2011 is half over; Where do we go from here?

I am a native Idahoan, having been born in Emmett, Idaho in 1947.  My parents were both born in Idaho also - Boise County (the part that is now Valley County) also - my father in 1907 and my mother in 1913.  My grandparents on both sides were early settlers of Idaho in Long Valley and Emmett and even my great-grandparents (Walter and Alida Dexter and George Alexander Logue) settled in early Idaho, all three being buried in the Crown Point Cemetery overlooking Cascade Lake.

With these roots in Idaho, I've done a lot of research on Valley and Gem counties.  It's very satisfying and exciting at times to come across a record of proof that these people really did homestead that piece of land, marry that person we've listed in our family tree, or give birth to that child at the place and time we've been told.  I've not, however, did a lot of research into Boise County (except where it applied to pre-Gem County times, 1915, or pre-Valley County times, 1917).

Though my family moved to Garden Valley in about 1950 and stayed there until my youngest brother graduated from high school, 1974, there was not a lot of history for our family there.  Younger brothers were born while we lived in Garden Valley, but they were physically born in the hospital in Emmett (Gem County).  One brother, George Alexander, was born Dec 11, 1952, passed away three days later, and is buried in the Emmett cemetery overlooking the city.

I did have a grand-uncle, Jacob Crawford, who was on the 1880 US Census for Garden Valley as a laborer.  He was 24 years old then, but later moved to Oregon where he raised his family (ironically, one of his daughters, a twin, was named Reba - maybe this is where my mother got my name as she was just 3 or 4 years older than my mother).  And my father's father walked (well mostly snowshoeing) from Cascade through Garden Valley to Idaho City (the county seat) in 1902 to get a marriage license to marry my grandmother.  But other than a few instances like this, there was not a lot of history of my family in Boise County.

So the opportunity to adopt Boise County for the US GenWeb project was a chance to correct the omission of researching the center of the 'gold rush' days in Idaho Territory, exploring the haunts of the miners and the cemeteries where they are buried, and discovering items of history and genealogy I might not otherwise come across.

If you want to check out what is in store, here is the website: http://boise.idgenweb.org/
(and a thanks goes out to Sharon McConnell for all her work on setting up the web-site).

 A logging operation in Boise County around 1950.

I look forward to hearing from anyone interested in seeing a particular bit of history, biography or whatever on this blog or on the GenWeb site.