Wordless Wednesday - Louisa Willden Pedigree Chart

For Wordless Wednesday, here is another Pedigree Chart that has been donated to the Lake Havasu Genealogical Society. Again, these charts were found at the old McCulloch Chainsaw Factory. A strange place to find such an item. As a way to help preserve this artifact, it is being posted here.

Therefore, what you see is what we got.

Since posting the previous Wordless Wednesday, I have discovered that Louisa Willden married William Burt. Louisa's Pedigree extended out so far that an additional page was created for those three branches.

Wordless Wednesday - Pedigree Chart

For Wordless Wednesday, we are posting a Pedigree Chart that has been donated to the Lake Havasu Genealogical Society. We were told that these charts were found at the old McCulloch Chainsaw Factory. A strange place to find such an item. As a way to help preserve this artifact, it is being posted here.

Therefore, what you see is what we got.

Throwback Thursday - Early Christmas for Genealogy Society

Christmas came early for the Lake Havasu Genealogical society - but the gift did not come in a sleigh from the North Pole. It took a moving van from Arkansas to deliver the early Christmas Present.

Over 800 pounds of books, periodicals, manuscripts, and papers were unloaded from the moving van.

The donation of genealogy material came from Willie Lee Jones, 79, a seven-year resident of Lake Havasu City. Mrs. Jones is the widow of Edward Warren Jones who died October 5, this year (1996). Mrs. Jones donated the personal genealogy library of her sister, Jessye Ann (Welch) High, deceased, of Mountain Home, Arkansas.

Photo contributed by S Maurer, Dec 2004 to Jeanette Perrin Coaly, Coaly Orchard a Book written by Jessye Aggansas "Jessye Ann" Welch High.

a microfilm reader and several rolls of film were included in the shipment, along with over 200 hard cover reference books, files, manuscripts, loose papers and 21 large family history portfolios representing "work-in-process" materials.

When asked to place a value on the donation, society president Nelson "Woody" Woodell said it would be several months before everything is inventoried and we know what we have. "It is a gift worth several thousands of dollars," Woodell said.

Members of the society unpacked the shipment in the garage of Dale and Corinne Wise next to the location of the society's public genealogy library. Members sorting the materials would find an interesting book, sit down an start reading. "It took a long time to get things unpacked," said Corinne Wise. "I would look around and everyone was sitting down and reading - the unpacking and sorting became a very slow process," she said.

Willie Lee Jones made the donation to the local society in honor of her sister as a memorial, and Mrs. Jones said she wanted her sister's genealogy materials put to a good use.

Willie Lee Jones and Jessye Ann High are daughters of David Delbert Clinton Welch and Nancy Younger Oldham. The Welch family are descendants of President Thomas Jefferson.

Jessye Ann High had accumulated the genealogy materials and personal library as a life-lone serious genealogist. Her accumulation includes thousands of letters and vital record documents, stacks of notes, and loose sheets of paper. One of the items found in the shipment was a hand written copy of the 1890 census on lined three-ring notebook paper, over 4 inches thick.

Included in the microfilm are three rolls of the 1790 census, one roll of the 1810 North Carolina census and a rare Rowan County, North Carolina county court Docket Book for 1773-1800. Goodspeed's History of Pennsylvania is complete on three rolls of film. A roll of film on the 1890 special Census of Oklahoma and Indian Territories, and five rolls on the 1910 Oklahoma census were in the donation.

While many states are represented by the vital records books, most of the reference books are for Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Family surnames in the "work-in-process" portfolios include Bishop, Danney, Darwin, Heath, Jefferson, Markham, Maxey, McCallum/McCollum, Oldham, Shults/Shultz, Smith, Sullivan, Vickry, Walker, Widler/Wyler and Younger.

Librarian Gloria Harrington has the task of classifying the books and entering them in the card catalog file. The society operates its library on the Dewey Decimal system and the books will be numbered for location on the shelves. "Preserving and making the loose papers and materials available for researchers will be the biggest challenge," Mrs. Harrington said. "We need to organize this material so people can use it." she said.

"There was so much material - all packed in boxes - on the moving van, we don't know what we have" librarian Harrington said. Society members helping unload the 800 pound shipment were overwhelmed with the size and extent of this personal genealogy library.

The society is working with Willie Lee Jones on a suitable memorial for her sister. In addition to marking the donated books with a memorial book plate, the local society will be planning some other type of memorial for Jessye Ann High in its public library.

At the time of this article, the Genealogy Public Library was located in the Home of Dale and Corinne Wise's home at 2283 Holly. It's current location is 2126 N McCulloch Blvd, Suite 17 located in the Shambles Village of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

The Cabin Home (Part 2)

The Cabin Home (Part 2)
by Denyce Cribbs

In my last post, I wrote about a booklet I found in our library called, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden, written by S.P. Dinsmoor.  Dinsmoor built a stone cabin in 1907, along with a sculpture garden, on his property of Lucas, Kansas.  I was curious to find out what happened to the property after he passed away. 

Samuel Perry Dinsmoor (1843 – 1932)

First, I was surprised to find that the booklet is still available on Amazon, in very limited quantities.  Surely, one of the first examples of “self-publishing” during its time, it survives as a self-published paperback in the modern age.

Also, I found that the property does indeed survive today.  In fact, the sculpture gardens are on the National Register of Historic Places. Tours are offered for $6 per person (well over the $1 fee that Dinsmoor called for in his will, and wrote about in his book).  According to the Kansas Sampler Foundation website,  (http://www.kansassampler.org/8wonders/artresults.php) Dinsmoor’s Cabin Home survives as one of the “Top 8 Wonders of Kansas Art.”  The website describes The Cabin Home currently:

The Garden of Eden is a world-renowned grassroots art site with one of the most fascinating (and bizarre) sculpture gardens in the world!

In 1907, at the age of 62, Civil War veteran Samuel Perry Dinsmoor began construction of this unusual site by building a structure of limestone logs, (some up to 21 feet long) for the family home. Then, using 113 tons of cement, Dinsmoor built 40-foot tall trees to hold his larger than life figures for his sculpture garden. He stopped working on the sculpture in 1929 because he went blind.

Tour guides help observers become fully aware that every part of every cryptic sculpture has meaning about Populist politics, modern civilization, and the Bible that connect like a dot-to-dot puzzle. The humor and message that he conveys through the sculptures amazes visitors.

Dinsmoor also built a mausoleum to house his mummified remains! Always a jokester, he claimed he would wink at anyone who paid to tour the garden. His vision was accurate and today the Garden of Eden supports itself through admissions. While Dinsmoor was building and creating locals tried to run him out of town. Decades later, the Garden of Eden became the town's main attraction and today Lucas is known as the Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas.

The Cabin Home Today

The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)

The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)
by Denyce Cribbs

In digging around the surname files in our library, I came across a little booklet in the Dinsmoor file entitled, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden.  Written by S.P. Dinsmoor, it’s a journal of sorts about the home and surrounding gardens that the author constructed in Lucas, Kansas. 

Dinsmoor served three years in the Civil War, claiming to see the capture of Robert E. Lee.  Following the war, he taught school in Illinois for five years.  In 1870 he married his first wife and became a farmer.  He eventually moved to Lucas, Kansas in 1891, and built his Cabin Home in 1907, and later the surrounding grounds which he named Garden of Eden.  He married his second wife in 1924.  He was 81 at the time, and she was 20 years old.

The cabin he built was distinctive in that the logs were all made of cement.  Dinsmoor states:

There were eleven rooms besides the bathroom, three halls, two closets with cave and light plant under back porch.  The porches, side walks, fence, strawberry and flower beds, fish pool, grape-arbor, three U.S. flags, Adam and Eve, the devil, coffin, jug, visitors’ dining hall, labor crucified, two bird and animal cages, and was house are all made with cement.

Dinsmoor goes on to describe the Garden of Eden that he created on his grounds, consisting of Adam and Eve cement statues, the Devil, Cain and Abel, and other creatures to complete his rendition of famous Bible stories.  Eccentric to be sure, he also built his own mausoleum and coffin, complete with instructions for their use after he passes away.  He states in his will that no one besides his descendants shall enter his mausoleum for less than one dollar, so that profits from visitors can be used to maintain the place.  He builds his own coffin to have a plate glass lid so he can break out on the final Resurrection Day.  At the foot of the coffin he places a jug so he will be prepared with water on the final day of reckoning.

This little booklet in an interesting legacy of a man’s creativity, complete with photos on every page.  It gets my curiosity going, though, about what comes next.  Does the Cabin Home still exist?  Is Dinsmoor buried there? I’ll try to answer those questions in my next post.