Before I Forget

          Ever in pursuit of my Willhelm clan, I found this piece from a Fort Worth paper published in April 1891. Mr. Willhelm has the same name as my great-grandfather. But I've not ever heard that my ancestor worked as a deputy, but only as a teacher, farmer, and/or writer of religious pamphlets.

          He and wife Rebecca or "Lena" were living in the adjacent county of Mason just outside the town of Katemcy. Their eldest son Glenn's birth record shows the family living there in 1890.

          But I've no proof that this Ed Willhelm is MY Ed Willhelm. Do you?



Source: 

• Fort Worth gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.), 26 April 1891. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. 
  http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86071158/1891-04-26/ed-1/seq-16/
  
  

          The Dallas Morning News wrote of the wedding of my Great-Aunt May Willhelm to Luther Ray Alexander on the evening of December 7, 1926.  May's sister Ollie was her maid of honor, and a Mr. Culpepper was the best man.  Lucille and Louise Alexander were flower girls. The bride was 28, and her husband was 38. A reception with 250 guests was held at a friend's home. 

          The announcement begins under the sub-titled date "Thursday." Click on the image to resize it. Click again to return to this page. Below the article on the same page is an advertisement reminding us that Wise Men buy Buicks for gifts. I so enjoy reading old papers!

Source:  Alexander-Willhelm Wedding, Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), Thursday, December 9, 1926, Part 2, Page 19 via GenealogyBank.com/ 

Always nice to find an ancestor in an archived newspaper! Especially one with whom I've happy memories of swinging me around and around the garden when I was a small giggly child. 

Grandpa was 36 in this photo that appeared in the Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram newspaper

Google announced it was bringing back its news archives. Perhaps you heard me hollering for joy when I read this? Here are a few articles from papers long ago about my close family and some articles mentioning distant cousins--all Willhelms.

My Mom and Grandmother in the Lodi, California News-Sentinel in March 2, 1950:

My Aunt, the pretty bride. I was thrilled to add this to my research, what a find! I wonder what happened to all those postcards Nancy and Larry mailed us from Canada?

While googling just now I found this on Jimmie Willhelm from Burnet, Texas:

http://www.bobnolan-sop.net/Reflections/Reflections%20htms/Willhelm.htm

TEN MINUTES OF RESEARCH LATER:  Ahh, Jimmie Willhelm is my Mom's second cousin once removed. His parents? Audis and Virgie Mae. Audis was the second son (of nine children) born to Joseph Flemon and Mary Elizabeth (Baxter) Willhelm. And Joseph? He was the sixth of eight children born to Welk Willhelm and Mary Elizabeth (Cowan). Welk, also known as "Welcome" on Confederate War records, is our ancestor who went missing soon after the birth of his youngest, Alice Emily, in 1883. ("Missing" is a nice word for abandoned. Or as Aunt Beatrice referred to it: forced to leave Texas after an altercation where someone was killed.)

I found an obit for Jimmie Willhelm's mother:

I have no idea who this Willhelm is, but I enjoyed the article from The Deseret News in May of 1967 about a college campus in Iowa. I would enjoy hearing Henry's comments about it now, wouldn't you? And yes, I intentionally "snipped" the tidbit about Ginsburg to the right of dear Henry's article. The times, they were 'a changing:

Got all that? I hope to soon post a timeline of our Willhelm family on another site to make it easier to see who's who. Thanks for stopping by! And Google? If you're listening, I appreciate you, Google. You're a researcher's dream come true.

LINKS to articles above:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fAw0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=dHgIAAAAIBAJ&pg=4916%2C4786218

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hxczAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jzIHAAAAIBAJ&pg=6976%2C3045678

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Wm4zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2e4HAAAAIBAJ&dq=lloyd-wiser&pg=4656%2C4897720

http://bnb.stparchive.com/Archive/BNB/BNB04282010p08.php

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7uRNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2UkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7171%2C6101137

My day job involves scouring records. My favorite hobby also has me searching and occasionally finding records. I especially like finding a new database of marriage records.

http://familysearch.org/ is uploading thousands of records each week with the help of volunteers who both scan, upload and occasionally transcribe to prepare indexes. Best of all, Familysearch is a FREE site. It recently partnered with Ancestry.com (an awesome but NOT free site) on some projects. 

Index = One of my favorite words. Without an index one must pore through page after page looking for a keyword. FamilySearch doesn't always have indexes (yet) for their many databases. Luckily there is an index for California County Marriages - 1850 to 1952, which is where I've spent the last 90 minutes.

Here are a few copies of marriage licenses of my "kin" that I was thrilled to find.