Book of the day: An Order of Worship for the Reformed Church;  Published Philadelphia by S R Fisher & Co in 1867.
Now the book isn't special for its contents which carry instructions for church services, but for an inclusion on page 17.

This book printed in 1867, belonged to Cordelia Knode, of Hagerstown, Maryland. She was a daughter of Israel and Sarah Kuhn Knode, and a great-aunt of Peggy Angel Wood of Chevy Chase and "Woodbyrue" Darnestown-Seneca, Maryland

And,
The Operator Johnstown

Message I
The torrent poured across the plain,
lapped torrents from the hills o'erhead;
"It looks as though true going to rain,"
The laughing operators said;
And then she wired-she loved her joke-
"That reservoir may soon be broke,
You'd better all get out your arks!"
They laughed, forsooth, to hear her larks!
Message II
"There is a flood, and here's your proof
We're telephoning from the roof!
Flee for your lives! The muddy foam
Engulfs already many a home;
The waters at our window-sills-
The dam has broken through the Hills!"
Message III
"This is my last message"-a hush
Along the wire; a sudden rush
Of waters-"Help!" Too late-they've swept
Where 2 brave women dying wept,
And weeping died, if they might save new line
The prey of Condemaugh's wild wave!
New York world.

Book of the day:
The Disposal of the Dead, edited by C J Polson, published 1953 by English Universities Press Limited, St Paul's House, Warwick Square, London. Authors, besides Polson, are listed as Brittain and Marshall.
Sections Historical Information, Mediate disposal, cremation, burial, exhumation, embalming, funeral direction.
VERY nice index for a subject you didn't want to know about. I think the sequence of chapters odd. Embalming information follows the section on exhumation.
No Photographs.

75% done organizing book collection along LOC [Library of Congress] coding.

Put a notice into Ancestorcloud saying I might be interested in doing lookups. If questions from readers involve any of the county Heritage books I have, I might be able to make suggestions about data.

Interesting books: 1948 25th anniversary graduation book for Harvard, which means the class itself graduated in 1923. The book includes class photographs.
Another goodie, the 1965 Civil War commemorate Register of graduates of the United States Military Academy. It lists all alumni of the school since 1802; and for those with relatives there is a 'genealogy' section, for fathers, grandfathers, etc.

Taking time out!

So much has changed; retired but the list of projects hasn't gotten any smaller.
Currently living in Durham, NC. First week of April and there are hummingbirds and salamanders.

Tiffin landmark's steps shattered

Crews start to demolish Seneca Co. Courthouse

Protesters bewail beginning of end, officials' failure to act

BY JENNIFER FEEHAN
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Elva Einsel protests outside of the Seneca County Courthouse. Ms. Einsel, who is 83, has lived in Tiffin for 21 years and was part of a group of supporters who voiced their anger at the county's decision to demolish the building. THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY Enlarge | Photo Reprints

TIFFIN -- The abrupt and unexpected destruction of the concrete steps on the Washington Street side of Seneca County's 1884 courthouse Wednesday jarred observers and those holding out hope that the building still might be saved.
It was the first blow to the downtown building's sandstone exterior since front-end loaders were brought on site last week.
"It's like mourning. You're waiting for that loved one to die," said Ruth Brown of Tiffin as she watched the work through the chain-link fence.
PHOTO GALLERY: Seneca County Courthouse demolition
Ms. Brown was one of 44 Seneca County taxpayers who filed a last-minute lawsuit against county commissioners with the Ohio Supreme Court and asked the high court to halt the demolition of the courthouse. The court denied the residents' appeal for intervention, and the reality of demolition is sinking in.
"We tried to save it," Ms. Brown said. "You can only do what you can do. I'm just disappointed."
Not everyone has given up.
"It only takes one judge to stop this," Lenora Livingston said, referring to the possibility that one of the county's common pleas court judges could order the commissioners to stop demolition and renovate the courthouse as usable space for the courts.

Pioneer Cemetery Restoration

Two Iowa residents preserving the state's earliest graveyards

By Gwendolyn Purdom | From Preservation | Spring 2012 

Dylan Brown-Kwaiser and Gail Brown at Skillman Cemetery.

Credit: Courtesy Gail Brown

Like most 17-year-old boys, Dylan Brown-Kwaiser is always happy to get some time behind the wheel. But unlike his joy-riding peers, the high school junior’s road trips include his grandmother in the passenger seat and a long list of historic pioneer cemeteries to explore.
“He does all the driving so I can stare out into the wilderness and see if we can find something,” says Gail Brown, Brown-Kwaiser’s grandmother and a professor in the geographic information system program at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Sometimes we just knock on doors.”
Brown and Brown-Kwaiser have documented and mapped about 1,300 gravestones in dozens of burial grounds since Brown received the Kirkwood Endowed Chair for 2011–2012 to pursue research on 19th- and early-20th-century Iowa cemeteries. The pair’s work—which involves GPS technology, photography, and detailed note taking—helps historians and preservationists piece together information about some of the state’s earliest settlers. Photos and coordinates of each headstone are turned over to the Iowa Gravestone Project, an online database operated by genealogy group IAGenWeb.

Library references for research

Need a place to start looking? I ran across this reference today which is outstanding and free.

http://www.newberry.org/research-guides

Research Guides

Welcome to the Newberry’s Research Guides. Librarians have compiled these bibliographies, checklists, collection descriptions, and links to articles about our holdings to assist you in your exploration of the Newberry’s rich collections.