I visited the Family Discovery Center and made a great new discovery

When Larry and I went to Salt Lake City for RootsTech 2015, we arrived 2 days before the conference started. That gave us time to visit relatives and gave me time to shop at Deseret Book and attend a tour of the new Family Discovery Center that FamilySearch has built in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building east of Temple Square. 

As I waited for the tour to start at 10 am that Wednesday morning I was greeted by Shari Mehling Stone and her friend. It was coincidence that Shari was there at the same time. I met Shari at last year's RootsTech. Her great granduncle's daughter Mary Mehling married my great grandfather, George Koleber in 1931.  

Shari Mehling Stone is 3rd from right in the green sweater.

Shari is reviewing the Mehling information provided at this
display in the Discovery Center. 

After Shari and I visited awhile, another guest arrived for the 10 am tour. We recognized each other from Facebook! I met my new friend Michelle Ganus Taggart. 

I observed as Michelle visited a room that showed historical events about the locations where her ancestors lived.

As Michelle and I continued our visit in the Center, as all curious genealogists do, we shared information about our ancestral families. I told Michelle where I was living in Colorado and she told me her father's Ganus family had lived in Manassa, Colorado around the turn of the 20th century. This map shows the proximity of Manassa to my current residence of Canon City, CO.  

She was surprised to learn that my husband had ancestral connections to Manassa, Colorado too. This 1900 census below for Manassa, CO shows residents Aaron Hawkins and family.

This chart shows my husband's relationship to Aaron Hawkins.

Aaron Hawkins and Larry Jamison are 2nd cousins,
3 times removed.

It's so cool that I was able to personally get acquainted with Michelle in the "Discovery Center" and discover our family connections.   

Finding cousins in a cemetery

This headstone marks the grave of my dad's younger brother, Alfred George Margheim, who died at age 9 in 1933 from pneumonia. He's buried in the Hygiene Colorado cemetery. I haven't visited the cemetery so I was really happy to see that Linda Fate had posted this picture on FindaGrave.com. By doing a Google search I found that the Boulder Genealogical Society has indexed the Hygiene Cemetery. As I browsed the listing of burials, I looked for any other names that are familiar in my RootsMagic database. 
I found the name of Myron Ingalls and I have Ingalls cousins (Laura Ingalls Wilder is my 7th cousin twice removed). 

Further research yielded the connection of Myron Ingalls to the Ingalls families in my database. From the information I gathered, I was able to draw up this chart: 

It reveals that the Myron Ingalls who is buried in the same cemetery as my uncle is my 8th cousin 3 times removed. I love it when searches come together like this. I have not visited the Hygiene Cemetery and had no idea that any of my cousins were buried there. 
My dad and his parents lived in Colorado 1931-1933 and returned to Kansas after Alfred's death to live out their lives. 

Back row left to right: John and Molly Margheim
Front row left to right: Ernest and Alfred Margheim

Drawn to this Infant's Grave

Yesterday my husband and I drove 15 miles to the neighboring town of Florence, Colorado to photograph a grave at Union Highland Cemetery. While there, we drove slowly around the cemetery and this little headstone caught my eye. It marks the grave of Lester Yost, who died Feb. 22, 1898 at the age of 1 year, 6 days. We stopped to photograph the headstone because my husband has a great-grandmother whose name was Yost. I saw that Lester's  parents were Lewis and Mary Yost.

When I got home I looked up Lewis and Mary Yost in the 1900-1930 censuses at Ancestry.com. I also found memorials on FindaGrave for Lewis and his second wife Effie. I learned that Lester's mother Mary was Mary Ann Patrick and that she died suddenly on September 14, 1910 after the family had moved from Florence, Fremont, Colorado to Craig, Moffat, Colorado. 

In 1900 Lewis and Mary still lived in Florence with their daughters Viola, born August 1892 and Mabel, who was born April 1898. That tells me that Mabel was born to Lewis and Mary Ann two months after their little one-year-old son Lester had died. That just tugs at my heart strings. The census indicates that Lewis and Mary had been married 8 years, so must have married in 1891 or 1892. It says Mary had 2 children and 2 were still living. Someone forgot about little Lester!

By 1910 Lewis and Mary had moved to Craig, Colorado and their household consisted of daughter Emma, born 1905, son Lewis Jr. born 1907 and Lawrence, born 1909. The census says Mary was the mother of 8 children, only 6 of whom were still living. Viola is not listed...perhaps by age 18 she was married. Mabel would have been 12 and she isn't listed either. Perhaps another loss through death? 

So we see that Mary was the mother of Viola, Mabel, LESTER, Emma, Lewis and Lawrence. If she gave birth to 8 children, she and Lewis by 1910 had lost 2 other children too. 

A brief obituary for Mary Ann Patrick Yost says that upon her death, she left 6 children, the youngest being age 2. That would be son Lawrence. I just haven't done enough research to figure out specifically who all her children were. 

By 1920 Lewis had remarried a woman named Effie, who was 3 years his junior. He was still residing in Craig, Colorado at the time of his death in 1942.

The thoughts that goes through my mind are "Does anyone remember little Lester? Do any of Lewis and Mary's ancestors ever think about his abandoned little grave with the multi-cracked headstone at Union Highland Cemetery in Florence, Colorado?" My husband and I noticed and took a few minutes on my 64th birthday to pay attention to Little Lester. 

Countdown to Colorado: 3 Days to Family History Expo

In three days I’ll be on my way to the Colorado Family History Expo 2009 in Loveland, Colorado with my friends Shelly, Patsy and Emily. Eight classes will be presented each hour during Friday and Saturday---how can I clone myself to attend 2 or 3 at once? Each of us has different interests and areas of research, so we're going to "divide and conquer". Shelly, a 30 year researcher, is taking a lot of the fun-sounding classes, like "Wagon Trains and Indian Fights", to be presented by Billy Dubois Edgington, and "Murder, Mayhem and Town Tragedy" with Lisa A. Alzo. Patsy has a strong interest in DNA as it is related to genealogy, so she'll be investigating classes along that line. I'm serving as a Consultant in our local Family History Center, so I'm going to learn as much as I can from the staff of the Family History Library and experts from FamilySearch so I can bring lessons back to our Center staff. I also use RootsMagic 4 for my database and am very excited about participating in two classes conducted by Bruce Buzbee himself! I'm also going to have fun in Janet Hovorka's class "Serendipity and Other Miracles: Why You Need Family History". I've experienced the serendipity in my family research!

I can hardly wait to meet many of my Facebook friends, and fellow genea-bloggers in the Blogger Bistro and Twitter Cafe. I'll be posting tweets to Twitter during the day and hope to post updates to this blog at day's end. I should do that during the day, but how would I tear myself away from the Exhibit Hall with all the wonderful vendors and product displays? From the Keynote Address at 8:00 am Friday morning by Bernie Gracy to the final drawing for the Grand Prize on Saturday at 6:00 pm, the Embassy Suites in Loveland, Colorado will be a ALIVE with genealogists and family historians, from the beginners to the experts and professionals. Holly Hansen, President of FHExpos, promises a very interesting and worthwhile expo that will teach us "The Tech to Trace Our Roots" right here for the first time in our beautiful Colorado!

I hope to see you there. You can also follow happenings on Twitter @FHExpos or on the blog http://fhexpos.com/wordpress/.