My Trails into the Past

Fred James Davey, the great-uncle of my husband, and older brother of his grandmother, Matilda Pearl Davey Gorrell, was born 27 November 1878 in Louisville, Kentucky to Frederick Henry Davey and Matilda “Tillie” Wollenweber. [1] He was the oldest of four and was just eight years old when his mother died in 1885. Not much is known about Fred’s early life until his marriage. He married Laura Hollowell in Joplin, Missouri on 16 March 1898 with his father giving his assent to the marriage. [2] Machinist Two years later, he is found living at 904 Main Street, Joplin, living with his mother-in-law, Medley Hollowell. He worked as a machinist, Fred likely following in his father’s footsteps. [3] Laura had died on 29 Jan 1899. [4] A 1906 directory in Springfield, Missouri, showed he was a machinist with Frisco Systems shops. [5] The same year, he married Alice Christine Pfotenhauer on 19 June in Joplin at the First Christian Church. [6] He continued working as machinist in Springfie...

It's  Saturday Nigh t  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Sunday, 19 June, is Father's Day.  Let's celebrate by writing a blog post about our father, or another significant male ancestor (e.g., a grandfather). 2)  What was your father's occupation?  What jobs did he have throughout his life?  Do you know his work history? 3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status post. The majority of the time, my father worked in supermarkets as a produce clerk or produce manager. He worked for several different stores but the longest were for LoRay Market and Safeway. The LoRay store in Walnut Creek was only a few blocks away, but he always drove, primarily because he started work at 5ish. This gave him time to put out all of the produce that was removed from the shelves and put...

1) Since this was Back to the Future week, I have a related challenge: Do you recall what you were doing in 1985? Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc? 2) Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog, or in a Facebook or Google+ post. What was I doing in 1985? I'd been married for just 5 years and we were living in our current home in Martinez. No kids yet. I was working for Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) as a train operator, probably working on the Concord to Daly City line. Somewhere in storage I have my run notebooks and could probably figure out what shift I was working.  It was probably something like 1130-1930 with Tuesday and Wednesdays off because I had lousy seniority, since I had only been there 7 years. My hobbies at the time did not include genealogy. I was a member of the Walnut Creek Model Railroad Society. I might have been Secretary, but I can't remember when I was first elected. The club me...