Well, visiting Guthrie didn’t work out too well. Found out
that the Guthrie County Historical Society has stored all their documents at
the public library in Jamaica. This library is open only in the afternoon. And
apparently that is at the whim of the librarian. Went over to the City Hall to
see if we had the hours right and the City Hall was closed. Went to the Post Office (at least it was
open), but the person didn’t know why the library wasn’t open. Jamaica is not a
big town so there wasn’t much else to explore. We had a nice drive through the
countryside, but no progress on family history research.
Decided to redeem a bit of the day and went over to Ames to
tour Iowa State. This is a land grant
university with a very nice campus. We wandered around the union and bookstore
before heading back to our campground.
We spent the next three days in downtown Des Moines; two
days at the Iowa State Genealogical Society and one day at the State
Library. Found several useful records of
births, marriages and deaths. We are becoming real experts at using the
microfilm machines. While I was trying to decipher the murky pages, I thought
of a story I had read about today’s children not being taught to write in
cursive and how they were losing the ability to read cursive writing as a
result. Sure hope these records get
digitized before that happens.
I will say that Iowans know how to build beautiful
courthouses and capitol buildings. We saw a gorgeous one in Adel, not far from
our campground, which was patterned after a French chateau. And the state
capitol building is absolutely stunning, complete with a gilded dome. The whole
area around the capitol building looks like a mini-Washington D.C. mall with
some impressive government buildings and lots of sculptures and monuments.
Today we took care of some household chores and then went to
the movies. Enjoyed Despicable Me 2 and
the minions. Tomorrow we head into the deeps of Iowa cornfield country to
continue our search for family history. |
| Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University. Named after Iowa State's first African-American football player, Jack Trice, who died in 1923 of a football injury. It seats 55,000. |
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| Iowa State Capitol building. Built in the late 1800s. |
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| One of the monuments spread around the Capitol grounds. |
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| Adel county courthouse, built in the early 1900s. |
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