First Field Trip Friday of the Year!

Downtown Burlingame.  Streets wide enough for oxen teams to make a u-turn

  This week we started our school year.  I know, I know you're thinking "What!?!".  Think of it this way, we start school when it's hotter than blazes here in Kansas and then let out in late March/early April when it's getting nice!  We've done it the last couple of years and it's worked out great, well, except for this year when it was still cold when we let out, but one out of 3 isn't bad:)
  One thing we started last fall was "Field Trip Fridays".  We've been aiming for local and low cost for most of them.  Today Bubby chose the Schuyler Museum in Burlingame.  The Schuyler Museum used to be Burlingame's school and it has been turned into the town museum and research center.

  It's a typical small town museum, but it seems like we notice something new each time we go.  Burlingame has been around since the 1850s.  An uncle of Hubby's, George Bratton, was one of the town founders. 
  Today we got to see inside the military room, it's usually locked for security reasons.  It was lined with reproductions and donations of uniforms and accessories from every war in the United States.

  One of the favorite parts of the museum for the kids is the coal mine exhibit...

  Ok, so I had my flash on, but this room is lit only by black lights and just thrills them to no end:)  They thought it was pretty cool when I told them that their gggg-grandpa J.J. Parrish was a coal miner there.  One of the best ways to get kiddos interested in history is to make it personal!
   Our trip would not be complete without me making the kids wait while I do a little research (I like to torture them a little, actually it becomes torture for me if I make them wait too long!).  This is what I found today:

it is a picture of the Burlingame G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) members.  Unmarked.  It was a new acquisition to the museum and they had it displayed in hopes that people would identify the gentlemen in it.  Oh, how I'd love to know who they all are!  After documenting all those soldiers in Burlingame Cemetery last year I've come to feel like these guys are my buddies:) 
  After a totally successful field trip, now we're wondering what's on tap for next week!

Starting Young

A young me at a cemetery in Texas

  Genealogy has always been a part of my life.  I can't remember a time when my Mom didn't research; I caught the bug when I was just 18 (read about that here), and my kiddos started going to courthouses & cemeteries when we still had to lug them around in their carriers. 
  Recently one of my buds encouraged me to teach a genealogy class to our homeschool group. Of course I was excited at the chance.  To me, genealogy can teach so much beyond just family relations, it's history, research techniques, problem solving, even math:)  While planning what to do for my fall class, my Mom brought to my attention a really cool program that our State Historical Society is doing called the Sleeping Heroes Project where students research Civil War Veterans buried in Kansas, and then upload the information into a database.  I picked out a handful of local cemeteries we can work on documenting, which was easy since our county has hardly been done yet.  In order to capture the kids' interest (and ok, I admit it, I couldn't wait!) I researched one vet from each of the cemeteries I chose.  I was really surprised at what I found: a spy, one who marched with Sherman through Georgia, a Confederate, one who fought at the first major battle west of the Mississippi, and even one of my own kiddo's ancestors who was captured at Chancellorsville. 
  My enthusiasm for the project rubbed off on Bubby who begged and begged for me to let him start transcribing the ones in our city cemetery.  I finally relented, making the justification that I could see how the whole transcription/research thing would go for a 3rd grader.  It actually went pretty well, he's been accurate with writing down exact spellings, etc... & actually helped me tweak my spreadsheet too.  My plan is to let the older kids do the research and transcription and the younger ones do the bulk of searching out where the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) stars are that mark the vets' graves.
  The plan is to meet once a month and work as a group and if the kiddos and their families have further interest they can work on a smaller cemetery on their own.   I'm excited to see what else we uncover with this project and maybe get some young ones interested in some history!