Henry A. Deland House

My dad collects postcards of Deland, Florida. So I figured there had to be some kind of book out there on the subject. Being in the book industry I checked books in print and came up with the title Around Deland A Postcard History. The problem was the book is a local publisher and was not distributed by any major wholesalers. I tried the phone number given--disconnected. Tried Google for the publisher and came up blank. Ebay, Amazon, Powells, Advanced Book Exchange, half.com, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, Borders--NOTHING.

My last effort was Googling the book title. It came up on the website for the West Volusia Historical Society. Why didn't I think of that? Deland is in West Volusia--just too easy I guess. The book was listed on their website for sale. $20 plus shipping OR I could take a quick trip to the societys gift shop and pick it up. That's what we decided to do.

The gift shop is located inside the Henry A. Deland House located just off highway 92 in downtown Deland. We managed to get the last copy they had. Hopefully dad will like it.

The Deland House was originally built in 1886 by George Hamlin the first attorney in Deland. In 1893 the house was purchased by John B. Stetson to be used for faculty housing at Stetson University. In 1903 the house was sold to Charles Farriss an instructor at Stetson. Farriss made considerable changes including adding a second floor, moving the stairs, adding a porch, and adding stained and leaded glass throughout. In 1988 the house was purchased by Robert and Hawtense Conrad and donated to the city. Over the next two years renovations were made to bring the house back to the style of when Charles Farriss lived there.

The house is available for tours Tuesday-Saturday from noon until 4:00pm with the last tour starting around 3:00-3:15. The charge is $5. Also located on site is the Robert M. Conrad Research and Educational Center which houses the Society's library, exhibit space, meeting room, and preservation areas for photos and newspapers.

Outside is the Lue Gim Gong Memorial. Gong was born in 1860 in Canton, China and moved to the U.S. in 1872. In 1886 he moved to Deland, FL. Gong was known as "The Citrus Wizard". Gong earned fame for a cross pollination of "Hart's Late" and "Mediterranean Sweet" producing a new orange called the "Lue Gim Gong". The orange ripens in early fall and is more cold resistant than others. It won a Silver Wilder Award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Gong also worked with grapefruit, roses, and other plant life. He passed away in 1925 and was buried in Oakdale Cemetery.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=gong&GSfn=lue&GSbyrel=in&GSdyrel=in&GSob=n&GRid=8461255&

http://www.delandhouse.com/

Florida census records added to Ancestry.com

Florida State Census Collection Now Available Online
The following was written by The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com:

PROVO, Utah -- According to historical documents available as part of Ancestry.com's new Florida State Census Collection, actress Faye Dunaway, famous for her performances in "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Mommie Dearest," was a four-year-old living with her parents and brother in Florida in 1945 and NASCAR co-founder William France, Sr., was already in the car business by 1935, listed as a mechanic living in Daytona. Now others with Florida roots can make discoveries about their own relatives. Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, has digitized and indexed the 1867, 1875, 1935 and 1945 Florida state censuses, which contain more than 3.8 million names and 75,000 original images. This is the first time these censuses have been indexed, making the information easily available and searchable online.

Florida is one of only two U.S. states (South Dakota is the other) to have completed a census as recently as 1945, which means many Floridians can potentially find their parents -- or even themselves -- while searching the collection and building their family tree. Using powerful search tools, users can easily discover the name, address, place of birth, level of education and occupation of family members and others living in the same household, as well as locate and view digital images of the original census documents handwritten decades ago.

"With the addition of our new Florida State Census Collection, never-before-discovered family histories will be found at the click of a mouse," said Gary Gibb, vice president of U.S. content for Ancestry.com. "Censuses are one of the best resources for tracing your family history and Ancestry.com is adding the 1945, 1935, 1875 and 1867 Florida state censuses to the largest and most complete census collections available on the Web."

Some famous Floridians found in the Florida State Census Collection include:

Faye Dunaway -- Four-year-old Faye Dunaway is found in the 1945 Florida census along with her younger brother, Mack, and their parents. According to the census, her father, John, was serving in the Army, while her mother was involved in "defense work."
Janet Reno -- This former U.S. Attorney General is found as a 6-year-old in the 1945 census living in Dade County with her father, Henry, who was working as a reporter.
Edith Ringling -- Edith Ringling, wife of Ringling Bros. circus founder Charles Ringling, is the only family member noted to be living at the Ringling Estate during the 1945 Florida census and her occupation is listed as circus proprietor.
William France, Sr. -- NASCAR co-founder William France, Sr., was already in the car business at 25 years old. The 1935 Florida census lists him as a mechanic in Daytona.
Abraham Lincoln Lewis -- Florida's first African-American billionaire and his wife are found in the 1945 Florida census, retired and living in Jacksonville, Florida.
Ancestry.com also offers a wide expanse of other Florida historical records, including the 1885 Florida State Census, a Florida Marriage Collection (1822-1875 and 1927-2001), the Florida Death Index (1877-1998), Florida Passenger Lists (1898-1951) and Florida Land Records.

Ancestry.com offers more than 7 billion names and 26,000 databases, including census, birth, marriage, death, immigration and military records; family trees; stories and publications; and photos and maps. The site currently boasts the world's largest online collection of census records, U.S. military records and immigration records as well as the largest compilation of Jewish and of African-American family history records on the Internet. Ancestry.com offers a free 14-day trial subscription and easy tips to help people learn more about researching their own family history.

About Ancestry and The Generations Network

The Generations Network, Inc., through its flagship Ancestry.com property, is the world's leading resource for online family history. Ancestry.com has local websites in nine countries and has digitized and put online over 7 billion names and 26,000 historical records collections over the past ten years. Since July 2006, Ancestry.com users have created more than 8.1 million family trees containing 780 million profiles and 15 million photographs and stories. The Generations Network also includes myfamily.com, Genealogy.com, Rootsweb.ancestry.com, MyCanvas.com, dna.ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Magazine. More than 7.6 million unique visitors spent over 4.5 million hours on a TGN website in October 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

Confederates in the Attic

This is one of those books you hear so much about. Usually when I hear that I am left disappointed. Sure there are a few exceptions: Confederacy of Dunces, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Into the Wild and a few others. This one left me with mixed feelings at best.

OK, Tony Horowitz has a great repuation and has won a Pulitzer Prize. His writing is easy and not boring. My problem is there just appears to have been an ax to grind against the South and to try and show it still kind of a backwards, redneck, anti black area. Sure parts of the south are that way but let's not forget that much of the north is the exact same way. Racism is alive and well in all parts of the world not just the old Confederate states. Unfortunately most of the world can not get past skin color or religion and just accept people as people.

Horowitz hooks up with a reenactment troop and leader named Rob Hodge whose whole goal in life is to be hardcore and not be a farb. To be hardcore is to be completely authentic in dress, action, movement, and eating. If you aren't hardcore you are probably a farb. We also learn that you can be a farb, act farbishly, and more. Reenactment is something I've never quite gotten so this does nothing to change my view of this activity. Basically though these people come of as harmless, a bit odd but harmless.

In this book we get to meet whites who are just plain racist, we meet african americans who don't feel the war was about slavery, we meet young african americans who voice racist views toward whites that would be decried if the other way, we get to go on a Civil Wargasm which is a trip to as many Civil War sites as possible in a small amount of time, we see Civil War decendants, we find out that Stone Mountain has been turned into some kind of theme park with laser light shows flashing across General Lee, and much more.

Then we get asked the big question: Is there a way to politically correctly remember the Confederacy? I would ask why would we try to make such politically correct. We all know slavery was wrong however none of us had anything to do with it. We can't correct the wrongs of some in the past but we can prevent them from happening again. Tell the FACTS as they are without trying to spare people who are looking to be offended anyhow. This goes for anything not just the Civil war.

While this book is easy to read instead of calling it a travel book I would more say it is a sociological essay to show that the Civil War is still going on in the minds of many Southerners. While that may be true we should not paint all people with that bruch.

No, it's not the Six Million Dollar Man!

It's actually a grave marker for Steven Austin at the Edgwater-New Smyrna Cemetery. Pretty impressive and boy does it stick out as all the memorials around it are what is now normal size. This seems more retro in many ways back to when markers were large and grand. I do like it however and wish we did have more large scale monuments in this area. There almost seems to be something lacking in the flat markers that are all so common and required at many cemeteries. Is this a lack of respect and rememberance for the dead? I guess it depends on your point of view really. Use the link below to check out 5 close ups of vaious parts of the marker. Rest in peace Steven.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=28502050

Spruce Creek Cemetery

This past weekend I got to go to the Spruce Creek Cemetery http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&CRid=1964763&CScn=spruce+creek&CScntry=4&& . For those not familiar with the Daytona Beach area this cemetery is located within the Spruce Creek Fly In community. This is a gated community that has a private air strip. I had never been to SCFI so I didn't know what to expect. Some homes were very large and attractive while others were not so. Guess a gated community isn't always what it's cracked up to be. But then again where else can you have a nearly private air field and have an airplane hanger for a garage?



This is a small, nice, fairly well kept cemetery with everything from Civil War Confederates to more recent burials. There are probably a couple hundred burials in total. There are a full gamut of markers from homemade to what are no doubt top of the line stones meant either as a sign of wealth, grief, or greed.

The main reason for the visit was to photograph stones of the Metts family for a Find a Grave request. It made for a fun hour or so as we were able to photograph the entire cemetery.

Improvements at findagrave.com

I just noticed a couple of great improvements at http://www.findagrave.com/ These should be a great help to genealogists and family historians. A submitter now has the ability to easily and quickly link a parent to child. On the left hand side there is a new feature where all you have to know is the findagrave number for a memorial, then add it in the new section, findagrave does the rest. It creates an automatic link to the parents memorial. What a GREAT addition! Maybe soon they will have it go the other way as well so that you can reach a childs site from a parents memorial.

Also, editing a memorial has become easier. Once you post a memorial you can easily go back and add much more material later. Click the edit button on the top. Now you may add birth and death location and other information easily and in one place.

Kudos to Jim and his group for these great improvements. I know some members bitch and moan on the forums page about this and that but come on the site is completely FREE! I can't imagine the time and money it takes to keep this very large site going but overall they do a great job especially when you consider we don't have to pay a cent for it if we don't want to. Now if we could just figure out an easy way to stop people from creating duplicate memorials, duplicate cemeteries, putting memorials in the wrong cemetery, well if you use the site you get my drift. Well, I'm sure Jim and crew are working on it!

The Assassin's Accomplice

With the 200th birthday celebration of Abraham Lincoln rapidly approaching we can expect a huge flood of books dealing with various aspects of his life and administration. It has already started really with one being The Assassin's Accomplice Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. The work was written by Kate Clifford Larson who is a professor Simmons College and has a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire. Don't let these credentials fool you. This is by NO MEANS a scholarly work and is by no means authoritative.

I will admit she gets the conclusion right. Mary Surratt was guilty. Other than that the book seemed to be filled with generalities that were never fleshed out. The killing of Lincoln is given just a brush over and little research seemed to have been done. The old story of John Wilkes Booth breaking his leg during the jump to the stage is given factual status despite evidence that would lead to this having happened during an accident on his horse. How else would a man who had just broken his leg have managed to get out of the theatre with no issue.

Larson spends much time discussing the publics view of Mary Surratt during the trial and the apparent shift afterwards when the realization hits that she is to be put to death. Why this shift of opinion? I still don't know after reading the book. Why did Andrew Johnson no have leniancy for an "old woman"? Beats me. What other options did the military tribunal have when faced with the mounds of evidence? Check elsewhere.

John Surratt is made out to be the scapegoat for Mary being put to death. If only he had come back to the states and surrendered Mary would have been spared the noose. Come on now. The evidence supports the verdict here and John had no more direct participation in the assassination than Mary. John was in Canada at time, depsite the author claiming he fled to Canada after the assassination.

Granted, Mary had poor attorneys. Let's face it in today's world these buffoons probably wouldn't pass the bar exam however that's what there was. They chose a poor strategy of trying to convince a military court that they had no jurisdiction in the case. How about trying to prove your clients innocence rather than arguing something that would be best done on your very limited appeals. They had an uphill battle and they didn't even get to base camp.

While not a bad read (trust me when I tell you if you no nothing about the time frame, the Civil War, or the assassination you won't be lost) my concern is people will read this and take it as gospel. Let's be honest there is no bibliography, only a scant section of notes and less than 10 photos. For those of us who actually look at this type of thing for further reading or research ideas this is a huge disappointment. The lack of review comments from respected Civil War historians on the jacket is also a give away that for top notch research we should look elsewhere. Better places to start are Manhunt by James L. Swanson or perhaps American Brutus by Michael Kauffman. Both of these authors are recognized assassination experts and while the books are not directly about Mary Surratt her life can not be seperated from the assassination.

In addition, for those with an interest in the Surratt family I would suggest checking out the Surratt website. http://www.surratt.org/. This is a fascinating site with lots of information and the membership rates are more than reasonable.

Sandspurs and headstones

Well Saturday was a trip to Shady Rest Cemetery in Holly Hill, FL to look for 5 headstones for a Find a Grave request and also to look for the headstone of Bolton Smallwood who was my great grand uncle. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSvcid=38582&GRid=29906671&&

Success on all fronts! It turned out to be a long afternoon. I found Bolton fairly quickly within maybe 15 minutes. The Moore and Fisher headstones were another issue however. My wife and I wanered the whole cemetery and were about to give up. We reached the last section and there they were. I received a very nice thank you email from the requestor so that was very nice. It made the hundreds of sandspurs worth the effort.

Sardis Church Cemetery

Tonight I was working my listings at http://www.findagrave.com/ . The cemetery I was working on was Sardis Cemetery in Jefferson County, Florida http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&GRid=30672293&CRid=2264890& This is a cemetery that I came across with my wife when we went to Tallahassee to see a Florida State football game--GO NOLES. We were staying at a KOA outside of town and on the way we passed a small church and the cemetery was behind it.

Saturday morning before going in to town for the game we stopped to have a look around. Turns out the cemetery wasn't too big so my wife and I each took a camera and photographed the whole thing. It was already getting hot but I had a good time. There were large numbers of certain surnames including Armistead, Cooksey, Hatchett, McClellan and others. The cemetery included everything from veterans to infants to those almost 100 years old. Truely a local church cemetery.

I was so wrapped up in the cemetery portion I never did get a photo of the church. We're going to another game later this year and staying at the KOA again so I'll stop by and get a few photos of the church.

So far I haven't quite listed half of the photos I took so please check back as I will be adding more names and photos.

There's always a first time

Welcome one and all to my new blog. Mostly I hope to make this about my major interests of genealogy, cemetery research, and the Civil War. I may talk about what I am reading, cemeteries I have been to to photograph and interesting things I have found, or maybe the latest in my own family tree research. I'll mention new things I've learned that may be from other sites or books. Of course I'll try to include links to anything I talk about so that you can read then yourself. Really I hope to just have fun and maybe occassionaly entertain you for a few minutes every now and then. For now take care and I'll be posting again soon!