The Great Road Trip of 2017......Part Twenty Nine/Day Twenty

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nine of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Ten of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eleven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twelve of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Thirteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  
Part Fourteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  
Part Fifteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Sixteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seventeen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Eighteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nineteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE 
Part Twenty of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twenty Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

When last we met we had just crossed over the state line into North Dakota......

Nice sky and an encouraging billboard, "Do Your Best."  I concur.

More sunflowers........

When we got to Fargo I told Hubs I wanted to visit the local Visitor Center.

This piece of equipment was featured outside of the Center......can you guess why I wanted to go here?

                                        

What a grand new building!  Hubs initially stayed in the car while I went inside.  He noticed that local kids were going into the building and coming out with bags of fresh popcorn.  Color him puzzled.....

As I entered the Visitor Center I saw a coffee and popcorn machine right by the door???

                                      

Then I saw some display cases...........

                   

These cases had all sorts of props and memorabilia from the movie "Fargo".  It's a good movie with a great cast of actors.  If you haven't seen it, you should go find it on some streaming service.

There were photos of the cast during production too.

It was shame they weren't selling this t-shirt in the little gift shop inside the visitor's center.

Here's where it gets weird(or maybe just quirky), they had the actual woodchipper machine used in the movie inside the visitor's center.  It has a rubber foot sticking out of the hopper(if you know, you know).  They had Winter trapper hats(google it if you live in the South and have never been North), and a short piece of lumber so you can reenact a scene from the movie while one of the employees there takes your photo(with your phone or camera).

Here's Hubs posing with me, though he didn't don a trapper's fur hat like I did.

Such a grand two story Visitor's Center with all sorts of brochures of things to see and do in the area and books for sale and reading tables like in a library!

And a small gift shop off to the side.

We spied this colorful bison on the way out.

Then we checked into our hotel for the evening, dropped our bags and went out to find dinner.

We hit a strip mall nearby with two options, Smash Burger and Huhot.  After Val in Iowa had raved so about Huhot we chose the Mongolian Grill.

A cute sign as you entered........

We perused the appetizer and dessert menu while we waited for our drinks.  Then it was time to get in line.

Huhot is a buffet style place.  You grab a plate and make your meat selection, then your veggie selections, and lastly your sauce option(s).  Then you queue up and wait your turn to have one of the "chefs" put your dinner on their large circular flattop grill and they cook it for you.  All cooked your dish is returned to you to enjoy.  They have a communal tip jar and when someone puts a tip in they all chant together while they cook.  Too funny and fun!

Here's my plate of vittles(you get soup and rice too).  My first plate was a bit spicy(the sauce was as I combined two sauces on that plate.  My second plate I went with just the non-spicy sauce which was more to my palate's liking.

For the price I didn't think it was a good deal so I wistfully glanced over at Smash Burger on the way back to the car(since I had never had that before either as there are none of either restaurants back in our part of PA).

Since it was August and the days stretch out until 8 something in the evening we had time to kill so we made a stop in town across the road from the "Sons of Norway" Lodge in Fargo.

After having my DNA tested a few years earlier it turned up that I had a small amount of Viking blood coursing through my veins.  Then after years of genealogical research I had discovered earlier that year that a statue of my 33 x Great Grandfather, Rollon Ganger-Hrólf the Viking or as he is also known ROLLO.  He was Count Rouen, the first ruler of Normandy(in present day France).  It is still not known whether he was Norwegian or Danish but we can say with certainty that he was Scandinavian.

More on Rollo HERE.

Rollo is the 3 x Great Grandfather of William the Conqueror, the progenitor of the House of Normandy in England.  The direct male line descendants of Rollo ended with Henry I.  Henry's daughter, Matilda, was the mother of Henry II, who laid claim to the English throne and was the first of the Plantagenet rulers.  Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's son, John I, became King of England(him of Magna Carta fame).

Me and Great Grandpa.  A statue in stone of Rollo made in 1863 by Arsenne Letellier was erected in the city or Rouen, France in 1865.  Two copies of this statue done in bronze were cast, one being sent to Alesund(the supposed birthplace of Rollo and the other to Fargo, North Dakota.

That marque is on the Sons of Norway Lodge across the way.  This area was settled by Norwegian settlers thus a Rollo statue being prominently displayed in Fargo. 

History of the Rollo Statue

The statue now stands in a small park near the Elim Lutheran church in Fargo.

We saw this portable stage nearby.  I suppose some musical entertainment was getting ready for that coming weekend.  But we were losing daylight and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Sluggy

Throwback Thursday.......4 Generations of Women

It's Throwback Thursday and this entry is taking on a genealogical bent.

If you remember I posted this photo of 4 generations of the women in my mother's family awhile back.....

That post is located HERE.
This photo is of the latest generations of my mother's mother's mother's family.

I recently found another old photo in one of my mother's old scrapbooks(or could it have been my grandmother's?)of another 4 generations of women in my mother's family that goes back another generation, to my 2x Great Grandmother!
It's not dated but I know it was taken in either late 1934 or early 1935.

My mother was born in August of 1934 and she is the baby in the photo......

From left to right are my mother, Carole Harper Bowman, aged under 1 year,  my mother's mom/my grandmother Lillian Vassar Harper, aged 20, her mother/my great grandmother, Lucy Baker Vassar, aged 46, and her mother/my 2x great grandmother, Luretta "Lou" Foster Baker, aged 76.

The 4 previous-to-me generations of my midtrochondrial DNA are in that photo.

Before you cast asperions upon Lucy and her sagging bosom be aware that she gave birth 12 times(and no doubt, being a country gal, breastfed every single one)plus at the time of this photo she had just given birth to number 12, my great Uncle Barry....or was about to give birth.  Barry was mom's youngest uncle,  yet mom was 3+ months older than her uncle. 8-)

I only have one other photo of "Lou" my great great grandmother and it was taken in an earlier year than this one and she is in that photo with her daughter, my great grandmother, Lucy, along with some of Lucy's children(including my grandmother Lil).

Lou Foster Baker is the one standing in front of the tree and her daughter(my great grandmother)Lucy Baker Vassar is standing to the right in the photo.  My grandmother Lillian is in front holding a baby, between the smaller girl holding a baby and sticking out her tongue and the boy leaning over.
I suspect this photo was taken a few years earlier than the other one, perhaps the late 1920's. or 1930's before 1932.

If only I could bring Lou back for a day to find out what her life was like and the stories she would tell.
I look at the paper trail on Lou and I see a woman who survived a hard life.

She was born in circa 1858, the oldest child of Wesley Baxter Foster and his first wife, Susan Elizabeth "Fannie" Redmond.  
If you read the paper trail of official records there is no clear record of Lou's actual name.
I found it as Luretta L., Lou, Lora, Lue L., Lou L. and Lou E. in census records.  No birth record has surfaced to date so we just have her birth date as what was given to the census taker.

The War of Northern Aggression began when she was 3 years old so she lived through that period of deprivation in the South until the age of 7.  Lou had a younger sister, Lillian Belle, born in Feb. 1861.

Here's a picture of Lou's father, Wesley.....

I don't have a photo of her mother Susan Redmond Foster unfortunately.

Her father, Wesley, fought in the war, so his wife Susan and their 2 children were without their source of income for a number of years while the war dragged on.   I don't know how long Wesley was gone but there is a gap in children from 1862 to 1867 so it's possible he was gone for most of the war.
He served in the 56th Virginia regiment which organized in September of 1861.

After surviving the war and the return of Wesley to the family, he went back to farming and the family grew to include 3 more children; Henry, Estelle and Flora.

Then Lou's mother Susan died in 1873, when Lou was 15 years old.  Her father was 36 years old and the children ranged from 15 to 4 years old.

Lou's father remarried in 1875 to Martha Harris(a woman 10 years his junior)so Lou had a stepmother at the age of 17.

I can find no record of any children from this union of Wesley and Martha and though a death certificate alludes me so far, Martha is probably deceased by 1878, since Wesley Foster married again that year to Alice Katherine Baker(a woman 19 years his junior).  Lou is 20 years old when this third marriage takes place. 

Alice and Wesley went on to have 8 additional children before Alice's death in 1919.  Wesley predeceased Alice by 2 years, dying in 1917.

Alice Baker was the younger sister of the man Lou Foster would marry later in life, Patrick Henry Baker.   Alice and Patrick's father was Richard W. Baker.  This means Alice was Lou's 2nd stepmother and later her sister in-law.

Alice is my second great grand aunt, being the child of my 3x Great Grandfather,  Richard Baker, thus my tree again turns into a macramé project. lolz

But I digress......

By the 1880 federal census Lou is 21 years old, married to Patrick Henry Baker and has a 6 month old infant named Richard Baxter Baker.  They are living with Patrick's parents,  Richard W. and Sallie Hamilton Baker.   According to the 1900 Census they were married in 1878.

Coincidence that Lou married Patrick the same year her father married a 3rd wife, Patrick's younger sister?  I think not.  New wives don't like having previous wives children around especially if they are old enough to marry off.  Lou was only 2 years younger than her father's new wife Alice at the time of that marriage.

Lou and Patrick Henry Baker went on to have 8 more children besides Richard Baxter(called Baxter)Baker between 1882 and 1899.  Patrick, who spent his life farming in Charlotte County Virginia, died in 1930 at the age of 83 and Lou lived another 11 years in widowhood with their oldest son, Richard Baxter(who never married),until her death in 1941.

Lou died when my mother was around 7 years old.  I don't ever remember mom talking about her great grandmother Lou.  Mom and her parents moved away from Charlotte County in about 1939-1940 so she may not have had any memories of Lou, being so young when they left the county/when Lou died.

It's nice to have this treasured photo though.  And nice to be able to patch together an ancestor's story.

Sluggy
 

Ancestral Connections Are Everywhere!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered 2 years ago that my bloggy friend Sonya Ann and I are related.  We are 9th cousins.
She and I are descended from Captain Samuel Snead(my 10th Great Grandfather, her 9th Great Grandfather).
He was our first Snead to immigrate to American. Samuel came to the Virginia Colony with his wife, Alice Gallimore Snead and their son, William, in 1635.

Our most recent shared ancestor is Samuel Sneed's grandson, John Sneed, who married Alice Tinsley.
From there our ancestor's branch off, Sonya's line being the son William Sneed of New Kent, Virginia and mine, the son Samuel Sneed of Hanover, Virginia.  Back then, name spellings were quite fluid, Snyd or Snead one time, Sneed the next time.  Over the years the spelling of the name got standardized in her line to SNEED, my line to SNEAD, but it's the same family line.

One of the famous cousins we share--Golfer Sam Sneed.  My 6th cousin 3x removed.

Anyway, who would have thunk it, that I'd find a long lost cousin in blogland?

So imagine my surprise when I had my last giveaway and the winner, chosen at random, had the same last name as the maiden name of one of my 3rd Great Grandmothers!

I emailed her if she knew anything about her family history and after some back and forth we discovered that we share an ancestor in Abraham Stapp II who married Dorothy Moss 1678.  Abraham was 2nd generation of that family born in America. We are 8th cousins 2x removed(I am straight 8th cousins with her grandfather).

One of the famous people we almost share, Scott Stapp of the grunge band Creed.  He took his stepfather's surname so genetically we aren't cousins.

But we do share this guy.....

Kentucky legend & frontiersman Moses Stepp.  That's his grave in Martin County, KY.


I find this happening every time I turn around.  I find ancestral connections to people I meet in my life.

More recently I was talking to another blogger buddy, Jay, and he said he was related to Roy Rogers(Roy's real name was Leonard Franklin Slye).

 Well I went to look up Roy's parents and Leonard's mother was named Mattie Womack.  Gee, I have a line of Womacks in my family lines. I traced Roy's maternal side Womack line back a bit and wouldn't you know, it flows back to Prince Edward County, Virginia, where my Womack's were too.
I feel confident that once I do some more digging I'll find the actual link to Roy Rogers maternal line of Womacks to mine.
So far on the paternal side of Sly family I haven't done enough research to connect Jay but he says it is there.
So while Jay and I aren't cousins we are both probably each related to Roy Rogers, Jay through the paternal line and me through the maternal line, so we are from allied families.

It sure is a small, small ancestral world we live in.




Have you done any genealogy research that led you back to famous or infamous people in your family tree?

Sluggy