ER Challenge: Week 9: Ancestry, et. al.

1. Searched my name, found me and my address in the US Public Records index, v.1. Didn't find any more info about me; perhaps I wasn't looking deeply enough. However, when I clicked on the Stories & Publications tab, I discovered I'm not the only Lee Crary, even Lee Ann Crary, out there. Nor, apparently, was I ever, as some names have dates going back to the 1800's. There's a Lee Crary in Everett, WA; one of the publications noted was located in Australia, one in Colorado, several titles of publications were in French, with one noting Montreal in the title--Candian, perhaps?
2.I searched for my paternal grandfather (whom I never knew and don't know much about), Lawrence Landwehr, found him in the 1900 and 1920 census, born and living where I had thought. Found his birthdate, names of his parents, and that they were both born in Germany--none of which I knew. Also found in Social Security (I think) records that he died in 1940. A search for his name spelled as noted did not bring up any records from the 1930 census, by which time he'd have been married and had a child, my dad, and I thought that was odd. So I did a search for Dad, found him in the 1930 census and discovered his dad's name was spelled in the 1930 records as Laurence, no W in there. And there was his wife's name, that he was head of the household and had a child, Wilfred. Would you guess the census records from 1930 were incorrect in the spelling of his name, or, perhaps, the 1900 and 1920 records were wrong. Interesting. Also interesting: Lawrence's occupation in the 1920 census was "hired hand," and others in the household (several people) all had the same last name, but not Landwehr. I'm thinking he was living with that family, working as their hired man, and was counted so. That kindof adds up because one of the few things I know about my dad's parents is that they were not well off. This stuff is addictive, far too interesting.
3. Yearbooks, yearbooks, old yearbooks from SD schools--USD, SD State College (Brookings), Sioux Falls College, Washington Senior HS in SF, Yankton, even some little places like Freeman and Emery.
Historical-type photos of SD in the Library of Congress collection. I like to see the dates with the photos, always interesting to compare, like a picture of Deadwood from 1876 and one from 1900 (I think)--some changes there.
County land ownership maps from 1860 to 1918; the counties I saw listed were all East River--Turner, Minnehaha, but I didn't go through all 139,000+ files. Seeing people's names in the township maps is cool, would be especially fun to look at a county where one grew up and knew some of the old (and current!) landowners' names.
4. I searched the publications in Heritage Quest and found H.P. Hall's observations : being more or less a history of political contests in Minnesota from 1849 to 1904, published in 1904. Chapters (the author's "observations") looked intriguing--apparently political turmoil with a little ugliness thrown in was not unheard of in Minnesota's early years, including 3 governors at one time at one point. Having resources like this so accessible--someone interested in local history with time on their hands could be deeply occupied as long as he wanted. Great way to bring history home to students who tend to think of it as removed from their lives, to show that history is populated by ordinary people not unlike themselves who just happened to write it all down.
5. Bison wasn't in there, nor was Claremont, so the next most likely place for me to find familiar locations is Deadwood; I chose the maps from April, 1923-August, 1948. Read somewhere that when multiple years are given that means that as sheets were updated they were meant to literally be pasted over the old sheets. Located on the map St. Joseph's Hospital, which is still there, but now is the Northern Hills branch of Rapid City Regional. Also located the place where Dem's family's house is now, but not on these maps as it wasn't built 'til '59 or '60. St. Joseph's also appears in the same location in the 1903 maps. Looking at a couple maps of Main Street, most of the buildings shown then are still there. The oldest set of maps for Deadwood is dated 1885; wouldn't it be interesting to see a map of Main Street from prior to 1879 and one soon after that, since a fire took out basically all of Main Street in 1879.