14 May 2010

Two Different Ideas from One Blog Post

I follow Arlene Eakle's blogs since she has a lot of interest in the MidWest, Kentucky, and good research in general.  Her new blog post, "American Mobility Declines in the 21st Century," gave me two new ideas!  

First, she talked about mobility in this country, citing a 2008 statistic from USA Today: 57% of Americans reported that they have never lived outside the state in which they were born.  Very interesting!
If I look at my pedigree chart from me back through my great-great-grandparents, I have a total of 25 individuals.  Only 8 of them lived solely in one state (or county of England): me, Mom, and 6 of my great-great-grandparents: one in Missouri, 2 who spent their lives in Vermont, and 3 who stayed in Yorkshire.  That's only 32%.  If I'd stopped calculating at the great-grandparent level, it's only 13%! And, that's assuming I never move out-of-state....

Secondly, Arlene finished the post with links to 3 new state memory websites:  Virginia, West Virginia, & Kansas.  Of course, I quickly linked to Kansas Memory, which was created by the Kansas State Historical Society.  There are lots and lots of goodies there, including a blog for the site.

Clicking on Chase County on the state map, led me to 71 items, all of which were interesting in one way or another.  Most of it was too recent to directly pertain to my direct line, but one of the items is a copy of the 1901 ten-page plat book for Chase County!  Each page is fully viewable/savable.  Here is a part of Twp 18S Range 7E:
I didn't see any HEGWERs in the book, but here are some closely related FINKs and BOENITZ/BENNETTs.  Other pages have FREYs, DRUMMONDS, and UMBERGERs.  All in all, it is super interesting to see where these cousins were living in relationship to each other.

A great big 'Thank You!' to the Kansas Historical Society for such a great website!  Thank you, Arlene, for such a thought-provoking blog post.

4 comments:

  1. I'm from Barton County, Kansas, which lies just west of Chase County. I found Kansas Memory a couple months ago and spent tons of hours there! Photos and plat maps to keep a person entertained for months! Now I need to go look at the West Virginia site! I sure enjoyed your post. Thanks!

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  2. Thanks, Becky! That's very kind of you. Someday I am going to see Kansas and put these maps to work!

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  3. In 1993 we visited Hymer and were able to find the original C.B.Hegwer ranch. If you look at the above map for "Charles Boenett" (Karl Boenitz) under the "e" in Boenett near the "200" there is a small black square. That is the location of the C.B.Hegwer home. The house is long gone, but the foundation remains as does the wall aroung the yard and the well.
    The Hegwer-Boenitz cemetery us just to the west across the RR tracks next to the creek.
    Hal Hegwer

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  4. Oh, Hal, what wonderful news! Thank you so very much! I have some very old notes about where the cemetery was, but not good enough to find it even if I were to ever get there. Talk to you later!

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