I have always known that my gg-grandfather Lorenzo Dow Weinhart and his family were living in Nebraska in the year 1885. I also was aware of his brother, George and his family, and his in-laws, Lester and Lucinda Archer, also living in Nebraska at this time. What I wanted though was to find a record such as a census to verify this and to see how close they all were residing to each other. I finally located the 1885 Nebraska census which showed that Lorenzo and George were living next to each other and that Lester and Lucinda Archer were living in close proximity in Rockford in Gage County. What I didn't know was that Lorenzo's and George's half brother, Watson Knight, was also living in Rockford at this time with George and his family (see picture).  ¶ 10:16 AM 0 comments

 
I was told about this interesting Internet site. It converts the dollars from past years to their present value by taking in consideration the inflation factor. For example my ggg-grandfather John S. Young according to the 1860 census was worth $1500 ($1200 property and $300 personal) and in the 1915 Iowa census he was worth $1600 (see picture). According to the calculation from this site his value in 1860 in 2008 dollars would be approximately $35500 and his 1915 value would be approximately $33600.  ¶ 11:06 AM 0 comments

 
In the picture are two one cent coins that John S. Young, Samuel Meader, Abner Fish, Sjur Markuson, Erik Gunhus and all of my ancestors of this time period would have used. The big one is from the year 1853 and the small one is from the year 1860. A big complaint about the one cent coin prior to 1857 was its size. It was approximately the size of a silver dollar which became a nuisance when having to carry around a number of them. In 1857 the United States began minting the smaller one cent coin primarly because of the size problem.  ¶ 10:50 AM 0 comments