WWI Plaque at Pawnee County Courthouse

On my way out of the courthouse in Pawnee City, I saw this brass plaque listing Pawnee County people who served in WWI.  Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the list only goes to K, which makes me think there's another somewhere.  Sigh.

I like the fact that they listed the Red Cross nurses as well as the soldiers!

I've put the complete list of names after a jump (I think)

Pawnee City Cemetery

If you find Pawnee City, you've found the cemetery -- it's right on the main road through town.  It's a big, well-kept cemetery with a very good directory and map in a little house onsite.  Beware -- there are half a dozen sections, with names, and the block and plot numbers repeat, so you really do need to write down the names (guess who didn't do that the first time!)  Most of my Shellhorns and Aikins have markers; the Colony plot, however, has several names in the directory but only one marker.

Pawnee City Historical Society

The Pawnee City Historical Society, in Pawnee City, Nebraska is primarily a museum site, with more than 20 historic buildings and many exhibits.  They have recently acquired a building which they call their genealogy building, but haven't had time to really do much with it except house AMERICORPS volunteers this summer. This building is pretty much only open by appointment and a very nice lady came on a Sunday afternoon to open it up and spend about an hour (without air conditioning!) with me. 

What they have:

• Cemetery records, including directories and maps for Cincinnati and DuBois, and the actual burial records for the Pawnee City cemetery
• A booklet, written in '70s, about the history of Cincinnati and DuBois, for sale for $7. (This same booklet is available at the Beatrice library, which is only helpful if you can get to the library.)
• Some digitized photographs 
• Some old land record books from the courthouse.  The courthouse still has the Grantor and Grantee indexes and the Deed books, but the historical society has the old books that are organized by legal land description.
• A few school graduation and county fair souvenirs, mostly hidden behind glass

I got the sense that these folks know how to run a good historical museum but are in uncharted waters when it comes to offering a good genealogy library.  There have given in to the temptation to create "displays" on the flat surfaces, which makes it hard to work with the cemetery records, and the land books are in a back room until someone figures out how to work with them.  If they can find a local genealogist to give them a little advice, though, I expect they'll put together a great resource.

I entertained myself on the drive back to my hotel thinking about what a visiting genealogist really wants from a local library...

DuBois Cemetery

The DuBois cemetery is just south of the town of DuBois on the main road through town. It's very easy to find and very well maintained.

I didn't see an onsite directory, but the Pawnee Historical Society has a directory and map.

I found a few Shellhorns and Miners here, and lots of Britts.  Selected photos are here.

Cincinnati Cemetery

Because the town of Cincinnati pretty much disappeared many years ago, the cemetery is located in the middle of a cornfield.  It is very well maintained today, but shows signs that suggest it has not always been so.  There is no onsite directory, so I would recommend stopping at the Beatrice Public Library or the Pawnee City Historical Society before heading out into the countryside; the cemetery is small enough to walk around looking for stones, but you'd want to be sure you are looking for Cincinnati rather than the DuBois or Pawnee City cemeteries before braving the gravel roads to Cincinnati. It also appears that there were a lot of burials for which there are no markers visible today.

I found markers for several of my relatives, both direct ancestors like Elisha and Flora DeWitt and Elizabeth DeWitt, and for other Miners, Lores and DeWitts.  I've put them all on my website at Cincinnati Cemetery.  (I only took pictures of relatives or probable relatives, which I estimate at approximately 1/4 of the visible markers.)

Beatrice Public Library

The public library in Beatrice is gorgeous.  Lovely building, nice landscaping, very interesting interior. 

They have a pretty good genealogy section, especially, as you would expect, for Nebraska.  Except for the county I was looking for...Pawnee, which is southeast of Beatrice.  I don't think it's the library's fault -- I didn't get the impression during my trip there's much of an organized genealogy force in Pawnee county. 

I did find a couple of useful things.  One was a cemetery index.  The other was a tiny history of Cincinnati and Dubois; from it I learned that Cincinnati was located in a floodplain, which discouraged the railroad, and that the combined effects of periodic floods and the railroad going elsewhere caused the residents to pretty much pack up and move north to DuBois (which is pronounce DOO Boys).  This helped explain some patterns in my data, which made me happy.

It was nice to have the genealogy section out in the main part of the library, like we...I don't know...belong?  Don't have to be hidden in a separate room?  Is the genealogy happy dance really that distracting for other library patrons?

Homestead National Monument of America

One evening during the conference, we had dinner at the Homestead National Monument.  The food was unremarkable, but the monument is kinda cool. I hadn't heard of it, but it's actually dedicated to a piece of legislation, the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered free land to anyone who could tame 160 acres of raw wilderness with a house, cultivated crops, and five years of residence.

There are two especially interesting things about the monument.  First, they have a dramatic new building with very well done displays and an interpretive film.  If you go in the evening, you may see a spectacular sunset framed in the windows.

Second, they have teamed with Family Search, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Footnote.com to digitize and index all the homestead application records at NARA.  Considering that they think that something like 70 million people today descend from homesteaders, and that homestead records can contain genealogically valuable information, I think that's great news!

I also think it's great to see how the National Park Service is trying to reach out to more than just tourists and schoolchildren.  Linking the National Archives' historical records with the NPS historical interpretation resources has a lot of potential to make genealogy a lot more fun.

Land Records and Genealogy Symposium, Nebraska

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Land Records and Genealogy Symposium in Beatrice, NE.  I learned several interesting things, the first of which is that it's pronounced beATriss.

The symposium is a joint venture between the community college in Beatrice and the Homestead National Monument of America, which celebrates the Homestead Act of 1862.  About 1/3 of the presentations focused on land records -- understanding the platting system, knowing what to look for in the deed index and deed book, etc.  Three of the others were on technology -- Google, blogs, social media; I liked the one Thomas MacEntee did on Google the best.  Possibly the most entertaining presentation was on identifying 19th century photographs; even the the event planners, who weren't genealogists, were fascinated.  Gail Blankenou did a fabulous job.

This symposium is offered every two years.  I've only been to one other genealogy conference, so I don't have much to compare it to, but I'd say that it was worth the extremely reasonable fee.  And, when making your lunch choices, go with the lasagna...