Greene County Genealogical Society
Meeting notice: The next meeting of the Greene County Genealogical Society will be Saturday, Jan. 3, at 10 am in the Jefferson public library. Valerie Ogren will give you a few tips on “Saving Your Stuff”. Since we focused during 2014 on gathering family history, now we must learn how to save it.
Grandmother’s House – revisited: At our November meeting, Elaine Deluhery gave what turned out to be an interesting program – to me anyway. It was an idea that she found online and we thought “Oh, what the heck, it will do in a pinch and fill 30 minutes.” She handed us a sheet of graph paper and asked us to draw the floor plan of our grandparent’s house – or another relative. I was amazed at all the memories that came flooding back.
Being a farm kid, it was always a treat to be able to walk from school to Grandma and Grandpa Radebaugh’s home in Rippey with some of my classmates who were town kids. Not only did I get the floor plan reasonably correct, I could even place the furniture and appliances because the arrangement never changed. [Our furniture has sat in the same place for 24 years. Now I know where I inherited that trait.] It seemed like one memory triggered another, and another, and another. Things like: the pantry always smelling like grape juice because there was a stone jar full of it on the cabinet that I was not allowed to drink. Sugar was Grandma’s answer for everything. If I turned my nose up at sliced tomatoes, sprinkle a little sugar on them. Don’t like scrambled eggs? Put some sugary grape jelly on them. [I knew about green eggs and ham long before Dr. Seuss came along.] Grandpa smoked a pipe, but it was forbidden in the house. However, Grandma did love the little cloth bag with a drawstring that the tobacco came in because it was just the right size for her flower seeds. Their yard was surrounded with flowers (mostly annuals), so she would harvest the seeds every fall and then start plotting out the arrangement of her flower gardens for the following year. Overnights were generally spent on the davenport/fold-out bed with Grandma. It had a feather tick mattress that once a year got aired out in the sun. It was nice to snuggle down in – except for the time Grandma told me she sure hoped a snake didn’t get in there while it was outside all day. Trips uptown with Grandpa always involved a treat of some kind – maybe yeasto, popcorn, or an outdoor movie by Thornburg’s cafe. All my memories might end up in a book. With any luck, I’ll have it done in a year or two.
IGS 50th: The Iowa Genealogical Society in Des Moines has lots of things planned for the New Year. In the last few months, it has added to its collection, grown its internship program to four interns for this spring, started offering Ancestry.com to its patrons, became an LDS affiliated library and booked great speakers and events in conjunction with their 50th anniversary. The affiliation with LDS means that you may now order microfilm at FamilySearch.org and have it sent to IGS – then go there to view the film on one of their many microfilm readers.
Reference library: Hours are Wednesday afternoon from 1 to 4 and Saturday mornings from 9 to noon. Other times may be arranged by appointment. Volunteers will assist you with any research problems you may have. [Be mindful of the upcoming installation of the new elevator/lift and call first to make sure our room is open.]
Contact us: Our web page is located at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~iagcgs/. Email us at gcgsiowa@hotmail.com or P O Box 133, Jefferson IA 50129-0133.
