McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
We welcome new member Maureen Ellis Bower, who has joined our museum effort. Even though Maureen lives in Georgia and cannot attend our meetings she already has helped by sending genealogy on the Ellis, Vickers, Stringer and Pender families of McLean.
From the Pender genealogy we learned that Maureen Ellis Bower and Alvin Rickard are related. Maureen’s great-grandmother, Sally Vickers Pender was a sister to Alvin’s great-grandmother, Emily Vickers Rickard
Also that genealogy solved the mystery of the G.A.Pender/Ralph Dillas Rickard letter that we wrote about in another columm. G. A. Pender was one of eight children of Miles Moseley Pender and Sally Jane Vickers and Ralph Dillas (Dill) was one of six children ofGeorge Rickard and Emily Vickers. Now we know the relationship.
Edith Bennett has contributed the following genealogy: Genealogy of Monroe Family of Ohio County, Kentucky, including William S. “Bill” Monroe, the father of Bluegrass, Genealogy of Edith Lillian Bennett, by Thomas Ward Humphery; “Old Hebron Church/Hunt Family Reunion”, Other contributions from Edith are a brochure “Woman’s Club of Livermore, dated 1954-55”, an ice pick from the old Livermore Ice Plant, a copy of the “Livermore Times” newspaper, giving the account of the 1937 flood and two old bills of Livermore dated August 3, 1938 and November 21, 1944.
Billy J. Hill of Owensboro, gave a box containing his mother Willie Hill’s scrapbook, genealogy and clippings for copying. Back in the 1970s Willie Hill of Island was active in recording the cemeteries of McLean and she wrote poetry and stories. A copy of a poem that she wrote about the Island Baptist Church was in the Hill genealogy.
A copy was given to the church for their archives.
Geraldine Lyons wrote telling us of her experiences during the 1937 flood and Wallace Dame came by to tell Helen Anderson that he still had letters that her mother had written to him during World War II. We are pleased to have all the contributions Continue digging into those old keepsake boxes and write to tel us about their treasures.
We have just learned of a new “Veterans History” project that the Library of Congress and the AARP are co-sponsoring to collect oral, audio and video histories, letters, photos and journals from veterans of World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf Wars. The address for more information is www.loc.gov/vets. On my first try I was unable to get much as many pages are not available. Again we urge you to send histories, stories, pictures to the museum. We hope to have a large collection of our McLean men who have served our country.