Sep 5, 07

Hello! I'm back home in Honolulu after being on the mainland for two months.


So much happened during the time I was in Indiana and Iowa
(Aug 11-Sept 4). It was all about family and genealogy. I'll put a few photos here and maybe write more later. One is of the 40 family members that came to the big "Hague/Rynearson/Wilson" family Reunion in Des Moines. Another is of Dorothy Rynearson and I with Sharon Carlisle Moore and her son Kirby Moore. I hadn't seen Sharon since I was 7 years old at my grandfather, Alfred G. Hague's house in Des Moines. Her brother, Chester, taught me to open my eyes underwater that summer.

The drawing is a photo of an original sketch my grandfather, Alfred G. Hague made for his niece, Grace Wilson many years ago. It is his idea of the Hague homestead of 1885. It shows the original house and barn. The barn burned and another was built to the left of the corn crib. But now all the buildings you see are gone. The place is just cornfields, an interchange to I-35 from Des Moines to Minneapolis, and part of the Ankeny, Iowa Airport. Gladys Keeling, a descendant lives on the remaining acres in a small house built about in the 1920's. I really prize seeing this sketch as I'm fascinated with the Hague Homestead, and the fact that my grandfather drew it. My father, Alfred Vincent Hague, spent many summers in his youth at this Hague Homestead which was established about 1861 near Berwick, Iowa - just north of Des Moines in Polk county. Wilson for allowing me to get pictures of this sketch and many Thanks to Grace's daughters, Mary and OralMayother old family photos.

I borrowed my cousin, Don's, pick-up truck (thanks Don!!) and drove up to Boone, Iowa for three days. There I met up with my Pearce cousin, Jeanie Ewing McDougall from LeMars, Iowa. We went to the Boone Co. Courthouse and found the deed books that recorded our great-grandparents purchase and later sale of two town lots in Angus, Iowa. (see picture) John and Jane Pearce, newly immigrated from Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, built a house and raised six kids in this coal-mining boomtown. The left in 1900 when the boom was over to continue coal mining in Colorado Springs. The property records clerk at the Court House was amazingly helpful and we were very happy to know John Pearce had saved enough money to pay $200 for the lots. We drove to where Angus once was, and located the exact property where they had lived. It was a real step back in time.

I was especially happy to find a picture of the school where our grandparents, Leonard and Margaret Pearce must have attended in Angus before 1900. Like everything else in the town, the school is long gone. See Picture. It was a two-story, four room school for all ages. We visited the Boone County Historical Society and an evening meeting of the Boone County Genealogical Society. While at the society a blaring horn went off - an alarm meaning a tornado had been spotted. It was very dark outside, but hadn't started raining. With lightening and thunder all around we sped back to our motel. They told us where the "shelter" was and gave us bottled water. Just as we got inside the sky opened up and a very heavy rainy downfall engulfed the area. The front moved on west, without much incident, but the thunder, lightening, rains and winds provided enough excitement for the trip.