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*Updated 10.22.22* 1937 Ossipee Center School play, Ossipee, New Hampshire

Black and white photo of a group of 3 rows of children of various ages in colonial costumes holding the Betsy Ross designed and sewn flag of 13 alternating stripes of red and white and circle of 13 white stars on the upper left solid blue field. Photo edge is marked "1937" in pen. On the back of this photo my great grandmother Jessie McIntosh Sturtevant wrote out their names as follows: 1937 Ossipee Center School play When Betsy Ross made Old Glory First row L-R Roland Wilkins Edwin French Jr Norman Remick Jr Harvey Emerson Raymond Perry Lenela Moody Madeline Goldsmith Dorothy Sturtevant* Esther Perry Barbara Emerson Second row L-R Violet Moody Flora Sturtevant* Theresa Goldsmith Vileta Moody Jean Sawyer John F. Harmon Joseph Nevers Harley Moody Back row L-R   Elmer Berry - Violin Miss Todd - Piano Helen Sturtevant* George Knapp - Mandolin Robert Sawyer Jr Hayes Sawyer Jr * Denotes grandmother and great aunts of this blogger. In 1937 Helen was 13, Flora was 10, an...
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#52Ancestors 2022 January: Foundations

Week 1 and (just in case I don't make it any further this month) the January monthly prompt is: Foundations. "August 21, 1983, Daddy & Lissa on the family room foundation" from the Flattery family photo collection currently in the possession of the author. Writing this during naptime on Sunday. My dad retired a couple years ago. My parents put their house up for sale, and it sold in two weeks. It happened so fast they had to put everything into storage because they thought they'd have a couple months to figure out next steps. I begged for the family photos and docs.  They brought me the totes of photo books and docs in 2021. I had never seen some of this stuff! Now some of that delay was the pandemic, they spent most of 2020 with my family in Georgia while there stuff was up in Massachusetts. Some of that is they don't want anyone to have their stuff. Haha. Well I scanned what I could and look at what I found. Dad attended Silver Lake Regional Vocational High ...
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From the mystery photos: baby on a step

  A black & white but sort of sepia photo of a baby in a bonnet looking to their left, sitting in what looks to be a Dr.'s bag or a carpet bag  (today's weekender?) on a doorstep with a paneled door behind it, shingle siding, wide trim around the door. Its slightly out of focus as if the person didn't quite know how to take the picture, or if the subject was moving.  The photo is from a collection of my maternal great grandmother's albums. Most are on the same paper with the white border, same B&W/Sepia quality. They start in 1918, and go through the late 40's. She would have been 20 years old in 1918. I can't find her on the 1920 US Census.  I have a hunch of who this is & where my great grandmother was, what she was doing. There's a fantastic indexed item on the big A genealogy website "Mae Intorf." Is that you gran? I started doing genealogy to try and figure out who my people are and why they are the way they are. The issues I have ...
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Week 28 #52ancestors Transportation

Excuse the format, this one will be a bit of a brain dump as I've not had a free moment lately to write a proper post. 52 weeks prompt this week is: Transportation. On my dad's side, his mother's mother's father James Albert Adams was a wagoner in the US Army from 1870-1888. From records I've found he was driving officers around and helping deliver telegraph line building equipment. This is a fun rabbit hole posted by  Greg Krenzelok - Director - Historian of the  U.S. Army Veterinary Corps Historical Preservation Group  (facebook link) "The Duties of the U.S. Army Waggoner"  (rootsweb link) Also on my dad's side, his great grandfather on mom's father's side drove a wagon in his later years in Allston, MA & was actually run of the road by a car, the horse got spooked & flipped the wagon. If you've ever driven in Allston this resonates.  Dad's stepdad Chester Flattery drove trucks in the Korean war and when he came home worked fo...
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Photo ID: My Dad visited Atlanta 68 Years ago

When we announced our move to the Atlanta area for work in 2016, my dad said "Oh, I've been there once, when I was a little kid, I think I had cousins there."  Fast forward four years and my parent's downsizing means all the family albums have come to me.  In going through photos from his childhood, we found these gems: My grandmother Miriam with her niece & my dad Check out the Chuck Taylors. These pictures are from 1953 at the top of Stone Mountain . I can totally see them walking up the side of the smooth rock, one mile trail, in chucks which have zero traction, with the kids leading the way. The mountain is 825 feet above the ground and 1686 above sea level. The one time I went up to the top (in the Skyride bc my parents cannot hike anymore) it was cold and foggy, with no visibility. On a clear day you can see something like 60 miles. The natural areas of the park around the rock are beautiful. The "entertainment park" is meh and the relief is an abo...
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One thing Leeds to another

I currently get about a hour or two hour break in the morning when the baby boy takes his nap during which I catch up on Podcasts & try to get something on my list for the week done.  Today I was listening to the pod from Family Locket :  Research Like a Pro episode 68 from Oct 28 2019 (we were just freshly home from having the boy when this came out so I'm catching up!) where they interview Dana Leeds about the Leeds Method of color clustering DNA matches. I haven't had a chance to try the Leeds Method but I think I get what it does. So when Ms Leeds mentioned Evert-Jan Blom's Genetic Affairs Auto Cluster  (record scratch sound effect) I abandoned my plan for nap time & went on a Google search hunt. The TL;DR At some point Blom partnered with MyHeritage, while Ancestry sent a cease and desist.  I ended up at the  MyHeritage DNA Tools section & ta dah!                         ...
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The Time the Snow Split - Family Lore & Facts

Family Lore & Facts is a series where I will take the family stories we heard as kids and adults but were never sure of all the details, research the facts of the time, and put together a full picture.  I remember standing in the kitchen, probably around the time of the Northridge earthquake in Southern California in 1994, when Nana, my mom's mother, came downstairs for breakfast and told us the story about the time she saw the snow split straight down to the ground.  Flora Sturtevant grew up in many places in central New Hampshire and at this time they were in Ossipee, where the snow was deep that year and it was around Christmas. They had an earthquake and she recalled going out to break the ice in the water for the animals in the barn and seeing a giant crack that went all the way down into the ground in the solid snow across the field. Nana would have been about 12 years old, the 3rd child, 3rd daughter, in a family of 5 kids. In this photo from the prior winter, she's...
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