Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Slow blogging....

Due to work schedules being totally hectic, my genealogy blog posting had stuttered to practically nil.

However, I do have to share today's bridge survey story.

I was at a bridge that crosses the Red River from Texas to Oklahoma. Normally the Red River is pretty wide and I'm guessing pretty deep. With the drought, however, the Red River at this location is essentially nonexistent. And I thought, seeing multiple footprints in the riverbed, that I too could walk in the riverbed and take photographs of the underside of the bridge spans that I needed.

Nope.

I got stuck. Specifically, one foot got stuck. My left foot. In a steel toe bot covered with a snake gaiter (to keep from getting bitten). And of course, every time I tried to move it, it felt like I was getting sucked further into the mud. My survey partner couldn't help as she did not want to get stuck in the mud as well.

Finally ended up using some tree branches to create a nest for my other foot so I wouldn't slip into the mud there and essentially dug my other foot out. Covered in red, red mud. And now I know where the Red River gets its name from.

And I don't even like mud when I am safe in the car.

Always an adventure. Especially when when we are going to end up driving probably 2000 miles by the end of the trip. It is only Tuesday and we are already at nearly 1000.

Weeeeeeeeeee.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Wilbarger County, Texas - 2 thumbs up for the City Government!

So I am going to be traveling to Wilbarger County, Texas, next week for work (time for more bridge survey). It will be part of a larger trip in west and and northwest Texas. I am not expecting to get a trip up to Wilbarger county any other time. Because of this, I was planning on making a stop at Eastview Cemetery in Vernon, Texas, but I have no idea of where the people were buried. This is the SNOW family, including Stillman B. Snow, from Virginia. His father was Asiel Snow, who came to Pulaski Co, Virginia, from Massachusetts.

So I was looking up the cemetery, found some entries on Find-a-Grave, but no actual plot locations. So in preparation for next week's trip, I faxed the City Hall, which holds the records of the cemetery. I had not expected a fast reply, and included my mailing address, phone number, email, and fax number. Not 20 minutes later I had received a fax and a email from someone in the City Hall in Vernon. This included a letter, the cemetery record for the SNOWs, and a map of the cemetery giving me directions to the location within the cemetery.

The city of Vernon in Wilbarger county is fantastic. I wish I had more people to research there! I hope that I can actually stop in and say thank you. I probably won't get any time to research as the schedule will be tight, but every little bit helps. I have no idea if there will be any headstones there, but at least now I have the cemetery record and can check it out!