Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

  Most Viewed Blog Posts 2023      There was an ad for a metal detector that ran on TV for years. A man spoke earnestly into the camera. “My wife said I needed a healthy hobby.” There was something about it that always made one of my sons and I laugh. It became part of a repertoire between us. Everyone needs a healthy hobby!       I have no shortage of hobbies or ways to spend my free time, and of course one of those ways is family history research. It seems there are two extremes and no middle ground in this area: either you are interested or you’d rather hear the U.S. Tax Code read aloud. If you are interested, you don’t want stories to get lost – or lost again, as the case may be. Everything I’ve written about in my blog this year was completely unknown to my family. Researching family history, we also learn a lot about history and places, and I chose to also write about the times and places and pop culture surrounding this set of ancestors.      My most-viewed posts sometimes surpr

     This fashionable dress from 1895 was probably similar to one Bird Bulger wore. Later, Bird Bulger said she had a premonition. It was a nice night in May and she was out promenading with her sweetheart, Montgomery “Mont” Orff. She had a beautiful new silk dress on, light-colored, her first time wearing it.       Clothing was much more expensive in the past, taking far more of a percentage of a family’s budget than it does today. Bird said the dress cost $65. To put that in perspective, Brooklyn schoolteachers with a year of experience in 1897 were paid $504 a year. An elevator boy in the courthouse made $408 a year.       For four months, since January 1894, Fort Wayne, Indiana had been plagued by someone the press called “Jack the Paint Thrower.” He would sneak up behind women in the dark and throw a mixture of oil and red paint on the back of their dresses, then slip away undetected. “For months, evening after evening on Calhoun street, the ladies of our city

  Note: The A to Z Family History Challenge was created by other family history/genealogy bloggers a few years ago to inspire people to write one post a week. I’ve also seen one that called for writing a post a day, except Sundays, for the month of April. These aren’t designed to be deep in-depth time-consuming research endeavors (but they can be – and I love doing research). The original idea was doing something quick, maybe posting a photo of a broach inherited from a grandmother and writing about it. Some bloggers came up with themes, one being places of importance in family history. I liked that idea. So most of my A to Z challenge will be places, and of course why they matter in my family tree.  A to Z Challenge: M - Mountain Spring Station, Mohave County, Arizona I wish I had a photo of George Walker Suttenfield, but I do have this picture of his remarkable second wife Sarah Foxall.        “Over and over the same story was repeated – of men who spent their money, their time, thei

  This illustration is from an 1890 story, "Peter's Christmas." Here, Mrs. Brown, the kindly matron of a Newsboys Home, has prepared a Christmas tree for the boys to enjoy. Homeless newsboys could stay at newsboy homes for a fee that was typically six cents a night, with a nickel supper and a six-cent breakfast. Lunch was on their own. The boys were out all day selling newspapers. “We sometimes think …that Young America of today is altogether too knowing to believe in a little man in a sleigh drawn by eight reindeers, running over the tops of the houses and coming down the chimney…to fill their stockings. Then too, the presents now a days are all so big and elaborate that they cannot be put in stockings…       How different from the little wooden horses, tin trumpets, pop guns and candies of long ago. Modern civilization is sweeping away all of the romance of life, even from children….Would that we had some Hans [Christian] Anderson in this country, to weave again th