When we last spoke, I promised to share a bit of what my g-g-grandfather had to say about his cabin, and the traffic that passed by the front of it. The cabin, as you might’ve guessed, is the very one pictured here, taken from the original painting (done from memory) in 1899.

I know these things, because the creation of this and the previously-mentioned painting were noted in the local newspaper:

“Uncle Dan Leonard has recently had a fine large picture (previous entry -ed.) of his Taylor county home painted which was on exhibition in the Shion drug store last Saturday and attracted much attention. Anyone who has ever partaken of Uncle Dan’s hospitality would at once recognize the beautiful home which he has builded (sic) for himself. Another smaller picture stood beside the large one. This was his first cabin erected in 1850. (actually 1856) The contrast is great.” (Duh)

-Adams County (Iowa) Free Press 14 Sept 1899

The artist’s name, BTW, was L. Berg. I’ve never seen another reference to him, but itinerant artists were commonplace in those days. If you ever run across him, please let me know. Now where was I?

Uncle Dan described his cabin, in his 1889 letter to his aunt (written ten years before the painting was done) as, “in its day the the finest residence for 12 years on a strip of land 16 miles long and 8 wide.”

Speaking of a photo he apparently enclosed, Uncle Dan drew attention to a horse on the road in front of his house… “a woe-begon moving family. Poor folks, they like hundreds of others had tryed (sic) Kansas and found it wanting and are pulling for their northern farms. Home.”

“Oh, I sometimes pity the poor slaves,” he continued, “the poor oppressed slaves that have left their eastern homes, came west to hunt a home and have been wandering those years and it seems as though they could not find any place to lay their head.” Uncle Dan wrote that note twenty-five years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

As a final, completely unrelated note of HUGE historical interest, at least to me, was one about recent events back “home” in Pennsylvania. The footnote was dated June 24th, 1889:

“Oh, what a calamity befell Johnstown and there is not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your father’s notice. Are you not of more value than many sparrows?”

Note for the non-native Pennsylvanian… On May 31, 1889, a neglect and a phenomenal storm led to a catastrophic dam failure outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 2,209 people died in the ensuing flood.

Caveat emptor.

No, I mean an honest-to-goodness, pass it around the coffee clatch letter from home? I’m ashamed to admit it’s been years. But a recently discovered letter, mailed in 1889, just might inspire me to write a few of my own. To wit…

My g-g-grandfather Uncle Dan Leonard, wrote an eight page letter to his aunt in 1889. Eight pages! To an aunt! That letter turned up in his brother’s Bible, so we know it was passed around the family long after it was sent. His brother Isaac saw fit to immortalize it in a book he knew would be kept. Perhaps best of all, it was mailed from Leonard, Iowa, a post office named for Uncle Dan and housed in a neighbor’s home just two miles to the south.

The salutation reads simply, “Dear Aunt.” Uncle Dan had three aunts, but the presumption is that he was writing to his Aunt Luzanna, who stayed in Pennsylvania with her aging mother when most of the family moved west to Ohio. He regrets that enough time has passed that it’s unlikely his aunt will ever get to visit him in his new Iowa home. So he sent pictures and rather verbose description of the property. (The pictures, apparently, have been misplaced.)

None of that would have been particularly remarkable, if not for the fact that the house he described in 1889 is still standing and occupied 120 years later. Uncle Dan commissioned a painting of the place ten years after he sent the letter. Side-by-side comparisons show how little it has actually changed.

As an extra-special treat to my family, Uncle Dan described the HUGE stone slab at the base of the front porch.

“If you look closely, you will see Mrs. Dan Leonard standing on a rock (sitting to the front and right of it in the painting) 9 inches thick, 8′ long and about 4′ wide, the largest stone in South Western Iowa and on said rock is inscribed as follows: Daniel and Jane Leonard 1856 (the year Dan and Jane settled in that very spot).”

That rock appears to be granite, and it’s still in place. It’s been a source of great curiosity in my family. My parents and I often wondered if there might be a time capsule of some sort underneath. We’ve offered, more than once, to pay the current owner for the stone and whatever may lie underneath, but to date, no deal. Below is a little closer look.

The letter goes on to describe a picture of the original log cabin that “was the finest residence for twelve years on a stretch of land 16 miles long and eight miles wide.” That picture was also a commissioned painting, drawn from the pioneer couple’s own memories.

This post is getting a tad long, so I’ll save more on that painting for next week. That, and Uncle Dan’s description of the poor souls passing along the trail in front of his house, dragging their meager possessions back from failed settlement attempts to the south and west in Kansas.

Your assignment, between now and next week… Go write a letter!

I won’t bore you with the details, but I decided to upgrade the Leonard Database this week. The good news is… we’ve gone from 1726 family members… to 2816. There were 669 families yesterday. Today there are 1017. There were 495 different surnames. Now there are 780.

Does this make me a name collector? (Don’t MAKE me stop this car!) Every one of those people has a story and I have personally touched their, uh, data. No bulk downloads from Ancestry or other sources for me. The bad news is, by updating the database, I completely broke all the links to family photographs. Don’t get me wrong, the photos are still there, but you’ll have to look a little harder to find them. At least until I get some fixin’ done.

Speaking of databases, Darrin Lygothe’s The Next Generation software, which powers the Leonard Family database, is also behind an interesting new project from FamilySearch. FamilySearch Community Trees are lineage-linked genealogies drawn from specific locations and time periods around the world. The idea is to assemble enough information to get a pretty good idea how people actually lived in those ancestral villages. And that’s about as far from name collecting as you can get.

A quick search on the Leonard surname turns up 46 hits, including several in Monmouthshire, England. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d love to know what life was like in Solomon’s hometown! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to stick my head back under the hood and see if I can fix what I’ve broken. Pass me that roll of duct tape, will ya?

So what’s that got to do with family history? It reminded me of some of my Dad’s favorite expressions, grandad’s, too.

Now, my family being what it is, me being who I am… things could get a little more, uh, earthy.

• Colder than a witche’s t*t.
• Colder than a well-digger’s ass.
• Tighter than the bark on a piss-ant tree. (Ever seen one?)
• North end of a south-bound mule.

Yunno, this topic sounded a lot funnier in my head. So how ’bout you? Got any weird only-in-my family expressions?

Odds & ends
Haven’t had much time to research lately, but I can tell you we’re working on getting some daguerreotypes converted to digital photographs. One of them is a picture of Mary (Van Ort) Leonard, mother to Edmund, Isaac, Uncle Dan, et al. Given the fact that she died in 1868, this will be one of the oldest photographs ever taken of a Leonard!

Please vote!
Never shy about prostituting myself, I’d like to encourage you to vote for Leonard Family Legends & Legacies in Family Tree Magazine’s “40 Best Genealogy Blogs” poll. Polls close Nov. 5th, results published in the May 2010 magazine! We’re listed in the Personal & Family category about halfway down in the last category. You’ll have to click inside the voting window and then scroll down. While you’re at it, go vote for FootnoteMaven in the much tougher All-Around Category. fM came out as one of my “mystery visitors” earlier this week.

Coming soon
Personal memoirs & archival materials. I bought a do-it-yourself memoir book (hard back, acid-free paper) for my Dad last Christmas, sight unseen. The idea is to answer questions about your life right IN the book. Last week, I ordered one for myself. Then it occurred to me, I have no idea what type of pen or pencil to use for the best results. Researching that now.

Until next time… Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

That’s right, ladies and germs, I can SEE where you’re coming from, how often, and what you’re doing while you’re here. BTW, you might wanna close those blinds behind you….

Most days, the logs are pretty boring, but occasionally, things start showing up that make me scratch my head and go “Whuh?” See, the logs tell me pretty much everything about you, except your NAME. So, who ARE you, anyway? I don’t mean the regulars from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan and such… I KNOW who you guys are.

But I’m dying to know who’s visiting from Johannesburg, South Africa and why? C’mon don’t be shy… I know you were here for seven and a half minutes on Monday, you run Firefox on a Mac (interesting combination), and your resolution is 1280 x 1024. I know which pages you visited and what you searched for. What I don’t know is your name. C’mon… cough it up!

Or you, over there in the corner, in Auckland, New Zealand. You were here for six and a half HOURS on Monday! You must’ve found SOMETHING interesting? Either that, or you fell asleep at the keyboard reading this drivel.

Or how ’bout the guy/gal from Bhubaneswar, India? You got here by searching for “Legends Blog.” Were you really looking for ME, or is that a banana in your pocket?

And you, over there in Manchester, England… did you find the John Leonard you were looking for? Probably an Iron Leonard, doncha know. But if you find a Solomon connection, please let me know!

Among domestic visitors, somebody in Birmingham, Alabama gets the award for “Whut the Hell were you trying to accomplish for seventeen hours and 56 minutes yesterday?” If you just ask, I could probably email you a report.

Among the other newcomers, at least the ones I noticed this week… Mesa, Tuscon, and Scottsdale, Arizona; Morgantown, Hope Mills, and Raleigh, North Carolina; Buffalo, New York (34 visits a week ago Saturday?).

I could go on, but I’ve already lost you and bored myself so if you’re still here… TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!