On The Bookshelf: Dear Mother, Love Daddy

In the good old days, family history books  were typically large hardcover tomes that were filled with a bunch of facts and  little to no story. I love that we are starting to get away from this dry type of genealogy writing that few people want to read to telling the stories of our ancestor's lives.

(Yes, I said it. I'm sorry. I know you and I love names, dates, and places but pretty much no one else does. If we truly want to hand down our family history we have to think outside of the box.)

Some people are lucky to inherit the "stuff" (h/t to my friend Denise Levenick). And those people often find great ways to share their stuff with everyone.

Dear Mother, Love Daddy. The World War II Letters of Roscoe and Gladys Yegerlehner May 1942-September 1942 is one of these works. Genealogist Deborah Sweeney shares with the reader the letters written by Roscoe and Gladys that provides us with another look at the World War II years.

According to the press release :

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and so the United States entered the Second World War. American men from all walks of life rushed to enlist, and not all
of them were young, single men.

In 1941, Dr. Roscoe S. Yegerlehner had been out of medical school for three years with a growing medical practice in the small northern Indiana town of Kentland. Married for almost thirteen
years, he had a loving wife and two young boys. He volunteered to serve in the United States Naval Reserve and accepted a commission as an assistant Surgeon with the rank of Lieutenant (jg) in May 1942.

Six months after Pearl Harbor, Dr. Yegerlehner found himself on a crowded train headed towards
the Norfolk Naval Training Station in Virginia. He would eventually serve in several posts
throughout the South Pacific. During his 18 months of overseas deployment, he and his wife
corresponded every day. They lovingly addressed their letters to “Mother” and “Daddy.” This is
the first volume of their letters.

Deborah Sweeney. (c) 2014 Andrea Reese

My post tomorrow will be an interview with the author about this wonderful family history.

About the author: Deborah Sweeney is a genealogist, writer and blogger. Since 2012, she has published over eight hundred of her grandparents’ letters on her website, Genealogy Lady. In addition to the letters, she has written several articles about genealogy and DNA research. She is a graduate of Boston University’s Genealogical Research Certificate Program and the ProGen Genealogy Study Group. Ms. Sweeney lives in Northern California with her family.

On the Bookshelf: The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

Gordon, Linda. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Since some of my ancestors lived in Arizona and were early settlers there, I am interested in books about the state.  Prof. Linda Gordon is also one of my favorite authors so I was exited to read The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction.  This story is one that might be of interest to those with Arizona mining and Orphan Train ancestors.

This is the story of a group of orphans from the New York Foundling Hospital who were sent out on an Orphan Train to an Arizona mining camp.  The Caucasian, mostly Irish, orphans were given to Mexican Catholic families residing and working in the mining town. The resulting story is one of racism, vigilantism, and  family.

Prof. Gordon conducted her research both in Arizona and with the New York Foundling Hospital Archives.  I believe that some of the detail of the orphan train movement and this history of orphans in New York during the early 1900's will be of interest to researchers who do not have Arizona ancestors. I also found her description of what it was like to work in a mine to be very informative and include detail that really brought that type of work to life for me. I had an appreciation of this back-breaking labor but her discussion brought the day to day facts about what it was like for miners to life.

I would recommed reading Gordon's  Notes section in the back of the book to learn more about the sources and research she conducted.

When I was considering purchasing this book, I read a bunch of reviews and noticed that quite a few college history students gave the book low ratings for its length and in-depth analysis.  This book is lengthy at over 300 pages and does go into detail about not only the event the title describes but also mining, relationships between races and gender, orphans and history.  Because of this, I think it's an important read for genealogists to not only understand some social history but also better understand the events of the day.