Dear Children

This is a letter my Great Grandfather wrote to his children before he passed away in 1939. The neat thing about it is that we have his original letter plus it was written in his own handwriting!
John W Lyon
B 1860
D 1939

I have transcribe the letter the best I could below.

Olin, Iowa

Dear children
I am so glad for this chain while I wright menny letters that does not belong in this chain still I look forward to the time when it will return and I will have the opertunity to keep the chain unbroken. Sickness, axidents and death are on our trail while we are getting up in years we may not be the first to make the missing link. All my ancesters on my fathers side have been taken with a stroke before they were sixty year old and I am now 76 am still able to express my thoughts to you for which I return thanks to my blessed Lord I can not help thinking how our children are scattered out from us and it is not likely we will ever meat as one family again as one family some of them are 3,000 miles apart but I do hope after my decease you will keep up the chain letter.
When we are writing this chain we wright a little different than we wood if we were wrighting a personal letter for various resons what wood be new to those in Cal or Ga wod not be news to those in Cedar Rapids and Davenport, but what about the conditions as they exist in the world today can you not see the ware cloud rising in the east and and the Bible seys all nations will be involved and the (??) is not exception then what about our Grand children. While some of them will be too young to take part in the ware yet they with us will have to suffer privation. President Roosevelt is not to blame for these conditions these conditions have been coming on for years but we could not see them as we do today but the Lord has promest us if we are only faithfull our bred and water will be there.

Transcribed by Mary Hellman 02-22-2011

One thing leads to another.....and another....and another

A post or so ago I wrote about Leah Hunt Riggs, a sister of my gr gr gr gr grandmother Rebecca Hunt Rivers. It was about how she (Leah) traveled to Oregon on the Oregon trail. Well, from there I wanted to find the guy (last name Hunt) who wrote the article. He surely is a relative!



I had found some correspondence through Rootsweb.com. between Dean Hunt and a couple of other people and when I e-mailed him it came back as undeliverable. After all this was a conversation that had happened many years ago and it was about that article! So from there I e-mailed another lady that was included in that conversation and withing an hour (I'm not kidding!) I had a new e-mail address for Dean.



Then, about an hour after that I received an e-mail from Dean that read Hi Cousin! How thrilling. At least I thought so. Come to find out, he is a descendant of Rebecca and Leah's brother Tunstall Hunt. Tunstall is the maiden name of Rebecca, Leah's and Tunstall's mother Rachel, who married Ambrose Hunt on October 27, 1797. Wow!



This is the most thrilling and rewarding hobby ever!



So happy hunting and keep looking. You never know what you will find.

What? Grandma was married before she met Grandpa?

Yesterday, I was searching marriages on Family Search and punched in my Grandma and Grandpa's names. Their marriage information came up which was cool to see.

What a shock when her name Eleanor Fahl came up again! First of all the status on three different entries showed her marriage status when she married my Grandpa, Willis Harold Lyon as being, unknown, married and divorced. What?

So after checking further it said she had been married to a Clifford Archibald Blair when she was 17 years of age and he was 20 years of age. What? They married September 24, 1917.

I really thought about this for awhile, not believing the information so then I called my sister Nancy and asked if she had heard of this before. "Yes" she said. Mom had told her years ago. Why didn't I know that? Especially with me being the family historian! Next I plan on asking my Dad about it. Unfortunately it turns out that marriage was not a good one for her and she got out of it by divorcing the man. It was also surprising, because she came from a religious family and back then - 1917 - it most likely was not looked well upon to have a divorce.

So I looked up Clifford Archibald Blair on Ancestry and came up with his World War I enlistment record which also showed his birthdate. His closest kin was his mother. There is not much information at all on this man and at this point I do not know if he married again, had children, or when he died. Amazing.

My Grandma Lyon was the sweetest woman ever, so this really surprised and shocked me. I told my sister - "if you have any secrets you better tell me, otherwise I will find out about it sooner or later for sure!"

Never Say Die

Back in the late 70's my coworker knew I loved hilarious things. Anything hilarioius. Well take a look at this newspaper clipping of a guy who amazingly survived the Civil War. Wow! This is amazing! And it it hilarious! Make sure you read to the end. It is something. Unfortunately I do not know what newspaper it came from. It was cut out from the page.



For some reason I kept this and found it again when Mike and I recently moved. Thought you would enjoy it. I tried looking on Ancestry to see if I could find any family, but I did not have any luck with his name.

Enjoy!

Winter Siblings

Don't you just love this picture? My Grandmother, Eleanor (Fahl) Lyon is on the right. She is with her brother Robert and sister Edna. There were six siblings in total in her family.



Based on the looks of their ages this photo would have been taken on or about 1907 in Marion, Iowa.



Happy January! Keep warm and cozy.

Three Generations of First Born Sons

Years ago, when my mother in law gave me a little pale light green baby outfit I was not too impressed. We had just had our first baby, a boy.

She went on to tell me my husband wore this outfit at about three weeks old and there is a picture of my father in law holding him in this outfit.

So - at about three weeks of age we went ahead and put this outfit on our Nathan and had a picture taken of the two of them as well.

When I found out we were expecting a grandson from Nathan I forwarded him this baby outfit. Two days ago, he put his three week old first born son into this little outfit and had a picture taken.

So here you have it. In the span of 57 years here are three first born sons wearing the same baby outfit!

Chuck holding Mike, Mike holding Nathan, Nathan holding Judah

Hurray for Hellman men and their first born sons!

Happy New Year

Here is to the year 2011. What are you hoping to uncover this year? So far, everything I have uncovered has been unexpected and a great surprise. Meeting new cousins is one of my favorites!



This year hopefully I will finally find out about my gr gr grandpa Andrew S Davis. Who were his parents? Did he have any siblings? What does the middle initial S stand for? What did he do for the 40 years of his life? Had he been married before 1865 and before the civil war?



So.....here is to another year of searcing for our long lost ancestors!



Happy New Year