What’s in a Name? Part 2

I was taking another stab at finding descendants of the Benham family who build our great old house.  I discovered that the middle initial of their son, Harry T. stood for Towner, his mother’s maiden name.  Carrie Towner Benham was born in Kentucky, and via ancestry dot com I found another family tree that listed her.  I’ve contacted the owner of that tree.  Fingers crossed……

A person can spend Waaay too much time searching for and finding family info on Ancestry dot com.  But there are several collaborators in the family who take on branches of the family tree.  Their help is appreciated.

I’m still semi-stumped with the Benhams though.  I lose the trail in LA in the 1930s.

What’s in a Name? Part 1

I was browsing a web site (city-data dot com) that claims to gather important data about communities across the US. This info, deemed “reliable but not guaranteed” includes a section titled “Most common first names in Sheridan, WY among deceased individuals”.  I’m sure somebody thinks this important, but I cannot imagine who.

Still, the purpose of a blog is to write whether anyone reads it or not.  And so….

John, Mary, George and James were the top names, George (141) and James (140) were nearly tied for third place, Mary held 2^nd place among dead ladies with 170, and John comfortably held the coveted first place spot with a whopping 203.  

So I presume that if you went to our local cemetery and combed the headstones for names, or you brought the local radio station’s sound truck to the cemetery and cranked up the sound (enough to ‘raise the dead’) you’d have many more Johns, than Merles, Mikes or Mahmouds show up.  As a matter of statistical irrelevance, the average Georges tended to live longer than the Johns or the Jameses, but the Marys outlived them all.

Last names?  Glad you asked.  Smith, Johnson, Miller and Jones took the top four spots, but the fifth place Wilsons outlived them all (on average).

Let it snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow (in the Bighorns).

Our friend Penny Becker of Sheridan Travel and Tourism makes it her business to troll the media looking for good write-ups of  the area.  From her recent Sheridan Press article, we learned that SnoWest Magazine has ranked the Bighorn tail system as number 7 of the top 15 snowmobile trail systems nationally.  As of April 12, new snow was still coming down. 

That’s good news for snowmobilers, fisherman and ranchers.

Doors

Bev and I have been refinishing doors lately.

These doors, from the upstairs hallway, are over 100 years old, and the wood is quite dry and brittle. But underneath layers of paint and varnish is some wonderful old wood. Our goal is to average a door each weekend - because it is so time-consuming. All those detailed edges take a long time to clean up, even if we frequently replenish the chemical stripper.

In August we’ll have been working on this house for six years. It simply not the same house – and yet it is.

Two wallpapers from two eras.

While prying off one door frame I came across a wallpaper pattern that must have been popular in the late 60s or early 70s. The blue in the pattern explains the horrendous blue paint that was two layers down in the door trim. Bev found pink underneath the blue. Imagine! Elsewhere we’ve found other layers of home décor wonderfulness – from painted Masonite wall coverings in a bathroom to plaster imprinted with real tree leaves is what was a breakfast nook. Such diversity, such color, such….

Our goal is to take it back some parts back to the elegance of Carrie Benham’s time – while we may not have the colors right, we can unearth the wood, strip the metal, restore the wood and give it the grace it one had. Other parts of the house, like the kitchen, have all the benefits of our modern era, but done in a classy style that Carrie would probably appreciate.