Riverbend Journal

  Not often am I blown away when a genealogist on YouTube puts out a video showing me the latest and greatest way to find new records on ancestors. For the most part, it is just rehashing what I have already known about and tried. But recently, I watched a video about a new search function on FamilySearch.org called "Full-Text Search". As of writing this, it is still a feature in their "Experimental Labs" section of their site but one I think anyone can navigate to it and try it out. Essentially, it is using some sort of A.I. software to read and translate script written documents that are scanned but not yet translated or indexed in any way. It sounded promising so I went downstairs to try it out. I have a lot of fairly undocumented families that I would like to search for more documents on but I chose to do my first search on my Chicken family since their surname is fairly unique. I typed in the name of Joseph Chicken since the two most researched people on that b...

  Gourmet table back in 2022 Long time readers will know that my wife and I are part of a gourmet group. We were invited into it many years ago and have enjoyed being in it all these years. It consisted of four other couples besides ourselves, and we rotated through our ranks being hosts. We break out the fine china and have a five course meal with each couple being responsible for one of those courses at the direction of the host who usually picks the theme, if any. The results are about five times a year we gather over a delicious meal that stretches over three hours long filled with great conversation among the lawyers, doctors and engineers (me being the only one of the latter) that comprise our group. It has been thoroughly enjoyable. A few months ago, one of those couples moved away to be nearer their kids and grandkids leaving a hole. Before they left, we had one more gourmet meal and had a great time except at the end when we normally pull out our phones and set up a date f...

A.I. Generated Image Back when I was growing up, "horseshoes and hand grenades" was a saying that was used to signal someone coming up short and saying they had been close. The response was "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." These days, nobody uses that saying anymore, at least that I've heard. Instead, we give out participation ribbons for everyone. With nothing really on my mind to post, other than that saying, I typed it into an A. I. image creator and above was one of four results it spit out at me, none of them really having a horseshoe in them. So perhaps horseshoes are still a bit fuzzy for A.I., especially when referring to the recreational game of horseshoes. The other three pictures options presented a person with a cowboy hat on their head. "Slicker than a bean" was another expression that came to mind but in that case, google couldn't provide with any help on determining its origins or meaning. I can still remember how...

Back in mid January, I wrote a blog post about my 3rd great grandfather Leander Wells, man on the run. I wrote of his desertion from the Union army during the Civil War, roaming around the country as a carpenter and finally his gruesome demise of being burned to death as a night watchman of a train station in Wyoming. Not posted back then was the newspaper headline seen above. He ended up being buried in Boone, Iowa next to his wife who had died 16 years earlier but I didn't know the reason why she was buried in Boone, a place they hadn't left a paper trail and was across the state from where they lived at the time. I theorized that perhaps one of their parents were living there at the time since the newspaper article on wife Mary Ellenor Well's death said she had been there visiting when she died.  By dumb luck, I stumbled upon a new to me website that contains hundreds of historic New York newspapers that you can search by county, date and search term among other things....

  I'm not sure when I first saw the movie Footloose, but it made an impression on me. Especially the "chicken" scene on the tractors where as farm kids riding to school on the bus, we debated the outcome endlessly. Those of us with farms using John Deere tractors were happy with the outcome while those kids from International using farms vowed their tractor would have one had they made it to head on head, or scoop on scoop as it might be. Sometimes when my parents were gone on a weekend, we ended up at a local babysitter across town who would keep us over the weekend. One Sunday after we attended her church, she picked up her grandson, my age, and we drove to the county seat and to a corner pizza shop called "Diamonds" where they cut their pizza into diamond shaped slices. In the corner was a jukebox and on this particular Sunday, the babysitter's grandson said he had a quarter to put into the machine and we were excused to go make a selection. Only when we ...

  In researching more on my 4th great grandfather Christian Echard and newly discovered wife Sarah Patterson Echard, I came across a court case that dates back to 1850. Evidently Christian died without a will which when he was on his second spouse at the time of his death, both with kids, left some confusion as to who gets what. The file is composed of 98 pages of script, most of it much more illegible than the sample shown above, and written in lawyer-ese which makes it very difficult for my reptilian brain to understand. I know it related to my line because I can clearly make out my 3rd great grandmother mentioned by name, Sarah Jane Echard Ware throughout the documents but not really the finer details of what happened. Included among the script filled pages were two newspaper clippings dating back to the 1850's about the sale of Christian's property and a letter written by Sarah to her uncle Peter about the money she received as part of her inheritance.  I have tried transc...

  As you can see by the object plugged into the upper right bay of my computer, I received my HHD drive with spinning disks inside but that is my second one. The first one arrived and after figuring out that hard drives now are mounted with "sleds" (that lighter blue colored object) and not using physical screws like in the old days. It is actually kind of ingenious as I have fussed with small screws that got dropped during installation and were nearly impossible to find. The sleds require only fingers and slide in, out and snap into place. I turned on the computer and saw nothing that said I had installed a hard drive. A day later, maybe three hours of troubleshooting and another hour on the phone, I finally figured out that my computer actually limits the size of a hard drive to 2TB (terabytes). All my data is just shy of 1/2 TB so really, having that limitation is not a hard ship. But while shopping for the hard drive online, many drives start at 2 TB in size these days an...

  A.I. Generated Artwork I woke up to the sound of what sounded like a garbage truck rumbling down the road and realized that I had forgotten to take out the garbage the night before. Nothing gets the body more alert in a faster manner. I jumped out of bed, threw on the sweats and raced outside to drag my half empty can out to the curb in a pouring rain, the first I've seen in three or four months. Fortunately, there was no garbage truck in sight and my neighbor's trash can across the street was still unemptied which means the truck hasn't come yet. Normally it comes in mid to late morning, well after I am up and about. But on the days I forget to set mine out, it inevitably comes at 4:30 in the morning... without fail. Now that I have mine out, it probably won't come to nearly noon. Garbage in my neck of the woods, and I suspect elsewhere, is becoming a problem. I'm not much of a consumer so we typically don't have much garbage. I set it out weekly though becau...

  Sarah Jane Echard One of my 3rd great grandmothers is named Sarah Jane Echard. She comes Virginia though she married into the Ware family which I've traced back through southern Indiana to Kentucky. Perhaps 20 years ago when I last researched her origins, I was convinced at the time that her parents were Christian Echard and Lydia Treavy Echard. But as I have started the process of compiling my research notes for my 4th great grandparents, all 64 of them, I realized that perhaps I have at least one of the parents wrong.  Sarah was born in 1837 according to her tombstone. Recently when I went to the historical center in the county south of me, which I wrote about Here on January 1st, I found an obituary for her. I will post it below but essentially, is says her parents were Christian and Sarah Echard, not Lydia as I had written in 20 years ago. So I started digging a bit into records for my 4th great grandfather Christian Echard and sure enough discovered a marriage record b...

Although I have no letters written after the war, my great grandfather Victor did have a series of pictures that he evidently took as he returned from France to New York City that are in the back of his photo album. I just think they are neat to look at even if there is no words I can add to go with them. I think that is the Statue of Liberty off in the distance Statue of Liberty a bit closer Welcoming committee Entering the harbor Getting closer to the end of the voyage The end in sight Almost there Home at last!

A.I. Generated Image This isn't personal to those it effects, but I have found myself cringing lately when I sit down to read my blog list in the mornings. It used to be an anticipated joy and now it has become anything but that. The reason is that a few of the blogs I used to enjoy reading seem to have switched over to posting political memes and posts meant to incite fear and for what purpose? From the comments I have read, they aren't convincing anyone to switch their views. I'm not sure enlightening their readership is happening as I almost never see a comment stating that it was news to them. It just seems like fear is the sole purpose and I'm not sure fear has ever solved anything. It just makes people divided and isn't really enjoyable for a morning read to start my day. I would rather spend my time and effort with those who wish to unite and find common ground or at least understanding of our differences. I hope this isn't misconstrued that I won't b...

  After my youngest got onto the school bus, I headed down to the office for my morning routine of catching up on blog reading and doing any deskwork needed for my three treasurer positions or bills that have arrived in the mail. I logged onto my computer but was greeted with a warning that my backup service would delete the contents of my hard drive stored on the backup's cloud that I use to store all my computer files in 39 days if nothing was done.  So I fiddled with that for a few minutes before I finally went into windows explorer and found that it didn't show my hard drive or it's contents at all. As far as my computer was concerned, I only had the hard drive that the operating system runs on and I had no second drive to store data. What proceeded next was an hour of reboots, using various diagnostic software and prayers to try and get my data hard drive to appear again but all without success. Thirty years ago, I used to consider myself a pretty good computer tech an...

A.I. Generated Art I started a new gig a few months ago. After retiring due to term limits (and desire) from being on the school board, I was hoping to take it easy with my "extra" time. That lasted all of about a week before I found myself on two more boards. Fortunately one of those boards only meets quarterly and to date, has required nothing more of me than to show up to those meetings and listen to reports, nod and maybe once in the last six months, offer an opinion. The other board however, was maybe biting off more than I should chew. I reluctantly said yes since it is a board position on a non-profit organization that I enjoy and gives back to our local community. The person who persistently waited over the years until my final excuse for not joining (which was my schoolboard meeting was on the same night and time) was no longer excusable. Then she showed up at my door and asked if I would be their treasurer. Despite being treasurer for two organizations already, this...