My Trails into the Past

On March 4, 1918, a newspaper article was published in the Los Angeles Times about the formation of baseball teams consisting of enlisted men at the Naval Training Station in San Diego. It was Ensign J.S. Conover’s plan. He was the adjutant and athletic officer of the camp. He hoped to form six teams and they would play twice a week. Prominent baseball men were to be coaches. Art Shafer, who was a former New York Giants infielder, would instruct the infielders. The pitches would be coached by Louis Sepulveda and Bill Billings. The former captain of the University of California team would coach the outfielders. These experienced men would be great assets to the team and sure to find the best players. Many enlisted men signed up including C.W. Hork, who I believe is Cyril William Hork. [1] Checking the Statement of Service card for Cyril W. Hork, he enlisted at the recruiting station in Salt Lake City, Utah and the first training camp he was stationed at was Naval Training Camp at San ...

My grandfather, William Cyril Hork, played baseball in Hamilton, Montana, as a young man, probably following the footsteps of his older brothers, Albert, Frank, and Tony, who also played. I found several accounts of his games in the Missoulian, Anaconda Standard , and Ravalli Republic newspapers. The first article covered a Boy Scout team and Cyril was one of the pitchers. [1] In the next article, Cyril is pitching for the high school team, beating the high school in Victor 8 to 3. “Besides twirling a splendid game, Hork rapped out two clean hits. In the ninth frame, with three on and none out, the youngster tightened up and retired the side.” [2] For the Memorial Day celebration, Cyril was the pitcher for the Knights of Birmingham (Masons) against the Valley Mercantile Company. [3] A follow-up article showed they won 3 to 1. Cyril got a double, stole a base, and struck out nine players. The whole article gave play-by-play results, but shown here is the box score. [4] He continued...

It's  Saturday Night  - time for more  Genealogy Fun! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to: 1)  What is the best or most important image or document that you have recently found online? [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!] 2)  Write your own blog post, or add your response as a comment to this blog post, in a Facebook Status post or note. Here's mine: I was working today cleaning up files in my download folder that I had collected over the past months. I have a folder called genealogy and it’s where I put images I have downloaded but am not ready to process. This morning I decided to process some of them. I had found several articles about my grandfather playing baseball in Hamilton, Montana. I carefully transcribed the articles into my RootsMagic database. In all of the articles, he is a pitcher. The earliest one was a baseball game played by the boy scouts. [1] In another game on the high school team...

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's  Saturday Night  again - time for some more  Genealogy Fun!! Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings , is to: 1)    What is your favorite National Football League team?  [For those that are not American football fans, but a fan of another sports team, substitute your favorite team].  Why are you a fan of this team?  How long have you been a fan of your favorite team? 2)    What is the genealogy of your favorite team?  When did it start playing, what leagues has it played in? 3)    Have you worked for the team in any capacity, or attended games?  What is your best memory of your favorite team's history? 4)    Predict the score of the Rams-Bengals game on Sunday. Here's mine: I am not a fan of football, though in the early 70s I attended Oakland Raider football games with my father. I later got my mother a women’s guide to football an...

This is my third year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Many of my ancestors’ siblings were either unmarried or had no children. I don’t want their lives to be forgotten when they had no descendants. Raymond Joseph Hork, my grandfather, William Cyril Hork’s brother, is one such person. Raymond Joseph Hork, the eighth child of Johan Anton Hork and Julia Ann Sievert, was born 11 November 1889 in Stuart, Guthrie County, Iowa. [1] His father was a tailor and moved every two years or so until they finally settled in Hamilton, Montana. [2] Raymond at a young age of twenty-eight years old, died on 1 December 1917 at the Montana State Hospital. Cause of death was exhaustion of dementia and precox. [3] According to Wikipedia , “this is a chronic, deteriorating psyc...

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Blog Writing : I wrote the following blog post this week: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  For week 15, our theme was DNA. I described what I’m doing to learn more about using DNA in genealogy research. For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , I wrote about my paternal grandmother, Anne M. Hork, whom we called “Nana.”   Webinars/Study Groups Attended:   I attended the Monday Morning Genealogy Group of the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society and we had nice discussion about lots of topics. We viewed a video of a new Italian LDS temple, spoke about searching in Ancestry and FamilySearch, as well as lots of other topics. Most everyone went to lunch together afterwards. I participated ...

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Albert Joseph Hork, the fourth child of Johan Anton Hork and Julia Ann Sievert, was born 2 August 1879 in Aurora, Kane County, Illinois. [1] He was an older brother of my grandfather, William Cyril Hork. As a young man, he was of medium height and build, and had gray eyes and light colored hair. [2] His parents were of Germanic heritage, so most of their children had light or blond hair. Albert worked many different jobs in his lifetime. In the early 1900s he worked as a bartender at the Hotel Hamilton and Saloon, run by Henry S. Page. [3] Later he worked at the Western News newspaper as foreman. [4] In 1907, he was the Deputy County Clerk and Recorder, working at the Court House. [5] He ...