Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

Here are some pictures from the cemetery. I think Laura has better ones, but I wanted to give everyone a a quick glimpse. All relationships are from the perspective of our collector, Joel S. Cotton. I have some more pictures of the surrounding area, but this is a big enough post, so I'll put those up later. Enjoy!

EDIT: I tried for an hour to make captions for this post, but Blogger has decided to be annoying so here is a key instead of captions:

Photo 1:Entrance to the cemetery
2: Plaque at the entrance
3: Grandfather, originally owner of sloughhouse
4:grandmother: Catherine Rhodes Sheldon Mahone Dalton (she was married 3 times, one (Mahone) ended in a divorce in 1870). Was a mid-wife and delivered our collector and his sister.
5: maternal uncle. I believe he inherited the land after Jared Sheldon died.
6: Wife of William C. Sheldon (aunt, by marriage)
7: Maternal aunt, died at age two of drowning
8: Father, committed suicide
9: Mother, died from an infection shortly after his birth
10: Sister. I don't know much about her, except she was raised by her grandmother.

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

Wow, busy week!

Last Wednesday I spent 2.5 hours searching ancestry.com for genealogy info. I think I need to go back and do some more, I got a lot of great info on Jared Sheldon, but not much on the Cotton's. I would like more primary sources to add to the kinship chart.

2.5 hours were spent on Saturday developing a kinship chart for the Cotton family.

I spent about an hour with group 2 today (Tuesday) going over our story board, sharing research, and discussing each of the areas we're focusing on. We're going to meet tomorrow before class to finish our story board.

Then I spent a whopping 5 hours this evening reading over the incredible copies from a Pioneer Cemetery book that Laura and Stacey got from the Library. It has an awesome amount of information and allowed me to fill in some gaps in the kinship chart. I also spent some of that 5 hours working on my part of the story board, redoing the kinship chart, and figuring out where I still have (gaping) holes in my research.


P.S. Had to share my cat's not so subtle hint that I need to stop studying for the night!

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.

finally, I have proof enough that Jared Sheldon and Joaquin Sheldon are one in the same (woo hoo!). check out these links:

Placer County archives and office of historic preservation I've also found this great bio of his, note: there is an error in the date of his death, it's suppose to be 1851 not 1857.

I spent about 1 hour researching and doing a blog post on potential baskets to use as our basket for the exhibit.

about 30 minutes: spent helping people set up an RSS feed and fixing some blogger issues.

30 minutes spent reading blogs.

30 minutes: studying some information given to me by Mary Re: John Hudson. I would like to get together with others from group 2 soon to determine how much information we want to include about him and Carl Purdy. (and of course talk about all the other stuff we need to do as well!)...On a side note, Mary gave me some info for the Grace Hudson Museum. She was John Hudson's wife and an artist. One of the books of hers, "Grace Hudson, Artist of the Pomo Indians" has cover art depicting a Pomo cradle basket just like my object (BAS 156), which I thought was pretty cool.

1 Hour was spent trying to decipher the Sloughhouse land grants. The copies aren't the greatest, and the script is really hard to read. I was able to get dates and I found out that 5 square leagues were bought in 1844. Did you know that one land league equals 4,428 acres? That makes about 22,140 acres (i think), which lines up pretty well with the Sac Bee article I found last week. That makes me feel a bit more confident that I have the right land grant, considering the name from the Sac Bee was Jared Sheldon and State Archives only had a Joaquin Sheldon.

I also spent an 1 hour discussing the deed of gift assignment with Mary, and 30 minutes reading through the auction catalogs.

I think that's it for now, equaling 5 hours for the week. I will be spending some time tomorrow perusing ancentry.com for more genealogy info.