On to OHHHHHklaaahoma

Route 66 Stroud, Oklahoma

We had very nice sleep in a very nice hotel in Topeka, KS last night... then we got up after a nice continental breakfast and drove on down the turnpike through Kanas, and into Oklahoma. Our destination this time was Stillwater to meet up with Laurie Kemp and her cousin Dee. It was really weird to see the way the tree tops had been broken off. I supposed there had been a storm come through, and it broke off many of the tree tops. It didn't take down whole trees, just the tops. Almost like they'd been chain sawed off at 15' above ground.

A neat twist for dinner: Last winter I got hooked on a Food channel show called Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, and one of the places that they showcased a month or so ago was The Rock Cafe on Rte 66 in Stoud, OK. It was used as inspirational material for the disney Pixar movie, Cars. (my favorite animated movie) It turned out that it was only a 40 minute drive from Dee's house. So we loaded up and all went down there tonight for dinner... and it was wonderful. I had their Jagersnitzal & Spaeztle with fried green tomatoes just as they had showcased on the TV show with Guy. The Jager is like a spicy German chicken fried steak. It was to die for. the soda pop was served in retro-glass bottles and the quaint Rte 66 and 1950's ambiance to the place was really cool too. They even provided you with a Sharpie marker to leave your personalization on the bathroom wall.

Vorhis family Troy Iowa

Ansel's maternal grandfather was Sylvester Vorhis, and his mother was Mary Melissa (Criss) Vorhis, they homesteaded in Troy, Davis Co. Iowa. I had been able to do a lot of research the last month on Ancestry.com, and then I found some letters from a 2nd cousin of Ansel's to Martina that confirmed everything I had found on the internet. This gave me a starting point, to find all the deed transfers.

So here's some pictures of the property that was owned by Sylvester and Mary in 1914 when Ansel was born. There isn't any resemblance to the house in the picture. My guess is that the house you see in the pictures was built in the 1940's. and replaced the one in the first picture that I posted.

After finding the property, then we drove to Troy. Sad little spot in the road. once a thriving agriculture hub for the county... it's not much more than a stop sign. All that's left of the high school is the memorial wall that is in one of the pictures. After we took the drive out to the property... then we went on the treasure hunt to find the cemetary where many of Ansel's ancestors are buried. It's called the Rouch Cemetary, 20 acres up on top of a knoll in the middle of a 160 pasture.

While I was in the library looking up newpaper articles with Karen, the lady from Bloomfield, we were able to find lot's of tidbits about the family in the newspaper indexes/archives. Ansel's mother was a school teacher and received her teacher's certificate from Iowa. She first married H. W. Smith and they moved from Iowa to Jorday Valley, OR and Eva taught school there. Mr. Smith, was a tin smith and while in Jordan Valley developed a servere malady brought on from inhaling the fumes from his smithing. The young widow, Eva Mae Vorhis Smith, moved back to Iowa and shortly there after married Hiram Walter Marshall, Ansel's dad. There were three children born to that union. A girl, Vivian born in North Dakota in 1907, Russell Bailey born in Colorada in 1911, and Ansel Noble born in Troy, Iowa in 1914.

Bloomfield, Iowa

Sorry if it seems like I'm skipping back and forth... just can't write it all in one setting

So here we go back to Bloomfield IA. They have a large Amish population and there were lots of buggies on the roads. They seemed to be all on west side of town, and the sides of the roadways were specially groomed and wide enough for the buggies to pull off when traffic came up behind them. They must have really good mirrors cause the were very quick to pull off way before I got close behind. I also noticed that there are different classes of buggies like Cadillacs, Chevys and Yugos. It was pouring down raining and the Yugos only had an umbrella across in front of them (not over them, but in front) as they went along. Chevy's had an adequate cover, and the Caddy's were almost patent leather with gold of chrome lights etc. This pic below is an Amish parking lot. There is a hitching rail that goes from the tree/horse to right to the left out of the pic.

I was thoroughly intrigued by their courthouse. Met some really wonderful gals who were really helpful. To my friends in the Harney County Courthouse... check this post out:

Here is the town square, the first pic is the road in front of the courthouse. Look close, they park in the middle of the streets, and in that middle parking area they pull in from both directions. The tall fancy building is their courthouse.

The building is preserved without creaky wooden floors, and all, no modern amenities. With the exception of the door for the handicap entrance. The basement was their jail and they preserved it with all the iron work in place as it was and work in it. Here's a pic of the Assessor and their office. If it looks like fake lattice, it's not it's half inch steel that has been painted. And there are zero windows anywhere in their basement.

So to you Harney County Basement dwellers... at least you have a few windows and you aren't really in a dungeon. ;o)

Their tax lot stuff is digitized (yay! )and they have a pretty neat website. So after spending a couple of hours in the recorders office, looking through deed index books from 1845 to 1925 (which were on shelves 7 feet high) then, looking up the deeds and coping them, I was able to determine the legal descriptions for the properties, and then have the maps printed. Again thanks to my friends at the HC Courthouse over the years that have helped me to learn and speak the language well enough to know how to do all this deed and property ownership research in a another county.

More later my friends... gotta hit the road.

Ansel's first whuppin...

This morning when Ansel asked where we were, and I told him Topeka, KS... he said oh, that's where he got his first obviously memorable whuppin.

They were at the race track and he had a little dog, a small hound and a feller happened along and admired the dog and asked if Ansel would sell him to him? Ansel said sure for $5.00, that was a pile of money for a boy in 1921 or so. So they exchanged the money for the dog and off the man went with his dog. they went about their business, took care of horses etc, and went home. ( or rather to where they were sleeping) When they came back in the morning the dog was curled up in front of the tack room. Ansel was happy to have his dog back...

Then another man came by, and offered to buy the dog too. So Ansel sold the dog and got another $5.00 for him and off that man went with the dog. Happy and rich Ansel went of to play... and pretty quick here came the first man looking for the dog thinking it might have come back... Ansel's dad calls him, and then he has to explain to his Dad and the man that didn't have the dog anymore that he resold him...

Fortunately he still had the loot, or "boot" as he calls it and was able to give the man his money back... but then the whuppin from his dad came... and he never did anything like that again.

Waking up in Topeka

It's a beautiful sunshiney day here for the moment at least. Will be heading to Stillwater, OK where one of my best friends from formerly from Burns, now from LaGrande, OR is visiting her cousin Dee. Laurie and her family used to live on the ranch next to Ansel and Martina in Burns, OR. So she is a really good friend of Ansel's too. It was a fluke, or one of those little God things I mentioned that she just happened to be in OK the same time. I couldn't believe when I was talking to her daughter about our trip to OKee, and she told me about Laurie's planned trip too.