Ancestry Research Day
Surely, if my dad didn't live in Letcher, SD, after 1930, then he must have gone to Mitchell. I remember him talking about Mitchell. Since we were already in Mitchell, which is also the county seat, today would be an easier day--no long drive.
So, after our breakfast at the Country Kitchen restaurant, we headed for the courthouse. We hoped to find some record of the three youngest Jacobus siblings in the pre-high school class listings. But, the school records are not at the courthouse. So, we drove to the middle school to find records. Unfortunately, a teacher roaming the halls told me that the office workers and those who could help me were out for a week of training.
The clerk at the courthouse had suggested we go to the library or museum to look for records and yearbooks. At the library, they didn't have yearbooks, but they did have city listings. City listings are kind of like census in that everyone in the household is listed. We didn't find anything about my grandparents, but we did find a listing for his brother, Everett, who was living with some of my grandmother's relatives, the Van Metre's.
Our next stop was the Dakota Museum. They had nothing and sent us on our way to the Carnegie Building, which houses old documents of the city. They had yearbooks back to 1917. So, we began thumbing through those yearbooks. We found Dad's next older sister, Wilmuth, had attended Mitchell High School in 1932; it was her Junior year. But, she was not listed as a student in her Senior year, 1933. So, where did she go next?
We still had no record of my dad or his youngest sister, Eloise, attending Mitchell schools. We were not able to access any records younger than high school, and my dad Eloise would have both been in the age group of today's middle-school years. So, we kind of gave up on that search until I am able to contact the school later this summer.
This search had taken most of the day and it was now 3:30 PM. So we stopped at a pub next to the Corn Palace and had a great hamburger.
The only picture I have to share today is this shot from inside the pub, looking at our car parked next to the Corn Palace.
On our way back to the campground, we stopped at the address where Everett had lived. The address is now a parking lot.
Later that evening I was able to contact Eloise's husband, Uncle Jimmy. He said that Eloise had graduated from high school in Spencer, SD. Spencer is about 20 miles to the east. Now, Dave and I had a new area to search for records. Uncle Jimmy provided some more details on the 6 brothers and 1 sister of Roy, my grandfather. A lot of pieces are now coming together.
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