Is it a Hobby?

Isn't this a cute metal sculpture of a Praying Mantis? My daughter Jill gave it to me last Sunday. My yard needs a lot of praying!!
Three of the Iris plants on order should arrive any day now. No sign of them yet. They are coming from Oregon. Six more will arrive by the middle of August from Cathey's Valley.
I always thought Irises needed full sun, but just the other day I read that in the hottest areas, part shade would be best.
Oh. Mine have to have full sun. No other place to plant them. No wonder they go dormant earlier than most other Irises I see. They were all dug up recently and replanted. I sure hope they all survive. It's so hot out there and we are restricted about our watering days. Three days a week.

I had a couple of requests for tombstone photos at the Winton Cemetery, so I went there Wednesday morning. I always find other stones that interest me. This time I noticed Henry Loewen, 1919-1935. I didn't have a clue as to who he was, but was curious.
At home I looked him up on the "Grandma" file from the California Mennonite Historical Society and learned who his parents were and that he died in an accident where he ran into a car. He was just shy of 16 years old. Was he running?
The next step of course is to look for him at Find-A-Grave. There someone posted the newspaper article of the accident and the obituary. He was on his bicycle at a blind corner near the library in Winton on Winton Way. This must have been when the library was in someone's home near Hall Blvd. and Winton Way. Also found out his older sister was Margaret who married Dave Koehn, our beloved Winton School bus driver.
You never know what you will uncover when you are taking pictures at the cemetery.
Everybody has a story.

Photos at Winton Cemetery District

After a couple of months of neglecting to take tombstone pictures at the Winton Cemetery, I finally went there again a week ago. More than 100 photos have been added, so now there are more than 1,800 to browse through. If you are looking for a name, it's much easier to go to the sets. If you just want to browse, click on this link.
Some of these have memorials at Find A Grave.
The above picture was taken around Memorial Day last year. The cemetery is especially pretty at that time.

Winton Cemetery at Find A Grave

There are quite a few memorials set up at Find A Grave created by different contributors. At first I thought that Find A Grave was too cumbersome and hard to find the names you're looking for. I finally learned my way around the website a little better. When looking for a particular cemetery in Merced County, here is the link to use:

Or if looking for someone buried at the Winton Cemetery I like this link. I just type in the surname and see what all comes up.

Sometimes the memorials are connected to other family members whether buried in the same cemetery or not. On my mother's side the links go from Winton to Kansas and on my dad's from Winton to Willows, CA. It's interesting to see what is out there.

If you want to create a memorial or let a contributor know of a mistake or additional information, you must first sign up with Find A Grave. If wanting to create a memorial, you must check to be sure there is not already one there for that person. They don't like duplicates and they don't want memorials set up for people who are still alive. I've seen that just so they could connect them to the in-law family.

After you are signed up and have a contributor name and number, if you see a memorial for your direct line, i.e. parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or siblings, you can request a transfer to you from the one who is managing it. Assuming you are closer related to that person than the "manager" is.
They must transfer within 30 days if you are closer related than they are.
I put up a memorial for my husband 5 years ago and then did nothing else until just recently. I have been taking pictures of the tombstones at the Winton Cemetery and posted them to flickr under the name of Winton Historical Society. If you see a relative's tombstone picture there, you are welcome to use it. If you plan to use several at Find A Grave, please ask permission first. But if you are just using them for your own personal use, then you're welcome to use them.

Also, if I have created a memorial for a relative of yours and you want me to transfer it to you, don't hesitate to ask. You can leave a message at Find A Grave or here if you are just giving information and don't want to sign up.

Winton Cemetery

This is one of the roadways at the Winton District Cemetery. It looks so peaceful. I love the large old trees that are growing there.
I've been taking pictures of the tombstones there and uploading them to flickr.
So far there are 1,339 photos online. I am slowly adding more information to the pictures when the information is available to me. Some of the information comes from the California Death Records; it lists the people who died in California between 1940 and 1997.
Usually I have a little more information on the people with a Mennonite surname. That information sometimes comes from the "Grandma" file that the California Mennonite Historical Society has created and maintains. I have their latest CD with 1,250,285 individuals linked to their families. Some ancestors are traced back to the 1500s in Holland.
I also subscribe to their "Grandma" online, where they update the information since the latest CD.
The online file currently has 1,285,498 people who can trace their ancestors back to the Mennonite churches in Russia or Prussia. They don't include the birth dates for the living people online, but the dates are included on the CD.
They started something new last year. If you have pictures at flickr you can tag them with the identification number from the Grandma file. Each person has a unique ID number. Of course they want the OLD historical pictures. Or tombstone pictures. So I have tagged a few individuals with the tombstone picture from the Winton Cemetery at flickr. I just started, so only a few are tagged.
This is an ongoing project of taking more pictures, adding additional information and tagging some of them to the Grandma online file. Fun -- but slow.

Bummer

Oh, Bummer!! I caught a cold Thursday night and wasn't able to help with the estate sale with the Atwater Methodist people. That was disappointing. Missed church this morning and decided to cancel my appointment with my reflexologist tomorrow morning.
I've been staying inside and trying to keep warm. Maggie the cat and I have taken lots of catnaps. She's become quite a lap-kitty.
I'm thinking I'll have to miss Bible Study tomorrow night also. It will probably be cold at night again.
I have two lunches to go to this week, so I gotta get rid of this head cold.
Last week I went to the Winton Cemetery to get more information for an article I'm writing for the Winton Historical Society's newsletter. While there I took more pictures of tombstones. There are now 964 photos at flickr.

I didn't notice this bench before in the Cypress Gardens area. Looks like a good place to sit and rest awhile. I'm hoping to take more tombstone pictures before the month is over. I'd like to have 1,000 uploaded. Maybe the weather will warm up a little.

New DSLR

I had an exciting day Saturday. My friend Pat drove us to the Camera Center on 9th Street in Modesto. I finally decided to splurge and buy a new digital single lens reflex camera. I've been thinking about that for a few years, but couldn't justify it to myself. What would I take pictures of?
I started taking pictures of the tombstones at the Winton District Cemetery, but I didn't feel that was a good enough reason. Then I thought about the Winton Old Timers. Every year I am at a table either selling something or collecting dues for the Winton Historical Society. I would like to mingle with the people and see who all is there. I don't get a chance to visit with the out-of-town people that I rarely get to see. In fact I don't even know who all is there until I see them in a picture that Norm has taken of them. So, having a nice camera and helping with taking pictures was my excuse for investing in a new camera.
Another reason, I am the editor of the "Winton Hometown News" for the Winton Historical Society. I asked one Old Timer for his memories of the good-old-days in Winton, he said he and his friend talk about them at the Winton Old Timers, but that I am never around. So, that is going to change next year!!! Yipee.

The camera I bought is a Nikon D5100 and the lens is a 18mm to 270mm zoom. Quite a long focal length and I read some negative things about that. The pictures may not be as high quality as with an 18 to 55 for instance. But you have to outweigh that with the convenience of not having to change lens if you need both a wide angle and a telephoto.
I don't expect to be professional, but I do like good quality pictures.

The first picture was taken at the 18mm, wide angle setting. The second picture was at 50mm and the third one at 100mm. I like a little better depth-of-field than what you see in the 3rd picture. Guess I'll have to take it out of "automatic" and use the manuel setting for a smaller aperture opening. The last picture was taken at the high end of 270mm telephoto setting. I was standing in the same spot for each picture. Just trying it out and see what I can do with it. The pictures come out at 4928 X 3264 pixels, which is a large file. I cut it way down before uploading these. I know I have a lot to learn.

Winton Tombstone Photos at flickr

This is a picture of the Fountain of Serenity located in front of the office at the Winton District Cemetery. I hadn't been to the Winton Cemetery for about 3 years, so this was the first time I saw this fountain. It's a very nice addition to the cemetery.
For quite a few years I've had pictures of tombstones on my computer that I used to upload to the California Tombstone Project, but they quit updating that website several years ago.
I was disappointed because I still had a lot of pictures to send them.
I thought about doing a website, but decided that was too difficult so decided to upload them to flickr. I have a pro account at flickr but didn't want to mix up the tombstone pictures with the Winton Old Timer pictures and others.
I set up a second pro account under the name of Winton Historical Society and uploaded the tombstone pictures there.
You can see them here. There are more than 350 pictures there so far. More will be added each month. A few of the photos will be replaced with better pictures. (I hope) There is a set (folder) for each letter of the alphabet with surnames beginning with that letter to make it easier to find the name you are looking for.
Here is a link directly to the sets. After clicking on the set, you can click on detail and view them that way instead of clicking on each individual picture.

I may start taking requests, but I would only go to the cemetery once a month. So, it may take a while to get the picture you want uploaded to flickr. The email you can use is wintonca@aol.com

Monday, May 25, 2009

Carolyn and I attended the Memorial Day service at the Winton Cemetery today. Pictured is the Winton VFW's Color Guard. The program was nice, the weather cool; better than hot.
Mrs. Beltz's class sang several patriotic songs.Cousin Jackie played Taps (a duet with someone, name unknown to me.)
The program lasted about an hour, the Dirks family cousins then went to Foster Freeze in Atwater and had lunch and visited. That was the best part of the day for me. (Although, I did enjoy the program at the cemetery.)

Updates on Winton Cemetery

Pictured is the gate from Cypress Avenue, where you can enter the Winton Cemetery from the back. It's across from Winton Middle School.
The next picture shows how nice the cemetery is kept up. It's always green and there are lots of flowers on the graves left by family.
The good news for us out in cyberspace is the volunteers at The Tombstone Transcription Project are working on Merced County indexes. Go to the website and click on Merced. Scroll down to Winton and click on the camera. I have uploaded a few more pictures that were on my computer. I plan to visit the cemetery soon and take more photos to upload. If you have a picture of a tombstone, read the directions and have your picture displayed online. If the picture is not too large, it will show up in the index right away, with the last name and some numbers until they get a chance to finish indexing it.
I just found out the Winton Cemetery District has a website also. Click here to read more information about them, the Board Members, the employees, the servies they offer and the prices.

Winton Cemetery

This is a picture that I took recently of the office at the Winton Cemetery. The office faces Almond Avenue and is just past Cypress Avenue, going west on Almond from Winton Way. There is another entrance from Cypress, but the main gates are on Almond.
The employees in the office are very helpful and will give you a map and mark the spot where the person is buried that you are looking for.
I've taken many pictures of the tombstones and sent them to rootsweb. Recently the cemetery website at rootsweb was moved to genweb. Click here for the link to California Cemetery Registration. Click on the county of your choice. They are still in the process of moving the pictures of the tombstones to the new location.
I am toying with the idea of posting my relatives tombstone pictures somewhere else on the web, but am still undecided. I did post a few at flickr, but not sure if that is a good idea. Maybe by the time I make up my mind, they will have them up at genweb. LOL
July 24 --
Hereld is the coordinator for the Merced County, California CAGenWeb genealogy and history website, there are many pictures of tombstones, taken by others at the Winton Cemetery. If you don't find the photo you are looking for at the other website, you may find it here.
I am willing to take digital pictures of tombstones at the Winton Cemetery and send them to the requestor by email. They would also be submitted to the above website. email me at CalifNative37@aol.com