Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

I found a fantastic website yesterday, California Digital Newspaper Collection that allows a search of many Californian newspapers, some going back at least to the 1850s.

I found the article about Jared Sheldon's murder: Horrible Riot upon the Cosumnes. It's on page 2

And this is Cotton Sr's suicide: Sacramento Items. It says his middle name is "H." and up to this point I've always seen it as "S" and Sheldon. It's bothered me that he had the same name has his father-in-law. I think attributing "S" to the senior Cotton was a mix up between the two. EDIT: even more confusing is in the Pioneer book I have, he is Joel S. Cotton. Maybe I'll just leave his middle name out of the genealogy chart?

I also found numerous articles discussing Joel Cotton (Jr.) guardianship as an orphan: Probate Court Feb 22 1877 and Probate Court April 11 1878

given to me today by Laura, who did awesome research at the Library...

I used to think that history was a thing you saw in books;

It always seemed to be there,
You never had to look.

One day I heard there used to be some History of this town
But when I went to look for it
No one had wrote it down

How do you find your History when you don't know where to look?
How do you know what happened
When there's nothing in the Book?

You start to do some asking and you really look around,
and bit by bit you dig it out
until you've got some found.

You listen to the old folks and you study the artifacts,
and you put the bits together
'til you see just how the stack.

And, finally you get a story even though it's not that much;
as long as you can reach it, then
It's History you can touch.

You find the gentle Miwoks with their acorn grinding stones,
and the people who dug their graves up
Just to rearrange their bones.

Michigan Bar and Sloughhouse, where the stagecoach made its stops
where they carried all the gold out
through the valley of the hops

You find out who lived in Wilton and in Franklin and Elk Grove.
And you get to know a lot about the Sheldons, Kerrs, and Rhoades.

It is written on the tombstones and it's buried in the ground;
It's in the memories of the old ones
that's how your History is found.

-Elizabeth Pinkerton, (from the book: Historic Cosumnes and the Sloughhouse Pioneer Cemetery by Norma Baldwin Ricketts)

I'm not sure who Elizabeth Pinkerton is, but I seem to remember that surname in my research somewhere. Anyways, I thought it was cool, especially since it mentions our collectors grandparents (Sheldon and Rhoades).

Here's my first draft of the Cotton kinship diagram. Sorry it's so small, it's as big as blogger will let me make it. Hopefully you can still get the idea, you can see a somewhat larger image if you click on it.

I'm thinking on the wall, we can put the kinship chart up and have important documents around it (like the Diseno, newspaper clippings, census info, etc.). I color-coded the people that are important to our story, and I'm thinking we can post each of the side panels in corresponding colors so visitors can follow which info belongs to which person.

Another, different, idea I had was putting the documents directly under each name, though I think it would make the kinship chart really big and maybe harder to follow...I guess we can work those kinks out later!

Lab: 2.5 hours

EDIT: I put the wrong date of death for Jared Sheldon. it's 1851 not 1857. It's fixed in my original.