Riverbend Journal

  As we typically do every late winter, we helped burn some of the ground on the farm to help establish more healthy plants and ecosystems. The fire kills weeds and invading trees and fosters the growth of soil nourishing prairie grasses. On this particular time, my wife asked to take over my job of running the drip torch to light the fires. I took over her job and drove around in a utility vehicle to mop up any fire that threatened to go where we didn't want it too and to haul people and tools to various points around the farm so that they could minimize that amount of time walking. It was definitely the easier of the two jobs but it was nice to have a change or perspective. Burning is an art and requires one to balance geography, weather conditions and skills such as backfiring. But we've been doing this since I was a teenager and so we do pretty well these days. This day was one day of sun between very windy days full of precipitation. It was probably going to be the only da

  My search for Joseph Baker actually began quite by accident. I was visiting a cemetery to take pictures of my McKee ancestors (one of which would marry John Henry Baker) and saw this stone about a dozen feet away and took a picture, just because of the last name. At the time, 2nd great grandfather John Henry Baker was as far back as I could trace my Baker family line. It wasn't until over a decade later that I would finally uncover more of this line and piece together some of the story of Joseph Chicken/Baker and come to realize, that the grave above was actually that of my 3rd great grandfather. Joseph Chicken was born in 1847 in the town of Evenwood, County Durham, England to Joseph Chicken Sr. and Elizabeth Ann Britton. Joseph was the fourth child of seven born to this couple who soon immigrated to America in 1849-1850. Joseph Chicken Sr. came first in 1849 with a group of Mormons and the rest came the following year. Joseph Chicken Sr. was listed as a coal miner in England an

  When our oldest was signed up for a European tour over spring break, my mind turned to logistics, specifically financial logistics. When I was a child in similar circumstances, we were sent on such trips with fistfuls of travelers checks that were nearly impossible to cash, especially when a busload of children all wanted to do the same thing. These days, life is much easier.  Our bank, given enough notice, will allow me to order foreign currency from just about anywhere ahead of time. So we ordered her some Euros. I didn't want m daughter to have a big wad of currency that she had to carry around just in case of pickpockets or perhaps a dishonest person seeing said wad. So we were pretty sparing on the number of Euros we gave her and instead signed her up as an additional holder of our credit card. Between the two, we were hoping she would have to avoid seeking out ATM's that were compatible with her card and were successful. She came back with just a few Euro coins and a ha

Rather than put the "picture" of interest at the top of the post. I am going to do my musings first and let you decide if you want to read the article below.  Based off recent successes in looking for digitized newspapers where there weren't any before, I decided to revisit a deceased ancestor of mine that met an early end and has an interesting story himself. Joseph Baker was actually born Joseph Chicken in 1847 England but after the Civil War, changed his surname to Chicken. I won't go into his details in this post other to say that he died in 1882 at the age of 35 years old. Young even by the standards of the day so I've always assumed it was due to an accident or something more sinister. Years ago when searching, I found an article in 1882 for a Joseph Baker murdered near Chicago but couldn't pin in on my Joseph Baker. More years would go by before more newspapers were scanned and I learned that it was actually a Joseph Becker and not Baker and the article

I haven't really celebrated St. Patrick's day since I did as a child by wearing green and as a college student by drinking alcohol. As an adult, it has just been another day for the last few decades. But this year, it happens to fall on a Friday of Lent when we Catholics abstain from meat. Not a problem for me. But word came that our Bishop sent out a decree saying that because it was a feast day for a saint, we could eat meat on this St. Patrick's day. I didn't think too much of it at the time but have since read, that only 70% of the bishops in the U.S. are doing so and it definitely isn't a decree issued by the pope. "We" decided to take advantage and my wife slapped a chunk of beef on the counter and told me to corn it. So I dutifully made a corned beef using our crockpot. I have never done so in my life but it came out super tender and delicious. Not really wanting a houseful of cooked cabbage odors to go with it, I opted to use fermented cabbage inst