|
Pages of this Journal transcribed from copies of the original by: Frances Cooley
Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the original Journal please contact:
Thomas W. Lannom 7219 SE Yamhill Street Portland, OR 97215 503-810-3856
About The Lewis-Winter Family Reunion Journal 1935 – 1967, Western, Nebraska About the Journal
Between 1934 and 1967, during the first week of July, the Lewis and Winter families faithfully held an annual reunion in Western, Nebraska at the Baptist Church parlors on Main Street. During or shortly after each reunion, a hard-bound journal was used to record attendees, entertainment, marriages, births, deaths and in some years, even the food served (fried chicken was a tradition). The journal was purchased in about 1935 for 25 cents, assuming somebody paid full price for it during The Great Depression.
The journal was meticulously
maintained by members of our family for over 30 years, starting with the reunion
in 1935. According to the entry from the
first recorded reunion titled “2nd Reunion – 1935”, “Records were not kept of the first two meetings” [emphasis
added]. I leave it to the reader to
decipher whether the first reunion was actually held in 1933 or 1934, since the
header and this sentence are clearly in conflict. All the following years would seem to
indicate the first reunion was in 1934. **
The journal is now in a frail state, being about 73 years old. The binding is tattered but still intact. The pages are faintly yellowed but holding together reasonably well. The journal is slightly stained and well worn with some strings coming loose from the binding material and cover. Maybe the stains came from somebody’s gravy recipe? The ink on many pages is noticeably faded and in some cases, smudged, but still quite readable. All things considered, the journal is in amazing shape given the many years and miles it has endured. It has served our family all these years, and all for about 25 cents in 1935. What a bargain.
As you are reading this, the journal is (or soon will be) back in the possession of my cousin Mrs. Debi Stone Garrison, NE 68961. Mrs. Garrison graciously allowed me to borrow and scan this family treasure. The journal was given to Mrs. Garrison by her mother, Mrs. Mary Ellen Armour Stone (a daughter of Anne Katherine Winter Armour). Mrs. Garrison entrusted me with the journal for copying in September 2008 following a small family reunion at the home of my Uncle Ward Armour Lannom in Bonita, California in August 2008.
About the Scanning
I scanned the journal in November and December 2008 in my home at 7219 SE Yamhill Street, Portland, OR 97215. I am a descendant of Frederick C. Winter (1839 – 1922) and Nancy Ann Lewis Winter (1850 – 1917) through their daughter Anne Katherine Winter Armour (1889 – 1986), through Anne’s daughter Frances Jean Armour Lannom (1921 – 1987), and through Frances Jean’s son James W. Lannom. They are all listed in the journal many times (Frederick and Nancy in spirit). I was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1968, less than a year after the last recorded reunion. My older brother James S. Lannom is listed on page 96 (1967).
I had two primary goals guiding my decision about how to scan this journal. First and foremost, I wanted high quality, cover-to-cover color scans to preserve the beauty and subtly faded colors of the ink on each page, and to ensure ease of readability.
Second, I wanted to ensure the journal could be freely distributed across the internet to our far-flung cousins wherever they may be, without having to create compact disks (CDs) and use the mail. I have found that even simple barriers like these tend to make people procrastinate, and that procrastination can inhibit the distribution of our precious family history. I want this journal to survive the ages, and spreading it far and wide is the best and only way to ensure that happens. The original journal can only be in one place, at one time, and it is safe in our cousin Debi’s hands. But in truth, the journal really belongs to all of us, each and every one. So please, send these images to your cousins. These goals guided my decisions about scanner settings and file format.
Quirks about the Journal and Limitations to Scanning
The journal is slightly longer than the surface of my scanner. This caused a number of pages to be cut off at the bottom, resulting in the loss of a sentence or two from many reunions. To get around this problem, any page that ran greater than the length of my scanner was scanned twice, once from the top, and a second time to ensure the bottom of the page was captured. Each time you see a page without the page number appearing at the top, you are looking at the bottom of the same page from the immediately preceding image. There is one exception, page 80. See below for details.
The journal itself has a few quirks you should know about. First, there is a pagination problem inherent in the journal itself. Pages 23-26 and 75-78 were not printed. I carefully inspected these pages and they were not torn out; they simply never existed in the first place. The reunions through the years over which these page gaps occur flow smoothly one year to the next.
Second, pages 37 and 38 (one piece of paper) were carefully removed from the journal, perhaps with a razor blade. I don’t know for sure why this happened, but I can guess. Pages 37 and 38 would have covered the 1948 reunion. The 1948 journal entry jumps from page 36 to page 39, mid-sentence, but picks up exactly where it left off in the same handwriting, albeit not of the same ink density (Mr. Lewis Winter recorded the reunion in 1948).
I am guessing a serious handwriting or other error occurred on page 37 or 38 and Mr. Lewis decided to simply remove those pages and start afresh on page 39. (It’s also possible there was a derogatory comment about aunt so-and-so’s awful potato salad, but I find that less likely than my first explanation. More to the point, nobody in our family makes awful potato salad.) If anybody knows where these missing pages might be, please contact me and I’ll be glad to get them scanned and included, no questions asked!
Third, pages 42 and 43 (1949) are simply blank. I elected to scan them anyway to keep the journal complete in every respect. The journal starts again seamlessly on page 44, continuing where the minutes of the 1949 reunion left off on page 41. It appears Lewis S. Winter, the secretary that year, simply turned one too many pages. Or maybe he had some greater idea in mind, or used invisible ink? We will probably never know.
Lastly, I inadvertently cut off the page number for page 80, but the script is all intact and the reader will note this page falls in the correct sequence between pages 79 and 81.
I apologize for allowing some reunion years to break across two files, and for scans that are not straight up and down.
Newspaper Clippings
In the later sections of the journal, newspaper clippings and other items were paper clipped to some of the pages. In these cases, I elected to scan the page exactly as it was, and then remove the clipping and re-scan the page to reveal the wording hidden behind the clipping. There were also a number of items clipped to the last page that I scanned as a group.
Index to Names and Reunion Years
The attached index ties names to reunion years, not page numbers. Fortunately, the journal is very well organized and labeled chronologically, so this indexing scheme should work well for most people, enabling you to quickly find the person you are interested in. Indexing the journal this way also achieved two other goals.
First, it quickly gives the reader a sense of which years the person they are interested in are listed in the journal. Indexing by page numbers would not achieve that since page numbers and reunion years have no direct relationship. Moreover, there are inconsistencies in page numbering as noted above. Second, and not necessarily less important, it was easier for me (sorry, but there is the bald truth of it).
I should also point out that a person’s listing in the index for a given year does not necessarily mean they were at the reunion that year. Many people sent letters or tape recorded greetings that were read or played back at the reunions, and because our relatives were quite good at noting fine detail, they were listed in the journal for that year as sending greetings, not attending. That being the case, the reader is advised to look at the journal for the year in question to ascertain the particulars of any given person in the index.
Newspaper clippings are not indexed by name. They are only referenced in the index by the reunion year they were clipped to.
The astute reader will also quickly note there are multiple variations on many names. For example, my own grandfather, Francis W. Lannom, is listed in the index as Lannom, Francis; Lannom, F. W., and; Lannom, Francis (CFC). I could have easily combined these names into a single listing for my grandfather, because I know they all refer to the same person. I chose not to do that because I do not know that to be the case for all the people listed in the journal. There are simply too many Lewis and Winter family members with similar (or even identical) names for me to make any assumptions about how to list them in the index.
Instead, I opted to be as consistent as possible, within reason, in the listing of the names. I listed the names as I saw them in the journal and made spelling corrections only when I was certain there was an error. I therefore advise the reader to carefully peruse the name index to find variations on the name of the person you are interested in.
This is especially true if the subject of your search is a woman who later married. For example, my grandmother Frances Jean Armour is listed under her maiden name for a number of years. In December 1941 she married my grandfather, Francis W. Lannom. So in some of the years after 1941, you will find her listed as Lannom, Francis (Mrs.), since that is the way she is listed in the journal. Again, I chose to stay as faithful to the journal as possible.
One final thought regarding the index. There is only one certainty about it; there are bound to be numerous errors and omissions and I apologize here and now for them. I gave my best effort at transcribing what I saw in the journal, but because I am not familiar with each and every name, nickname, etc., there is simply no way to be one hundred percent accurate in this regard.
If your purpose is to find each and every listing of your relative in the journal, I advise that you search, at a minimum, the years adjacent to those I have listed for them in the index. Better advice yet would be to read the journal all the way through. I hope many of you choose to do that. It’s a wonderful way to get to know your roots.
Noteworthy Entries in the Journal
I am noting a few items here that are worthy of follow-up from a family history perspective. The journal indicates that “motion pictures” and “family history” were part of some family reunions. I would love to get copies if anyone has them. Here are the references I’m referring to:
1938: “Mr. Fred Winter took motion pictures of the group.”
1939: “Mrs. Nellie Andreas, family historian, read the history of the family. The family tree has been traced back to the Revolutionary War. A family tree showing all the names and marriages was drawn by Miss Margaret Winter.”
1939: “Fred Winter again took motion pictures of the group.”
1940: “Motion pictures of the group were taken by Fred Winter.”
1941: “Motion pictures of the group were taken by Fred Winter.”
1943: “Motion pictures were taken by Mrs. Tom Plummer.”
1953: “After [the] program pictures of the group were taken by Fred Winter.”
1958: “After the 6 o’clock supper some of the group went to the Fred Winter home to look at past reunion pictures.”
1959: “The historian, Mrs. Fred Winter presented a family tree dating back to the Revolutionary War. The family was traced to James Christie, a Virginian, born in 1758.”
Last Thoughts
My cousin Debi Stone Garrison has told me that these reunions have continued more or less to the present day, and that a second family reunion journal follows this one. Scanning the second reunion book is beyond the scope of my intentions today, but maybe I will undertake it in the future, with Debi’s blessing of course.
Debi Stone Garrison is descended from Frederick C. Winter and Nancy Ann Lewis Winter through their daughter Anne Katherine Winter Armour, and Anne Katherine’s daughter, Mary Ellen Armour Stone born in 1926. Aunt Mary Ellen provided entertainment for many of the early reunions, along with her sister, my grandmother, Frances Jean.
No harm came to this journal during the scanning process. It was treated very gently and every effort was made to protect it from damage. Newspaper clippings and material removed from pages to ensure clear scans were put back exactly as they were found by me.
Please contact me at 503-810-3856 or by e-mail at thomaslannom@comcast.net if you have questions or comments.
I am deeply indebted to my cousin Debi for sending me this journal. I hope it survives for many generations to come.
Thomas W. Lannom December 13, 2008 Portland, Oregon
|
