SWNGS preserving area records

If you enjoy this column or the columns by Walt Sehnert and past ones by Linda Hein, then you have benefited from the efforts of one man, Harry D. Strunk, who made the saving of McCook newspapers from the past a priority. It doesn’t matter what the reasons were for his gift to us, what matters is that he made sure they were saved.

Currently, the SWNGS library is full of dedicated people doing the same thing: Saving our history. If you stopped in right now, you would find the conference room transformed into a digitalizing factory as two dedicated individuals from the Family Search (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) organization scan our old district court books, marriage licenses, naturalization applications and school census records, just to name a few. We had already been blessed with the gift of a small photo machine from Chris Christensen and he had been doing maps, photos and records but several of them required his taking the images and stitching them together, a monumentally time-consuming project. This current operation allows for the saving of literally thousands of records in just a few days. Those SWNGS members who are available to help have hauled box after box of records to the library and then painstakingly readied the individual pieces of paper for photocopying, returning the record back into the box when finished.

When this project is done, there will be a digital copy available for research of thousands of records from Red Willow County. Why is this important? Many of those records are deteriorating, most are vulnerable to destruction by fire or water and all contain important genealogical research information not to mention historical provenance for the stories of our beginnings in this county.

Here is an example. Yesterday when I stopped by the library for some quick research, Mike Fidler caught me there. He was trying to either prove or debunk a family legend that was tied to the great train wreck of 1911 between McCook and Indianola. The legend had it that a newly married couple, Hiram and Lena Feekin, had boarded that train in route to Lincoln and died in the accident. He had found the gravesite for them and it showed they had died one day apart but gave no information concerning their marriage date which he had been told was the same month and year as the accident. You know how family stories are, the tragedy according to lore was they got married in McCook, boarded the train and died in the aftermath.

I first went to the volumes of obituaries at the library and searched the records for 1911. No obituaries for either existed. Strange but not unusual since neither were born in McCook, his wife having been a Cappel from Culbertson/Perry area and he from Lincoln having come to McCook with the railroad. We then went to the marriage records for Red Willow County and again came away empty handed. These records are already digitalized and are name searchable on our website.

Next, we did a search on the SWNGS website for any record containing the name Feekin and got several hits, one of which was a wedding announcement from the McCook Tribune. We pulled and printed the write up and discovered the initial debunking of the story for they had gotten married in 1909!

With that in hand, we went to the website: www.chroniclingamerica.gov and did a search of the McCook Tribune papers available online. We immediately got several hits of the name Feekin; it seems he was quite a shot-put thrower and made the paper under the railroad news several times. But, it was the article on May 30, 1911, which proved true the second part of the story for it covered the dead and dying from the train wreck previously mentioned and both Feekins were listed as severely scalded and expected to die as were Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Culbertson. They had all been taken to the Cambridge hospital for treatment. The Feekins did pass one day apart in May of 1911.

One of the most important things being saved is the court case books for they are hand-written records of what transpired during the trials and therefore fascinating studies of human nature when it comes to lawsuits and divorces.

Join us at the library to uncover your ancestor’s past. We are open to the public on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-4 PM, 110 West C Street, Suite M-3.