VISITORS AND QUERIES
BY KAREN HANSEN
Following up on a story in our last ACR, Orris and Reva Drake met Karen and Tamara Moriarity and were given the photos of Edwin and Selma DRAKE and one of Wallace and Robert Drake, as children. Everyone was glad to have them reunited with the family.
Our sincere thanks go to Natalie and Don Richards of Clearwater, Florida who delivered pictures and information about Don’s aunt Florence BEAL and her millinery shop in Walnut, which was at 215 Antique City Drive. They gave us copies of the agreement for buying the millinery stock, envelopes and postcards addressed to Florence at Walnut, an ad announcing the purchase of the business, 2 local play ads where Florence had parts, and a 1913 Christmas card from the pastor of the Presbyterian Church here. Natalie helped me to write the article in this ACR on Florence Beal and her millinery shop.
We also are very grateful to John Behrens of Port Angeles, Washington for the five books that he donated to our resource collection.
Visitors have included Chuck and Margie Eyerly from Oakland, Iowa, who came to use our computers for ancestry.com and heritagequestonline. He is researching all of the doctors that have been at the town of Carson and we were able to find census records and a deceased physicians’ database with some of the names. Margie is looking for her HUFF ancestors, which is challenging due to multiple marriages of one of them.
Virgil Peterson visited from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. We were able to find the photo of his father, Ernie PETERSON, Mayor of Marne, turning the 1st shovelful of dirt for the groundbreaking of Marne Housing.
Norman Archer from Council Bluffs will return to find the gravestones of George and Carl ARCHER, which we located.
Alice Pollock from Willard, Missouri and Patti Clark from Visalia, California spent considerable time in the genealogy room and are now members of WGS. They gave us the church bulletin used in this ACR that included the death of their brother. We also received some photos of Maggie Ronna and of the E. H. Ott Hardware store, which, coincidentally, was in the building which is currently the library and genealogy room. We also located the Walnut House and many family obits and marriages. In addition to the OTT family, they are researching the DREYER sisters, Dora Ott, Maggie RONNA, Lizzie GUMBERT, and Bertha MUELLER. Their dilemma now is proving the maiden name of John Henry Ott’s wife. Many sources say Anna Marie (Mary) FASSE, but many others say Mary BIERMAN or BEHRMAN.
Our sincere thanks go to Alice Pollock for the package that she recently sent. It included a tin duck cookie cutter hand crafted by Ernest Henry Ott of E. H. Ott Hardware. She also sent Dora Ott’s death certificate and more family photos. One photo was labeled by Alice’s father, Grandma Dreyer (Voss) and she didn’t know who she was. I found obits and a marriage that verified Maria Schafer was married to Christian Dreyer, who died, and she later married J. H. Voss.
Darlene Ross from Washington State was in to use our resources.
Jon Thomas from Blachly, Oregon and Ronald Thomas from Council Bluffs, Iowa stopped to see where their grandfather John LUETT lived and where he worked as a blacksmith.
Jennifer Burgin from Selma, Texas emailed us and came in on a Tuesday afternoon when many of us were working, so we were able to find much information for her and she was thrilled. She received BURGIN obits for Niclaus, William, Hattie, Raymond, Ralph and Jennie; BURKEY obits for William Henry, Roy, Meta, Sarah, John, Cordelia, Catherine, and David; CAMPBELL obits for Oscar, J. H., Anna, and Roy; an obit for Henry WENDT and his marriage to Ida CAMPBELL. Jim Hansen was lucky to find a Card of Thanks after the death of Ida WENDT, but the Walnut Bureau which should have had the obituary is missing from the microfilm. Recently, Jennifer requested the obituary of Elvira Deen Smith, which was sent to her, along with the names of 3 others researching her.
Tom Carroll of Avoca visited, seeking information on the property at 409 Antique City Drive, home of Rick Heiny. Tom does metal detecting as a hobby and was fortunate to find many items in that yard. He found 3 Madsen Brothers Furniture Store tokens, a billiards token, and many coins, including wheat pennies and Indian head pennies. We found that the house was built by Billy and Sabina BURKE, who bought the property in 1887. Owners before them were Fred Moershell in 1877 and J. H. Crommett in 1883. Billy Burke had a grocery store here and his wife was also very prominent. Sabina sold the house in 1949 to Henry and Evalena Rossmann, parents of Rondo Rossmann, who later lived there with his family. There were only a couple of other people who lived there for short periods. We suspect that the items that were found there came from the days of the Burkes.
Rick and Petra Heiny have just donated many letters, postcards, textbooks, a 1903 newspaper, a baby scarf and a belt that belonged to the Burke family. After we extract genealogy information, the items should be displayed at the Walnut Creek Museum. Tom Carroll would like to know other Walnut locations for practicing his hobby.
Dan McCool of West Des Moines, Iowa emailed us seeking the names of 3 Walnut students who participated in the state wrestling tournament in 1923. Gayle Stuart found an article about the 4 boys who were training for the tournament at Iowa State College in Ames. They were Carl LEBECK, Walter BEYER, Herbert SIEVERS and Alvin CADE. Carl Lebeck wrote an article about their trip. He mentioned Walter and Alvin in the article, so the 3 of them apparently wrestled. Soon afterward, Walter got scarlet fever and was quarantined.
Gary Plagmann of Atlantic, Iowa requested obituaries for Ernest and Henry RABENSTEIN. Ernest is buried at the Lincoln Township Cemetery, but we did not find obits in the Walnut newspapers for either of them. I had also looked in the Avoca papers for Ernest with no luck.
Barb Butcher did find Henry Jacob Rabenstein on www.findagrave.com website in the Pringle Cemetery in Custer County in Pringle, South Dakota. The dates on his memorial page were birth as January 9, 1890 and death as December 23, 1963. His wife was Edna M. with birth date as July 22, 1893 and death date as March 10, 1964. Also, www.familysearch.org has entries for Henry for the 1930 census and the 1935 state census among other things.
Margaret Peters of Houston, Texas was unable to locate the graves of her great-grandparents George and Vernie NEFF. We sent a cemetery map with the location marked and also a photo of the headstone to her.
KH