St. Louis World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition), 1904

The Great Ferris Wheel - World's Fair, St. Louis, U.S.A. American Stereoscopic Co., 1904. Available from  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005686728/

Today marks the 110th anniversary of the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the St. Louis World's Fair, in St. Louis, Missouri. The fair celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. It was held from 30 April 1904 to 1 December 1904.

Bird's eye view, World's Fair, St. Louis. 1904. Available from NYPL Digital Gallery under digital ID G90F441_008F

The Fair included exhibits from 43 of the then 45 states, the United States government, and a large number of foreign countries. Many companies had exhibits at the fair; a partial list can be found at http://atthefair.homestead.com/Misc/CompaniesAtTheFair.html. The 1904 Summer Olympics were held at the World's Fair from 29 August 1904 to 3 September 1904.

My great-grandfather John Boe attended the St. Louis World's Fair with his brother Hans Adolph "Duff" Boe and his mother Aaste (Halvorson) Boe. My great-grandmother Kathleen Graham was working at the fair. According to my mother's first cousin Marie, Kathleen said that she got paid for talking. Marie also said that this is where John and Kathleen met.

Kathleen's mother, Catherine Elizabeth (Winters) Graham Mapplebeck, also attended the St. Louis World's Fair.

Alton Evening Telegraph, 10 October 1904, p. 4

Ruby flash glass souvenirs from the 1904 World's Fair

References and additional information
Louisiana Purchase Exposition
Louisiana Purchase Exposition: The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair (University of Missouri Columbia - MU Libraries) - digital image collection
At the Fair
Celebrating St. Louis - The 1904 World's Fair
1904 World's Fair in Forest Park
The 1904 World's Fair: Looking Back at Looking Forward
1904 World's Fair Society
All the World's a Fair - 1904 World's Fair sites in St. Louis

Tombstone Tuesday: William J. and Myrtle E. Schneider

William J. Schneider was born Johann Wilhelm Schneider on 8 December 1883 in Remagen, Kreis Ahrweiler, Rheinland, Germany. He was the son of my great-great-grandparents Carl Joseph Schneider and Christina Nagel. He died on 27 June 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri.

William's wife, Myrtle E. Milam, was born on 3 October 1898 in Missouri. She was the daughter of Frank R. Milam and Nora E. Eaton. She died on 5 November 1991.

William and Myrtle are buried in Sunset Memorial Park and Mausoleum, Affton, St. Louis County, Missouri.

52 Ancestors: #16 John Boe

Both my grandfathers were born in April. Today would have been the 106th birthday of my maternal grandfather, John Boe. John was born in St. Louis, Missouri on 28 April 1908. He was the first child that his parents John Boe and Kathleen Graham had together. He attended St. Louis public schools and St. Louis University High School, but he did not graduate. However, he was still able to get into college. His high school had been damaged by a tornado, so he claimed that his school records had been destroyed. He attended the University of Montana in 1931-1932 along with his brother James, and he was in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He worked with Western Electric Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He then worked for the Minneapolis Star, and then for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

In 1939, John began working for P. F. Collier and Son. John's brother-in-law Earl Mason Roberts (husband of John's sister Florence) was working for the company and convinced him to work for them as well. John started off as a door-to-door book salesman in St. Louis, and within three months, he had been promoted to District Sales Manager in Indianapolis, Indiana. On 25 September 1939 in Indianapolis, John married Margaret Ann (Schneider) Foerstel, and gained an instant family (she had a daughter and son from her previous marriage). The family lived in Detroit for six years, where John and Margaret had two daughters and a son. They moved frequently, and lived in Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; New Hyde Park, New York; Redwood City, California; and Highland Park, New York. In 1956, John was appointed Vice President of P. F. Collier and began working at the New York office. He bought a home at 506 E. Saddle River Road, Ridgewood, New Jersey. He eventually became Chairman of the Board and President of P. F. Collier, President of Merit Students Encyclopedia, Inc., (which he created), and Senior Vice President of Crowell-Collier-Macmillan. Every year, he and Margaret traveled around the world and visited all the sales offices. On 15 July 1968, on his retirement, he was presented with the original Merit Students Encyclopedia Man of the Year Award. After six months, John had had enough of retirement and went back to work for two more years. In 1974, John and Margaret sold their house in Ridgewood and moved to an apartment in Ramsey, New Jersey.

John belonged to the Rubicon Masonic Lodge of Detroit, the Medina and Scottish Rite in Chicago, and Knickerbocker Country Club in Tenafly, New Jersey.

John died on 24 November 1977 (Thanksgiving Day) in New York City. He was buried at Valleau Cemetery in Ridgewood.

 John Boe as a boy

 

John Boe

Margaret and John Boe

John Boe in Paris with Guy Mollet, Prime Minister of France

 

Grandpa Boe and me

John Boe's MSE Man of the Year Award

Census Sunday: She Hasn't Aged a Day in Twenty Years!

In 1940, my great-grandmother's sister Augusta "Gussie" (Gersbacher) Parker was enumerated as a lodger in the household of John and Mary Buckley in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California.

1940 United States census, Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, population schedule, Assembly District 47, enumeration district 19-472, sheet 2B.

According to this census record, Augusta Parker was 40 years old. Her date of birth was 29 January 1881, so she was actually 59 years old - nearly twenty years younger than the record stated! Her place of birth is incorrect as well; she was born in Germany, not Missouri, although she came to Missouri when she was two years old.

Treasured Artifacts of the Garden State Online Museum

Garden State Legacy's new online museum, Treasured Artifacts of the Garden State, has just opened. Images of artifacts from the following New Jersey history groups, museums, and archives are included:

American Labor Museum - Botto House National Landmark
Asbury Park Historical Society
Avalon Free Public Library History Center
Camp Evans/InfoAge Learning Center
Chester Library
Civil War Museum of the General James A. Garfield Camp No. 4 Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
Cumberland County Historical Society
Delaware and Raritan Canal State Parks
Doo Wop Preservation League (The Doo Wop Experience and Neon Sign Garden)
Fleetwood Museum of Art and Photographica
Haddon Heights Historical Society
The Hermitage
Historical Society of Ocean Grove
Historic Burlington County Prison Museum
Hunterdon County Historical Society
Liberty Hall Museum
Library Company of Burlington
Macculloch Hall Historical Museum
Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities
Millville Army Air Field Museum
Monmouth County Historical Association
Monmouth Museum
Morristown National Historical Park Museum & Library
Museum of Early Trades & Crafts
The National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey
New Jersey State Library
New Jersey State Museum
Newark Museum
Old Barracks Museum
Roebling Museum
Plainfield Public Library Local History, Genealogy, & Special Collections
The Proprietary House
Red Mill Museum Village
Somerville Public Library
South River Historical & Preservation Society, Inc.
Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms
Sussex County Historical Society
Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie
Union Forge Heritage Association
USGA Museum
Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society
Washington Township Historical Society
Whippany Railway Museum
Whitesbog Village

National DNA DAY

Public domain image from http://www.wpclipart.com/

April 25 is National DNA Day, which commemorates the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003.

Family Tree DNA is having a sale on Y-DNA testing today. A Y-DNA test can help you find genetic cousins through your direct paternal line. Although only men can be tested, women can ask a male relative to be tested.


Mitochondrial DNA testing can help you to learn more about your direct maternal line and your ancestral origins.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license

This map shows the migration patterns for mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. My mitochondrial DNA haplogroup is H2a.

Autosomal DNA testing can help you to find genetic cousins through any of your family lines. I matched with someone who turned out to be a descendant of my 5th-great-grandmother's sister.

Documenting the American South

Documenting the American South contains primary sources (texts, images, and audio files) on southern history, literature, and culture. It is sponsored by the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. DocSouth contains the following collections:

The Church in the Southern Black Community
The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina
Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina
The First Century of the First State University
First-Person Narratives of the American South
Going to the Show
The James Lawrence Dusenbery Journal (1841-1842)
Library of Southern Literature
North American Slave Narratives
The North Carolina Experience
North Carolina Maps
North Carolinians and the Great War
Oral Histories of the American South
The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
Thomas E. Watson Papers
True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina

The collections can be browsed or searched individually. It is also possible to search across all collections.

I found references to my 6th- and 7th-great-grandfathers Abel Gower Jr. and Sr. in the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina collection. They were listed as Abel Gowen, but I could tell from the content that the documents referred to my ancestors (Sr. and Jr. were listed together with others who had traveled with my Abel Gowers). I also found references to an Abel Gower who was with the Regulators of North Carolina. This man may not be one of my ancestors; there was another Abel Gower who served in the Revolutionary War in North Carolina and later went to Georgia. I think that Abel Gower was related to my Abel Gowers, but I do not know what the relationship was.