Genealogy - Diggin up Dirt

From this weekends visit with friends I brought back slides to try out in my new VuPoint slide scanner  that I had mentioned previously on April 26, 2008. I had only tested it out with negatives and it seemed to work relatively well.

From yesterday’s messing around I did find a few things that could be a bit bothersome. The slide scanner can be a bit slow in resetting itself. The instructions say to wait 5 seconds in between each capture. Once loading the scanner, at first I was waiting for the slide to completely load and the image to stop changing. This was creating some very bleached out images. I looked for a place to adjust the setting and didn’t find one, I even searched through the small amount of documentation that was included. When I looked closer at the preview image that appears on the screen as it is being scanned, I realized that it was giving me different exposures to choose from. I ended up rescanning some images that I thought weren’t going to display anything at all. Occasionally you had to be quick about capturing the correct exposure or you would end up with a washed out version.

The slide holder holds 3 separate slides. I found if the slides were at opposite ends of the exposure scale the scanner would do well on one and bleach the other out. I tried two different methods to correct this problem. One is to place only two slides in the holder leaving the middle one empty to give the scanner a chance to readjust and the other was to empty the scanner completely and only do one slide at a time, giving the scanner plenty of time to readjust its settings.

Some were a bit tricky and I had to load them into the scanner several times to get the correct exposure. Overall with the learning curve I scanned in over 100 slides in about 5 hours. This included taking the slides out of their metal cases, another bit of a hassle, but would have needed done regardless of the scanner I had purchased.

It was no secret in the family that my great grandfather Van Houtte was a miserable man. There is a story that is told about a door that needed to be put on the family home. Although he would bring a bag of candy home for the children on pay day he never bought things that were needed for the house. The door was ordered and it came in, just as they do now without hinges or a lock. My Great grandmother, Clemence Mary, got a neighbor to hang the door with old hinges and purchased a lock set at the lock hardware store. They had been keeping the door shut with a nail. My great grandfather, Emil Victor, asked how much the lock set cost and decided it was too much and took it off the door and took it back.

A month later Emil went into town and bought another lock set that he claimed was the same price as the one that he had taken off of the door. All of this happened before 1920. Much to my surprise I found 2 articles on newspaperarchive.com that helped support the story of Emil’s temper and started gossip about Clemence.

McKean County Miner, June 19, 1919

 

Beefsteak and the Boarder

 

Sheriff E. W. Jones and Deputy Sheriff, C. C. Choate served as members of a Belgian relief committee Sunday, when they were called to Mt. Alton to straighten out the marital as well as martial troubles of one Victor Van Houtte, a Belgian.

 

Their findings were as follows: Victor works in a chemical plant at Newton. His wife keeps the family home at Mt. Alton and also a border. Victor usually spends the weekend in the bosom of his family and upon arriving on one such occasion recently found the boarder in his wife’s bedroom. With commendable fortitude he passed up this irregularity, but the following morning when the “missus” fed him bread and black coffee and produced delicious beefsteak for the boarder he decided he had a real grievance and chided his wife rather sternly.

 

However, open hostilities did not result until last Sunday when his wife criticized his methods of gardening while he was hoeing in the truck patch with the sweat of honest toil dripping from his brow. This was too much and the long suffering husband pursued his wife and threatened her with the hoe. She escaped and sought the protection of the strong arm of the law. The relief commission responded and after hearing both sides of the case impressed upon the belligerents the beauties of peace and strongly advised them to avoid strife in the future and from outward indications succeeded in patching up the difficulties.

A week after the publication of their fight another article appeared in the Mckean County Miner:

McKean County Miner, June 26, 1919

 

Van Houtte Was Arrested

 

Upon a surety of the peace warrant Victor Van Houtte, who is employed in the chemical plant at Newton, was brought before Justice Gleason by Constable Dickinson, Saturday and after a hearing held under $300 bail for his appearance at court. His wife was the complainant in the case and claims that her husband threatened her with a garden rake and double-bitted axe and that his general conduct has become unbearable.  Mrs. Van Houtte is described as an entirely respectable hard-working woman, the mother of four intelligent children, three of whom appeared at the hearing and testified in their mother’s behalf. The husband appears to be insanely jealous without apparent reason. Van Houtte secured bail some hours after the hearing and was released from custody but must face the charge at the next term of court.

By the time the Census was taken in 1920 Clemence was living in Bradford with her children and Emil was still living in Lafayette.

I have wondered for some time if purchasing a membership with newspaperarchive.com would be valuable to me. I wondered if there was going to be different newspaper articles available from what was posted on ancestry.com. To my surprise it has turned out to be very valuable.

My paternal great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Burgess, was in the Civil War and was at one point in time one of only seven survivors. I found many articles on newspaperarchive.com with mention of him in it, including his obituary, which did not mention his deceased wife at all. I knew that her first name was Mary and that she was alive up until 1920 but that was about all I knew about her.

I started reading every article with the mention of B.F. Burgess in it. For once the tendency in the late 1800s and early 1900s to post everything about every move made by residents in the newspaper was about to pay off. I found this article:

Olean Evening Herald, June 22, 1920

 

Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Burgess and family of Olean visited at the home of Mrs. Burgess’ brother, John Donigan, Sunday.

I now knew her maiden name and was about to discover a whole lot more. I kept reading the society articles and found not only that she had a brother named John but had one name Thomas also. It was at this point I was about to be confused. One of the articles mentioned siblings named “O’Keefe.”

I had been searching the census records in the Olean area to find the Donigan family that would have a Mary, John and Thomas, pretty common names for an Irish family. It all became clear when I found Mary’s brothers living in the Olean area as step children of Patrick O’Keefe. Mary’s mother, Mary, had remarried after her first husband, James Donigan’s death about 1860 – 1865. I found 6 children from the marriage of James Donigan and Mary and another 2 children from her marriage to Patrick O’Keefe.

Of course since I have solved the problem of Mary Donigan, I have now created more problems, like the names of James Donigan’s parents and Mary’s mother’s maiden name and then her parents and then…. It never ends.

This is Dad's army photo. On the back of the photo, signed by each of the members of the photo are the names of each soldier. My uncle, my mother's brother, is in the front row. This is before mom and dad were married.

Photo –

Front row Left to Right –

Russ Duint, Erie, PA, Norbert Walkiewicy, Erie, PA, James E Hollenbeck, Erie, PA, George Hamilton, Erie, PA, Sargent Roebuck, Dale West, Bradford, PA, Dub Strohmeyer, Erie PA, Fred Bubl Jr., Erie, PA, Eugene Walker, Hazel Hurst, PA

Second row –

Herbert Schmalenbach, Erie, PA, Jack Sherman, Steve Frolch, Erie, PA, John Heintz, Erie, PA, Dick Van Houtte, Bradford, PA, Deek Taylor, Bob Schwab, Duke Center, PA

Third row –

Darurn Turner, Eldred, PA, Ray Fronchnett, Erie, PA, George Hoetzl, Erie, PA, Charles Swartz, Mt Alton, PA, Chet Chojnathi, 120  41^st, Erie, PA, Philip L. Smith, Eldred, PA

Back row –

Len McLaughlin, Erie, PA, Bruce Sherwin, Bradford, PA, Clarence S. Lube, Erie, PA