Riverbend Journal

Not to long ago, I discovered more articles on the life of my 4th great grandfather Joseph Chicken that made me desire to once again, take up all the information I have and seek out my 5th great grandparents. I compiled all the information I knew about his parents. They are from England. His father's name is John and he is a carrier. He had no memories of his mother from a young age. Not a very in depth list for sure but something to go on at least. I did know that Joseph had lived in Durham county, England in 1841 when he was listed at being 25 and that he immigrated to America with his wife and three children in 1849 when he was around 34 years old. So I started searching in Durham county and came across a hit fairly quickly. John Chicken was baptized in Durham County on 4 May 1791. Assuming he was born that same year, he was 21 years old when he married Ann Hutton also in Durham County on 13 Dec 1812. This latter date creates a problem because I have always listed Joseph's b...

  Last spring during the big bedroom swap project, I refloored the room to be my eldest new bedroom, formerly the mother-in-law suite, down the hallway to the right in the above photo. Running out of time due to the return of the mother-in-law, I opted to not continue the flooring down the hall and into the family room, despite having bought enough to do all that, so I could finish up her new room which had formerly belonged to my youngest and then finish up the youngest room, formerly belonging to her older sister. Clear as mud? By the time I got all the bedrooms repaired, repainted, items hung as desired, etc., it was spring and so the remainder of the flooring project got put on hold for outside things, like gardening, working in the garage/shop, etc. But with more snow than we typically get in an average year and more than we had gotten in the last three years combined, and temperatures bottomed out 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, I decided perhaps I should restart that proje...

  The 1841 England Census states that Joseph Chicken Sr. was born in Evenwood, England which is just to the SW of Auckland England. His marriage record at St. Helen Church in Auckland also confirms this. But the biography article in the newspaper in my previous post says he was born in Durham city to the NW of Auckland. I don't know the answer and most likely will never know.  But while searching the area via armchair, I came across a website with records for Durham county, England, of which both Evenwood and Durham city are a part, and was able to locate a more detailed church record than the index record I had known about previously. Besides the marriage date of 25 Nov 1837, it also says the following: Joseph Chicken (bachelor, pitman, full age, of Evenwood, son of John Chicken, carrier) married Ann Brittain (spinster, full age, of Evenwood, daughter of John Brittain, joiner) Witnesses: John Wilson and William Teasdale So now I know the name of the fathers which would be my...

  A.I. Generated Artwork For many years, I've put off a task that I know I shouldn't but just couldn't bring myself to do. I needed to upgrade my electronics to the 21st century. By that I mean I still have a landline phone, coaxial cable television that also services our internet, all in one bundle. In order to get better services that met our needs, I would need to unbundle things and align various services to all work together providing similar services at a much cheaper price, hopefully. But sometimes it is just easier to go on the past of least resistance, which in my case was to write an increasingly larger check for my bundled services. Then out of the blue, a fiber optic cable started laying conduit for their cables in my town, then my area and even right through my front yard. According to their website, come spring, I will be able to have a CHOICE for my internet services for the first time since living here. I decided that I would be ready for spring when my time...

  I have always loved this photo of my great grandfather. I have only seen it as either a blown up picture or used in a magazine article about him. I've never seen the original. But in another random box among my great uncle's slides labeled "Summer 1963 Canada", I found it. From using contextual clues from the other slides in the box, it was taken at the fishing lodge/cabins my great grandparents used to manage. I am unclear of the specifics but I have heard that my great grandparents managed a fishing camp somewhere up in Canada. I'll have to look back, but I'm fairly certain that it still exists and is called Tall Pines Camp but used to have Ballard's appended to the front when the original owners still owned it.  I'm assuming this photo is taken on Wabaskang Lake which the camp sits upon. Also in the same box, is a photo of my great uncle standing upon an old wooden boat now high and dry somewhere. I'm sure there is a story here and I wish I kn...

Still sorting and scanning through my great uncle's slides, I came across somewhat of a mystery box. On it was just the date July 1971 instead of a number and a location out west like the rest of the boxes. The box itself was a different color and shape. I took out the slides and held a few up to the office light and saw lots of people in them which made me excited and I ended up scanning every single one. Above is a picture of my grandparents, uncle (not great uncle who took the picture) and mom. Although I suspect the picture was taken at my grandpa's farm, five or six miles north of where I spent the bulk of my childhood, I'm not sure the reason for the photo. Everyone is dressed up but the focus of the photo seems to suggest the root cellar was the focus, perhaps the rusty pipes laid upon the door. My mom was nearly not in the picture.  Root cellars are nearly extinct these days. Most houses in the region have storm protection from full depth basements and cold storage ...

  A.I. Created Image I have little faith in my government to do anything efficiently. I know going into anything dealing with them that my hard earned tax dollars are being used inefficiently for everything they do for me. It really isn't surprising. Whenever anybody in history has had bottomless pockets, i.e. taxpayers, there is no incentive to spend money wisely. Case in point. My oldest is going to college and as part of that process is encouraged to apply for federal student aid. I'm 99.999% certain that we earn too much income to qualify but their website says that there are no limits and that one should always apply just in case. My daughter takes this very seriously and wants me to apply. So I am going through the motions so that I can apply, be denied, and move on with life. My daughter first has to go onto the federal student aid government website and start an application which she did. It in turn sends me an invitation to set up an account as a parent which will be l...

  A rather apocalyptic A.I. generated picture of voting last night We are outgunned Outmanned Outnumbered, out planned We gotta make an all-out stand Right Hand Man - Hamilton (The Musical) As I'm sure you all are aware, even my friends from other countries that read this blog, America, specifically Iowa, was starting the process of electing the next president. We use a system that might be called antiquated, and possibly needs a fresh coat of polish and is largely misunderstood, to poll our residents on whom our appointed electors should vote for at the next National Convention held by each political party. It is called a caucus. Both of the two major parties held their caucus last night. The Democrats just met to elect chairs for the next election after this one as well as various stages of our process leading up to and including the Democratic Convention. They used to poll themselves too but found themselves in trouble with the national press during the last election cycle and w...

The last slide in a box of my great uncles slides in the Seattle, Washington area of 1966 shows the above aftermath of a house fire. On the slide in my great Uncle's handwriting is says, "Tragedy in Auburn - Mother, Father and 3 children die in house fire, one lived.) For perhaps obvious reasons, it kind of caught me a bit and so using my old newspaper database, I soon pulled up the story. On 20 June, 1966, Bobby Kerr and his family were living in the house when apparently a wooden table placed over the vent of a gas operated floor furnace caught fire and quickly set the house on fire. After the fire was put out, Bobby (28), a son Donald (4) and daughter Lisa (3) were found deceased in one of the bedrooms. The articles said son David (6) escaped through a small window but don't say the exits of his Bobby's wife Judith (23) or baby Lisa (18 months) who were only listed as being in critical condition at the Auburn hospital.  The Kerr's had only bought the home three ...

  Back deck after 26" of snow, 50 mph winds and -20F temperatures By Iowan standards the first part of the storm wasn't too bad. Sure it was a lot of snow, about 15" worth, and more snow than we had seen in the past two years combined, but everything was still drivable once you made it out of the driveway. There were branches down and side streets that were more one way than the normal two way, but one could get around. Then the hammer dropped with a good old fashioned blizzard that lasted for two days. It left another 11" of snow but came with high winds that blew it around and piled it in deep drifts anywhere it could. Clearing out the driveway became an exercise of patience as the snow you got ride of flew downwind to the next neighbor's driveway and my driveway would fill in with the upwind neighbor's snow. I blew through a tank of gas in four days of snow blowing. I probably haven't used a tank of gas per SEASON for three or four years.  In retrospec...

  Several weeks ago, the doorbell rang and I answered it finding Bob standing outside. I never really knew Bob until about a year ago and it was more of a locality connection than anything. When we purchased this home but before we moved in, our neighbor's husband died. Bob worked for him part time and also worked part time as a carpet installer. In fact, I realized that we had crossed paths at our previous house when we had some carpet installed by him. Anyway, after the neighbor's husband died, Bob sort of adopted his widow and would stop in from time to time to do general handyman things for her. Eventually, our neighbor's mental issues (severe dementia) started worrying Bob and he knocked on our front door, to give us his phone number in case things happened while he wasn't there. I'm not sure we ever called him, but we saw him from time to time and would always wave across our property border at him. Our neighbor's daughter moved in to help take care of our...

  We interrupt this blog for a brief post about the big snow storm that hammered us. Unlike many predicted a week out by the weather people, this one arrived and delivered. I cleared about 8 inches of snow off our driveway twice, once the first morning and once the second morning after the 36 hour storm finally left for the east coast. I don't know how much snow that means we had but it was a lot. It was all very wet snow which tends to collapse down on itself with time. Also, the forecasted 40 mph winds for the second day of the storm did hit, breaking a number of branches off our snow laden trees and blowing snow this way and that. Had it been a real dry snow, it would have been a deadly storm because dry snow with wind produces whiteouts and drifts taller than houses. But with this snow being so wet, the drifts didn't happen and the whiteouts were not as bad as they can be.  My guess would be from 12 to 16 which is what various weather people predicted.  After clearing...

  Ernest Kuck and my great grandfather A little over a year ago, we traveled out to The Dalles, Oregon area to vacation and experience some of the area a distant relative had lived and then funded a huge museum when he died. I wrote about that HERE . Ernest Kuck was my first cousin, three times removed or translated, my first cousin three generations different than I. The nearest relative we both share in our family tree is my 3rd great grandfather, and original immigrant along that branch, John Kuck.  Growing up, I didn't know anything about John Kuck and my grandfather didn't know anything either. I always suspected a lot of that had to do with John Kuck dying while his grandson, my great grandfather and the gentleman on the right in the above picture, was away fighting World War I in France. It was only after I started figuring out my family tree using genealogy that I finally pieced things together and discovered the gravesite for John Kuck which my grandparents were able ...

  Last year sometime, I found Kev Alviti's blog An English Homestead and immediately fell for it as we share some things in common. He is a stay at home father though he does run a woodworking business. He lives on a small acreage and loves to garden. Best of all, he is a prolific writer and even video producer of all these things.  Towards the first of December last year, Kev made a beautiful bread board with inset carved letters stating "Bread Is Life" along the top. You can see that post with video HERE . It just happened to coincide with my wife's deep dive into sourdough baking and I thought it would be a perfect gift for her. I immediately went to the Etsy site where he said it would be listed and tried to buy it but, I'm sure due to mailing logistics, it wasn't available to oversea customers. Since Kev lives in England and I in America, we thus have an ocean between us. I let the idea stew for a week or so but saw that it still hadn't sold so I wro...

  On our final day, and perhaps the coldest day of the trip, we went on another short but classic hike, leaving earlier enough to be the first ones there as it is a popular hike among the tourists. The last time I had done this hike was almost 20 years prior on my honeymoon. The above photo is a panoramic photo of the area outside of the farthest feature and perhaps least well known (for reasons written below) on the short trail. Near my pack is the opening to a cave. We hiked here first to avoid any crowds that might follow as the cave is fairly small and could be a choke point with a lot of people. As it turned out, we had every interesting stop along the trail to ourselves though we met a large number of people heading in as we were hiking out. Around the corner and inside the entrance of the cave from the previous picture above, I snapped this photo. The cave itself isn't much of a secret as there are signs pointing which way to hike to see it. What is not as well known is what...

  This particular part of the Ozark mountain range is perhaps notable for the harder band of stone that is present on nearly every mountain. Because it didn't wear or erode as fast as other layers, it forms a band at about the same elevation on every mountain and as one might expect, if full of waterfalls as well as making it difficult to navigate at times when crossing this natural boundary. As many do in this area, we often hike the various hollows looking for this boundary layer and potential waterfalls. In this case, this waterfall is known and published though as of yet, not visited very often as it is off the beaten path. It is referred to as Bowers Hollow Falls. As far as waterfalls go, it is a classic among them. We had the entire place to ourselves as we ate our packed lunch and admired it's beauty before hiking back.

  The day after Christmas, we left for the family cabin in NW Arkansas for a few days of vacation spent mostly hiking. Since it was pretty cold the entire time we were there, our hikes were mostly shorter hikes spaced out by periods of time spent in the cabin reading, eating or playing games. Our first short hike was to the mountain seen above during warmer days called Roundtop.  It has two loop trails that encircle the mountain on various natural benches formed by harder stone so we ended up walking around it twice. On the upper bench, there were some view points and below is one of them guarded by a snag of a tree that I found interesting. The mountain is infamous as the site of a plane crash 84 years ago. I looked it up on some of my online newspaper sites to find first hand information but it was pretty sparse for such an event. Below is a section of an article that also detailed two other area disasters that resulted in the loss of life. Basically, it sounds like weather ...