This has been such a neat couple of days... I've seen the hand of God or His dispatched angels directing our path... having us bump into just the right strangers at just the right times, and us making the wrong turns to find what we needed.
So now I'm going back to Wed morning since I didn't have internet. We had spent the night in Fort Madison, I wrote about having to go 10 miles off the beaten path to find a motel. So in the morning we headed west on Rte to bound for 
Douds, IA. Knowing that was where Ansel's paternal grandparents lived from US Census reports. So my first stop was to find out where the County seat was, so I could research deed records. That turned out to be Keosauqua, IA. Then to find the Courthouse... It was in a wonderful old building from the turn of the century that had not been remodeled. The ladies there in the Recorders office and the Auditors office were very helpful. I was hoping to find a birth certificate for Ansel's dad, but he was born in 1879, and they didn't start keeping records until 1880. However we were able to find the deed records, and transfers of the deeds to and from Walter G. Marshall to the current owners. Then took a drive out there to see where it was. These pics are of the homestead. The house is probably partly original and remodeled over the years. Except for the home site area, the eighty acres is currently all corn on the gently rolling hills. They had 80 acres of farmland. His paternal grandparents were Walter G. and Sarah Criss Marshall.
Douds, IA. Knowing that was where Ansel's paternal grandparents lived from US Census reports. So my first stop was to find out where the County seat was, so I could research deed records. That turned out to be Keosauqua, IA. Then to find the Courthouse... It was in a wonderful old building from the turn of the century that had not been remodeled. The ladies there in the Recorders office and the Auditors office were very helpful. I was hoping to find a birth certificate for Ansel's dad, but he was born in 1879, and they didn't start keeping records until 1880. However we were able to find the deed records, and transfers of the deeds to and from Walter G. Marshall to the current owners. Then took a drive out there to see where it was. These pics are of the homestead. The house is probably partly original and remodeled over the years. Except for the home site area, the eighty acres is currently all corn on the gently rolling hills. They had 80 acres of farmland. His paternal grandparents were Walter G. and Sarah Criss Marshall.
Then it was off to Davis County via Rte 2, which is where his mom's family was from. Sylvester and Mary M. Criss Vorhis were his maternal grandparents.
So as we are ho humming our way across the corn stubble fields, imagine my excitement when this car hauler passed me on Rte 2. It was the NASCAR promo-show car for Matt Kenseth.
I kept hoping they would pull over and stop somewhere as it was noontime, but when I got to my turnoff they kept going. Oh well I'm really not a Kenseth fan... now if it was the 24 car or maybe even 88 I'd have passed them and flagged 'em down.
Does the picture below look familiar????
Ok give up???? It was the inspiration for Grant Wood's "the American Gothic" painting.
As we were driving to Davis County, I kept seeing these signs for the American Gothic house... not having a clue what it was about, I decided to stop and look... Actually it was another of those little God things... the curator had a bunch of information for me... and ideas who I needed to talk to and she made some phone calls for me.So my next stop was the library at Bloomfield, Iowa the county seat for Davis County. They have an incredible genealogy room. But you have to have a guide person to use it, and no one was supposed to be there until one the next day... the librarian called the head person and put me on the phone with her. When I explained my circumstances and that I was researching the Vorhis family, she told me of a woman who lived next to the library who was researching the same family. So we called her, and she came over and helped me for a couple of hours.
Well I'm out of steam for tonight... more tomorrow
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