Thursday, August 27, 2009

Do you know Mary Morris?

Question:
Do you know Mary Morris?

Details:
The photo is identified as Mary Morris. She is labeled in the photo as a teacher. The school year was 1928 - 1929. This could have been in Nebraska, possibly in Cherry County, maybe even in Alliance.





References:
- Numerous facts were gathered from the private Richard Family Estate collection. These facts span numerous sources of information and contain genealogical data, photos, and newspaper articles.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

What are your earliest memories?

Question:
What are your earliest memories?

Answer:
This is actually a pretty tough question. I had to go back and look at some photos to get the chronology right and it turns out what I thought was the earliest was a year or so after another memory. Which means, my earliest memory would be Easter 1980. To be exact, Easter fell on April 6, 1980 so I was just three days past being exactly 3 1/2 years old. I was visiting my dad's eldest brother in Fort Meade, Maryland where he was stationed and we were doing various Easter activities. We dyed eggs, played games, ate way too many marshmallows, and had a nice Easter dinner (at least I'm sure it was nice, especially if my aunt was cooking it).

I remember they had wicker furniture which I always thought was weird. Their driveway was medium sized and you would turn left out of it to leave the neighborhood (I think they lived on a corner lot too). They had a nice backyard with a fence I think where I did the Easter egg hunt thing. And I remember my aunt letting me eat a bunch of marshmallows. Like almost a whole bag of them.

On a side note, there are other events that I think I remember when I see them in pictures, but I'm not sure if I remember them or if I remember the stories people told me while showing me the pictures.

Photos:
In the photo, you'll see the goofy kid in the dog sweater, that's me. On the right is my uncle. But pay attention to the counter. The eggs are there, obviously, but there's a crayon that I remember using to write on the egg before we dipped it in the dye (so the dye wouldn't stick to the egg). There's also an old bottle of Joy dish soap, old Pyrex mixing bowls (we had a set like that for the longest time), and some White House apple vinegar. And don't forget to check out those old curtains.



References:
- Numerous facts were gathered from the private Richard Family Estate collection. These facts span numerous sources of information and contain genealogical data, photos, and newspaper articles.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Hiatus Over?

After nearly a year on hiatus, the Unidentified Family Objects (UFO) blog will be coming back to life in a couple of weeks. While the original focus of this blog was to document those family objects found, discovered, and stored in our private Area 51 collection, the format will change slightly as we move into the future.

Going forward, the UFO Team will work to document things more "genealogical." We will start with questions to ask your own family in an effort to help you gather history. From there we will progress into things that involve more research. We will try to use actual documents and ephemera from our own Area 51 collection as guides to drive you in new directions of thought.

With that said, we would also like to remind you that we will still do our best to comply with our previous risk analysis and keep as much private information as private as possible. But any information that is in the public domain can and will be covered. And as we stated before, we cannot control how information is used.

And as usual, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you are always welcome to contact us.