My Dad Was a Water Witch

 My Dad was a dowser, a water witch. People would be waiting for us to come to visit the family so he could find them a new well. Dad was born in Alabama. He and his family moved North when he was a teenager. Most of his family are still in Alabama. So anyway, he would go off and find water. I remember running along behind him sometimes, watching. I was fascinated. My Mother, on the other hand, tried to hide it from everyone 'back home'.

Dad would just find a forked branch and cut it when he got to the place. Then he would walk the place. Well, I won't go on as it could get quite long. It took a long time, as he would continue to walk in a north/south and east/west directions.  He liked being right, and he liked going up against technology to prove it!  The last time I know of him going witching was in the mid 1980's.  He was finding his own new well. They had pretty good tech then and he bragged that he was less than an inch from the what the tech said! 

 

The 'fixed' photo!

The first part of January I posted on Bluesky that I wanted to know if anyone knew someone that could fix a photo for me. I got a nice response!

The photo had lain in the bottom of a box. I didn't know there was one in existence. It is not a great photo and it was scratched bad. My post on Bluesky was answered by a Dr. Christophe (@offrez-une-genealogie.fr).  I am so happy that he was able to make the photo clearer. Well worth the money!

Rufus Lee Brock, Jr.
1931 - 2006

 

Searching For George Brought Sadness

 

I'm still working on photos. I have made a huge dent though. Two large folders are done, and I am working on the next folder, which is larger than the last one, so I will be in it for a while. But they are correctly named and meta data added.

When I need a break I type out obits to add to the program. I have 9 left to do. No problem there! I think an obituary is my favorite source. Yes, I know they are not always right, but for the most part they are. They have a lot of hints in them that can get you to the next step. Anyway, I had a George M. Woodson that did not seem to fit anywhere into my family. I was fairly certain that he should fit in. As I was typing out his obit, the only person I recognized listed was an aunt, Cora Woodson Jaynes. I had no siblings listed for Cora in my program, though I knew her parents names. George died in Italy in 1943. I made the assumption that he was brought home for burial. I then went to Find-A-Grave. No George buried in Indiana. When I removed the place of burial, George Marion Woodson popped up, having died in Italy in 1943. He was buried in Italy. I know, duh. In my defense, most of my people that died on foreign soil in WWII were brought back for burial, at least they have grave sites in the county. I'm not going to check that they are in them! 

Then, another problem. He had no parents or siblings listed on his page on Find-A-Grave. I knew from the obit that his parents were Louis and Mary Woodson. So I went looking for Louis Woodson. No luck there. I had not searched for Cora on Find-A-Grave before, so I tried that. I found her, her parents and siblings were listed. Interesting. There was a Lewis. Not Louis. Spelling can give me a headache. On his page there is no George listed as his son. In the newspaper obit I have, a John Bias was listed as an uncle. Lewis Woodson married Mary Belle Bias. On FamilySearch it was all laid out. In the obit was listed a Mrs. Reichenba and a Mrs. Mae Wheeler as sisters, while in another little blurb article about his death, sisters were listed as Mae Woodson and Mrs. Lucille Reichenba. I know where he fits now. They were all listed as children of Lewis Woodson. There was no death information on George. He was 25 when he died with no wife or child, and obviously forgotten over time. I will have to go and remedy that (and hope it stays corrected). I'll add the obit as well. Now to find sources to go with it all.

This talk about WWII got me thinking about my uncle, Ermil Trapp. He was killed in the Battle for Metz, France in 1944, part of a tank brigade. My mother, a 9 year old at the time, remembered going to meet the train carrying his body home for burial. I know that this ritual happened over and over again. I put their obits and stories on the Jackson County INGenWeb site when I was the CC there. I remember typing out the obits for two brothers. They were the only children the family had. This family gave their all, and I don't know how they kept from falling under the weight of sorrow. I would have to limit myself to only one obit and article a day because I would feel sick after doing more, I wanted to cry all the time. 

These guys are the original Antifa. They gave their lives so we would not have to live under Fascism. It's time to remember that, the price they paid for this freedom we have, and hold it dear.  

Picture from Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/images/search/tree/)

Photos, Photos, and More Photos

 Alex Trebek is gone.

2020 just needs to be over. 

I have been working behind the scenes for a couple of months getting to all those things I have put off for years. I've just finished organizing and going through each and every one of my digital photos. It says I have 38,558 files. Those are only photo files. ONLY photos. I am a little surprised and alarmed because I still have several albums to scan, and I bet I will run onto another folder full at some point. I still have work to do inside each folder, as I want to make sure they are all tagged. Some are and some aren't at this point. Also, I may consider that I do not have to keep every photo. It's hard for me to throw them out, but I don't have to keep every photo. Right?  I don't have any problems arguing that I do need to keep them all, but the number of files is overwhelming. I'm spending some time thinking about what to do. 

I scanned each album as it was organized by the owner of the album. Each page had several photos on it that I would "cut" apart to make individual photos. I have the original album pages in a large folder listed as "Main Album". I'm thinking I could cull the main single files down to a nice overview of the years, and keep the "albums" together as they are. I have my grandmother's, my dad's, my mother's, and so on. Until recently they were only kept on external hard drives and DVDs. 

I want to get them pared down and maybe upload most to Google Photos. I just bought a book by Lisa Louise Cooke called "ULTIMATE Genealogist's GOOGLE Toolbox". I watched her video on YouTube about Google Photos and was impressed, not just with Google Photos but with the price for more space. I will certainly need more space than the free space that I have left. I had originally bought the book for all the rest of the information in it, but really got a bonus with the Photos part. I did not know what was offered in Photos.

When I need a break I type out an obituary. That is the next thing on the list to do. I have an enormous file of obits that need typed out and entered into my database. So that is the next chore. After that, articles and books. Plus research. 

It's going well. So far.

A New Toolbox Need

(I've been away for a while.  Life interrupted me.  I am back.  I know it is April 1st, but this is no April Fool's gag!)

I've finally given up on Picasa.  It is the ornery-ist thing I've tried to work with.  So I threw it out.  I wish I could have wadded it up and tossed it, but I had to be happy just to empty my recycle bin.    I really needed to hear crunching or a bang. 

Now I am on the look out for a program that is simple and free.  I need to organize more than anything else.  I don't want it to hold all my many gigs of photos.  I like that I could uninstall Picasa without any worry about any loss of my photos.  I don't really need the program to do much of anything else.  I have PSP 8 and Photoshop Elements 9 to "work" on any that needs fixing.  But the basics like red-eye removal and straightening up a photo is nice to have handy. 

I have downloaded and have been looking at FastStone Image Viewer, but I don't think that it is quite what I had in mind.  Also have been reading about Zoner Photo Studio Free.  It has a free version, but is it worth it? 

I know PSE9 can organize your photos into albums.  What I don't know is if my photos are deleted with the program if it is uninstalled.  There are also photos that I have within folders that go with my RootsMagic that I don't want touched at all.  Can I stop that?  How hard is PSE9 to work with?  I just started working with this program a couple of months ago, so I am a big-time NEWBIE!

If anyone has any opinions they would share about this, I would appreciate hearing them.  What is the most used photo organizing program used by everyone?

Sheri