What are your favorite things you've learned from genealogy?

[Tek_Freek]

A couple of things from ancestors. This one was a doctor on the ships that took the slaves to Liberia. This is a death certificate.



This is from April 6th, 1908

Mr Peters shot at Mrs Penn. Hit constable Allen.

And a mention of something that happened in San Francisco. April 18th, 1906

[ClaraC]

This isn't really a "favorite" as much as it is intriguing and sad.

When I did my ancestry a relative family had a 4 year old boy die in the 1930's. He was counted in the census that year, the day before he died. So his name and birthdate and age were recorded in the census, and his death date in ancestry.com and his gravestone was the very next day. This child died the very next day after the census was taken.

I wonder. Did the census worker run over him with their car? Did the census worker take the mother's eyes off the children long enough to cause this death?

I don't know. There isn't further record. I am SO INTRIGUED about this dear child's death.

[Alandros]

I've found a lot of interesting things, probably my favorite is learning about my 2nd great grandfather Byron Ray Baker (1859-1940) m. Lenora Rudloff.

He was born in a now ghost town (completely out of existence now) called Sumner in Atchison Co., Kansas. His father was a delegate to the "Leavenworth Constitution" in Kansas, one of the four Constitution delegations during the "Bleeding Kansas" era and though never went further than that it was the most progressive (equal rights no matter race and some level of women's rights). Both his grandfather were pioneer merchants and traders and active in local politics.

In the same spirit he was there on the first day of the Oklahoma land rush at Guthrie and set up a food stop as quick as possible as people rushed in. Guthrie became a 10,000 population railroad town overnight. Some excellent photos were taken in Guthrie only about a month after the initial rush, some of them






Through the excellent and free digitized newspaper records for Guthrie Oklahoma I was able to find he ran a second hand store, was elected as a delegate to his local ward. He then won the election and became the City Marsha/Chief of Police.

A couple years later he resigned and with his family moved away suddenly, ending up in Wichita Kansas.

I later found in a news article in Wichita Kansas that said he was forced out for taking bribes from grafters at a carnival. Apparently this was all done silently for the most part, at least in the Guthrie newspapers I saw no mention of why he resigned.

So yeah he went to and was elected City Marshal of an old west railroad town and was run out of town for accepting bribes from grafters at a carnival. Like a plot from Deadwood or Hell on Wheels lol.