Family Events ~ February 21 - 27

February 21 ~ This day is marked by the death of my great-grandmother, Mary BENZIE in 1961 in Garretsville, Ohio. The picture to the right has a notation on the back "Ma Ritchie at the farm." I don't remember her as I was barely past 2 when she died, but I do remember visiting the farm. Her son Tom lived there all of his life.

February 22 ~ On this day in 1908 my grandfather (and son of Mary BENZIE), David Washington RITCHIE is born in Cleveland, Ohio. (Born on the day celebrated as Washington's birthday, thus his middle name)

He was "the youngest of the oldest four" as he always liked to say (in a family of 8 children.) So, that would make him the scowling youngest child in this picture. Maybe he didn't care for the hat??

This day is also marked by the death of my step-great-grandmother, Lena VENETTE DUNCAN in 1923 in Boulder, Colorado. She is buried with her mother Mary LEGAULT VENETTE BOWLEN and her daughter Melva Marie DUNCAN in Green Mountain Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado. This is a huge cemetery and I was fortunate to find a full index and map on-line (click the link above) that allowed me to locate this grave several years ago on a trip to Boulder.


February 24 ~ This day is marked by the death of a potential 7x great-grandmother, Barbara HUNZIKER in Staffelbach, Aargau, Switzerland.

February 26 ~ On this day Isabella DAVIDSON, my 4x great-grandmother is born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.


February 27 ~ This day is marked by the death of my grandaunt, Pearl Emma SAURER BIDLE in 1998 in Wayne County, Ohio.

One thing I remember about Aunt Pearl is visiting her when I was a teenager. I am 5'2" on a good day and Aunt Pearl is a good 3-4 inches shorter than I am. She was cooking something for us, I don't remember what, and she asked me to take a skillet off the burner. It was a huge old cast iron skillet and I used both hands to lift it. She later walked over and was slinging it around with one hand as it it weighed nothing at all!! Even then - and she must have been near 70 since she was my grandma's older sister by 10 year - she was stronger than I was. I guess living on a farm most of her life was better conditioning than 10 Minute Abs or Sweatin' to the Oldies ;-)

Family Events ~ February 6 - 13

As I ended last week's Family Events post, so I'll start this week's:

February 6th & February 7th ~ On these days, some years ago, right before and right after midnight my twin nephew and niece are born. I am using a more recent picture of them for this week - one taken at Christmas. We had the family celebration today so, once again,

Happy Birthday Twins!!!

February 8th ~ On this day in in 1835, my 2x great-granduncle Robert SWINTON is born in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. Also on this day in 1894, my great-grandaunt Selma EICKELBERG was born in Denver, Colorado. She would only live to be nineteen, but I have a number of pictures of her. My grandfather's baby book is also inscribed, "Presented to Baby Quick by His Aunt Selma" so I even have a sample of her handwriting.

February 12th ~ On this day in 1754, my 5x great-grandmother Agnes STEVEN is born in Kilmany, Fife, Scotland.



February 13th ~ On this day in 1908, my granduncle Clair Raymond SAURER was born in Wayne County, Ohio. Wasn't he the cutest thing?!

I Give Credit to Midge...

....Midge Frazel that is over at Granite in My Blood for this post.

Back in early December I saw several Facebook updates from Midge about her new digital voice recorder. She even posted a short clip of her first recording (oddly enough, she has a New England accent - who would have thought!) I had been thinking about getting some type of hand-held recording device but just didn't have the energy to research them. I'm sure you all know how it is - there are a million choices and it just seems like you should thoroughly check them ALL out. Well, fortunately for me Midge mentioned exactly what she had purchased. I decided that was good enough for me! Now let me say that Midge never said, "Hey everyone, go out and buy this." I just decided that if she was happy with it and could upload a clip so (apparently) easily, that was going to be the extend of my "research." Besides, I could order it from Amazon and it met my price criteria. [Here is a link to the product, if anyone is interested]

As I mentioned in a recent post, I used this as part of my Christmas genealogy game. I had my nieces and nephew record answers to some of the questions on their quizzes. So, here's my first attempt. I chose this clip because I knew I had some pictures from one of my Grandpa Quick's photo albums to illustrate it: