19th Amendment Women's right to Vote

The 19th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Passed August 18, 1920


My grandmother told me about the first time she could vote. She said she was so proud to able to vote and then realized she and my grandfather (she had been married for 2 months) had voted for different people for President.

According to wikipedia, the 1920 election was Warren Harding (R) versus James Cox (D). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1920

So if they had bumper stickers in those days, one of my grandparents could have proudly displayed, "Don't blame me, I voted for James Cox."

It's Election Day, go VOTE!

Dancing with the Stars and Cloris Leachman

I had always heard that Cloris Leachman was somehow my distant cousin. I thought I would see if I could confirm this without spending too much time on it. A quick look at wikipedia showed that she was born in Des Moines, Iowa to Cloris Wallace and Berkley "Buck" Leachman. (And that she was Miss Chicago in 1946 and her website is http://www.cloris.com/.)

Then family trees on Rootsweb showed Berkley's father as Robert Parker Leachman and his father as William Leachman. This same info was found on the Census records. I then got out my Leachman genealogy compiled by the unknown cousin supposedly trying to get into the DAR.





There is William Leachman, brother of my gg grandfather, Leonard Leachman. William and Leonard are the sons of Leonard Leachman and Sarah Sanford.

I had previously posted the obit for William's wife, Sarah.
http://youlookirish.blogspot.com/2008/03/sarah-parker-leachman.html

If I was really clever I could tell you exactly how Cloris and I are related, what cousin how many times removed. But I do know her gg grandfather and my gg grandfather were brothers.

Layla

This is our new baby, Layla. She is Husky and Catahoula Leopard thus the blue eyes. We adopted her from "Animal Services"; they don't call it "The Pound" anymore.

Her name was Layla when we got her. Of course now the Eric Clapton song is forever stuck in our heads.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

I'm a Yankee doodle dandy
A Yankee doodle do or die
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam born on the 4th of July

We all know the song. When we were little my brother and I always thought it was so cool that Leonard Leachman was born on July 4, 1776.

This is according to Leachman genealogy that my grandmother had. My Dad said it was done by a cousin trying to get into the DAR. Unfortunately it does not have the cousin's name.

Leonard (my great-great-great grandfather) married Sarah Sanford in 1804 and they had 11 children. Baby number four was Leonard who married Pauline Lewis, whose anniversary articles are posted below.

Happy 4th

To Leonard and Pauline

These are copied from Pauline Leachman's scrapbook

Newspaper articles about her grandparent's anniversaries.

Wish I had the gold and silver nugents :)

Back up your files

We were robbed on June 3 between noon and 1pm. I assume they saw me leave the house. They took all the usual things thieves take when they rob houses. They took the computer which was 6 years old so no great loss however all my files went with it and that's what I miss. YEARS of pictures and family videos. And MY FAMILY TREE MAKER PROGRAM with thousands of names and dates and census records and military records. So ... today's genealogy lesson is back up your files. And I know everybody says it but I never did it because this was never going to happen to me!!!! Actually once, in December 2004, I did back up the Family Tree program. As much as I enjoy genealogy, if I had to go back and start by entering my own name in Family Tree Maker, I might have to get a new hobby.

I also had lots of things scanned. If I scanned it, I have the hard copy but most of those things are so old I hate to keep touching them. I scanned them so I could just look at them on the screen. And then some things I had scanned because I wanted to post them here.

The police did get a lot of fingerprints so I have not given up hope of getting some of my things back.

Ellen Goodman's column

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for the Boston Globe her column Sunday was "The secrets buried under my family tree." The secret is that her grandparents married just five months before her Mother was born. I really liked this paragraph.

But what we really want from the generations past are not just the facts or the DNA. We want the stories. Love, passion, success, disappointment, humanity. There may be no way to know - really know- their interior life. But how many of us would trade in the data for one good diary?

I don't know how long the link work but this is the column.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/04/18/the_secrets_buried_under_a_family_tree/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Ellen+Goodman+columns