Checking in and Checking Up

I heard about another book on Valley County, Idaho history and thought I would check it out.  The book is "Free Land! Hopes and Hardships of Pioneers of Valley County, Idaho."   It is a Valley County History Project published by them in 2009.  The Valley County History Project is composed of writers and researchers who donate their work to this non-profit organization.  I could have bought the book directly from this group, but chose to order it online from Amazon.com. 

The book is full of nice pictures, maps, and lots of information, but it is lacking information on my Dexter forefathers who were early pioneers of Valley County and the information they have on the Logue's (also early settlers) is grossly wrong.  I'm not sure who supplied them with the information but they sure got it wrong. 

First, see my posting of March 21, 2012, for information on the Dexters and their journey to Idaho's Long Valley.  I used this information to file for a pioneer certificate from the Idaho Genealogical Society. 

Pioneer Certificates

Pioneer certificates are issued to direct descendants of persons who lived in Idaho before Statehood, 3 July 1890.  Applicants must prove direct descent from a person who was in Idaho Territory prior to statehood.  The ancestor need not have been born here; they need not have stayed here but applicants must prove they were once here.

As for the Logues (also early settlers), in the tables starting on page 240 (Valley County Genealogy, compiled and edited by Eileen Duarte), they list George A. Logue as follows:
GEORGE A. LOGUE came to Long Valley in 1901 and met his wife SARA who came here with her family in 1889.  (WRONG - George A Logue (born 25 Dec 1840) married Sarah A Sweet, in Pennsylvania before 1869 and was father to Thomas E Logue, Johns S Logue, and Fred S Logue, all of whom moved to Idaho in 1901 - see Our Logue Family History by Wesley Craig on the Valley County Genweb page.  He lost his first wife, Sarah, in 1882 and remarried Aurilla Ervay, having a daughter Bessie with her, still in Pennsylvania.)  They homesteaded in Crawford. George's brother THOMAS ELBRIDGE LOGUE born 1870 married MARY WINNIE DEXTER of Crawford and ran the FS Logue & Bros Store in Thunder and died 1954.   (WRONG: Thomas E Logue was George's oldest son.  He did marry Mary Dexter - of the above mentioned Dexter family - but did not run the store in Thunder.  His two younger brothers, Fred and John were owners and operators of the store.  In checking out land records, a brother of George, Washington S Logue, also filed for a homestead in Valley County and is listed on the 1920 census living next to George's daugher Bessie and her husband, John P. Lampie.  Other Logues listed in the land records are Ezra Logue, a cousin, Thomas, John and Fred.)  George's son Merton was born in 1910 (George would have been 70 years old then) became a logger and later was Sheriff and died 1987.  Another son Cecil was born 1907 married Rachel Crawford 1933. George's son Walter was born 1909, married Vava Marguerite Jones 1902 and their daughter Leona born 1918.  (WRONG:  Cecil, Walter, Merton, and Leona were children of Thomas E and Mary Winne Logue.)  

Why these errors surprise me is that the authors use a lot of information from Wes Craig (my cousin and grandson of George's daughter Bessie Logue) as sources for their Logue information and he is the author of the Logue Family History which proves that their data is incorrect.


One other small error noted: In the same table as above the authors list my uncle Joe Crawford (wife Mable) as brother to Otto W Crawford.  They are not brothers (his brothers were Will, Walt, Ernest and Cash) and I have not found any connection between these two Crawford families.


I apologize for neglecting my blog.  I invested in the 2012 Family Tree Maker because I thought it would be great to have software that would sync with my family tree on Ancestry.com - maybe save some time rather that have to enter the same data twice.  WRONG.  I've totally messed up my Family Tree Maker database and I've spend hundreds of hours trying to get it back to where I had it.  Doesn't leave much time to post to my blog.  I hope to be at a comfortable place with the database where I can take time to post regularly.

Back Again

I can't believe it has been over two months since I posted anything on my blog - in my defense, it was the end of the term at work and as soon as I'd put in all my required hours and the kids' schools were out we loaded up some grandkids and took off to Disneyland.  Then I got back and started getting ready for another Crawford Family Reunion.


My granddaughter and I started scrapbooks on our Disney trip right away, so I haven't spent a lot of time on my genealogy research.  When I did, I made a mess of it.  I have Family Tree Maker 2012, which syncs with your Ancestry.com tree (that is if you set it up right).  Somehow, I got my trees (I have several) confused and now I am going to be months straightening it out.  My subscription to Ancestry expires in July, so I am trying to decide if it is worth keeping it up.

So I would really be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience with the FTM 2012 and how I can clear up this mess (one tree has doubled every member, so instead of 5000+ members, there are 10000+).

Well I think I'll work for a while on my Ancestry family tree and resume this tomorrow.

1940 is here but not an index in sight - YET

So the 1940 US Census has been released and I've scoured all the places I thought my parents might be.  Haven't found them yet.  I've found both sets of grandparents (in Valley County, Idaho), lots of aunts and uncles in both Valley and Gem County, cousins in Valley County and many familiar names in Boise County (Garden Valley and Crouch).

I read over Christina's timeline of where they were in the late 1930s and early 1940s and have followed up in each of those places:

9) Dad worked that summer in south Donnelly and lived in a collapsible house (I think this is those tent homes - wood sides up about three feet then sides and top of canvas).

10) Back to Cascade for the winter in a house on a hill by a shop.  They bought the house and moved it to under the water tower.  Christina Winnie was born there March 18, 1937.

11) Moved to an abandoned house in Werley (unsure where this was).

12) Went to Tonasket, Washington to visit Aunt Alice (Belle Crawford Marshall).

13) Back to Cascade (NOT THERE) in a collapsible house; it burned down, so the family moved to MacGregor (I actually found MacGregor, a community north of the Cascade Reservoir, south of Donnelly NOT THERE), living in a tent and piling brush for Boise Cascade.

14) They then moved to Emmett (NOT THERE) and bought a trailer house.  Cyril Ellis was born in May of 1941.  (Cyril’s doctor  was CE Carver and when mother named him the nurse who was the doctor’s wife came in and asked if she wanted to give him the rest of the doctor’s name C.E. – Cyril Ellis.  Mother had found the name Cyril in a book and liked it and Ellis is the only name she could find to go with it, so he wasn’t really named after his doctor even if it might have looked that way.)

15) They lived on Trail Creek in the trailer house (on the Salmon River) for three years, wintering in Cascade.  (There are pictures of the trailer with Cyril, Dixie, Tommy, and Christina – some with a tricycle, some with a trailer.  Uncle Cash must have worked there one year as Dixie is his daughter and she was in a lot of them.

I guess you can see why my folks are hard to find.  My father was doing a lot of work in the woods during the summers and wintered in Cascade or Emmett with family.  They did not really settle down to one place until they moved to Garden Valley in 1950.

Here the family is in the summer of 1937, just the four of them until Cyril was born in 1941 (Mom had lost her first child, a daughter, in June 1934).

With my father's parents in the Cascade census (Thomas and Winnie Logue) was their youngest son, Fred.  Below is a picture of him in his uniform as he visited home sometime between 1943-46.  His service during the war was at a radar station in Kodiak, Alaska. With him is my father at the left and their father, my grandpa, in the middle.  Grandpa passed away in 1954 (as I was beginning my first grade of school).

So, if you are anxious to find your family in the 1940 census, you may have to wait a while longer until the entire thing is indexed, or you can do like I do and spend a few hours a week just pouring over sets of records in areas where you think they may have been in 1940.  Whichever, it is fun to look through records that are closer to our day, possibly seeing a celebrity or someone that may still be living.

So have fun looking through 1940. And I will spend every spare minute I have indexing batches of records (right now I am working on Washington state records).