisco area was that we went on a "field trip" to Angel Island.  What an informative but moving experience.  We went through the detention center where poetry is carved into the walls, sleeping quarters, etc.

where you catch the ferry

part of the original dock

detention center

looking outside from the inside: no wonder the immigrants felt  imprisoned

portions of the walls deteriorated and gone without repair

sleeping quarters

poem

poem that had been painted over and over in an effort to cover it up

more sleeping quarters.  person on top got wet laundry hanging over him

photo of an immigrant

narrow hall way

office...note the typewriter

recreation room

the only bathroom in the place

women's detention center:  recreation room

photo of what used to be in this washing room

best preserved poem since it was covered up behind a desk or  wall hanging

in room 105 you could make your own rubbing of a Chinese poem

Many of the gravestones we saw were well-kept in green grassy cemeteries, however, we visited three cemeteries in desert areas that held a lot of history as some of the people were buried in the 1800's.  Seeing the gravestones was another way of confirming that this ancestor lived and died.  The gravestones some times had interesting information or background.  Just the place where they were buried added into the interest.  Plus, David had bound and unbound books on a few of these ancestors and he knew where they came in on his family tree, which made finding the gravestones more exciting.  In southern Utah the sexton was very helpful and kind and showed us three cemeteries, helped us find family gravestones and gave background on the cemetery, the area or even the person buried there.  As it turns out, she and David are related at some point.  At the end of seeing all three cemeteries we ended up going to her house and she and David exchanged books of family history.  Seriously!  I played with her two darling great-grandsons so she could work and talk with David.

While we were in Utah we got to the Stratton reunion and enjoyed a Segler pre-reunion.  (Our son started school just three days before the actual reunion so we couldn't get to that one.)  At the Stratton reunion David made sure to get people's contact information so that next year more people could be contacted earlier and hopefully attend.  We had a great reunion and for short notice, it was quite successful.  One other notable experience we had was that we attended the St. George temple.  What a wonderful experience.  We'd never been to the St. George temple; it's a very beautiful temple.  That's our summer trips in a nutshell.  Hope you are still working on your family history and genealogy.  It's worth the diggin'!