www.paperartistsonline.com

Those of you doing genealogy will enjoy this. The building I work in is several decades old, and among other things has a basement that is also a bomb shelter, front work space that used to be part of a police station and jail, and a council chambers that once upon a time used to house fire trucks. As I said... decades old. Anyway, the basement, which has steep steps and is NOT someplace I'd want to be stuck in, is also where old records are stored, and in some cases, lost until we rediscover them. Our court clerk was doing a little cleanup and looking to get a couple shelves of old ledgers out of her space, so she asked me to look at them. A fair amount are financial ledgers, but we also found some voter registration ledgers from 1920-1923 and a slice of the 1930s.

I contacted the County Elections office about them taking the records, as we don't keep them at City level here, and then decided to take pictures of the oldest ones, because the town of Selah was founded in 1919... so these are the first few years after Selah came into existence. Now, imagine my surprise when I find a Hysom (my maiden name) among them! I'm not originally from this area, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a twig of the family tree way back when.

I texted the pictures to my mom, as she has the thick book of Hysom genealogy at her house, and she is digging through it to find out.

Now for the weird part.... J.H. Hysom became a registered voter on June 21, 1920... exactly 51 years before I was born. On. My. Birthday. How weird is that?!

Cool stuff.... sounds like a good story to scrapbook... just for the sheer fun of it!!

they should keep them locked up with peoples info on them
but it ould be a cool story to tell

jmp1022 wrote:they should keep them locked up with peoples info on them
but it could be a cool story to tell

State law dictates what should be done with voter registration records, so I'm waiting to hear whether we get to keep them for historical purposes or they simply get sent to State Archives.

nchoney wrote:Cool stuff.... sounds like a good story to scrapbook... just for the sheer fun of it!!

I did take pictures....

That’s wonderful! Im so glad you’ve rescued them. Keep us update on the mystery Hysom!

pamcook wrote:That’s wonderful! Im so glad you’ve rescued them. Keep us update on the mystery Hysom!

I will, but no idea when I will have more info. Mom didn't find anything useful in the book she has, which really only pertains to my dad's immediate family tree, so she is contacting the people who put the book together years ago to see if they might know something more.

I wonder if the GenWeb project could scan these? That's one of the sites that has helped me a lot with my family research.

Possibly. Although at this point I'm at the mercy of the State archivists.

Cool story, Monica! I hope he is some relation.

I often find those weird time connections. I'll be doing some research and find the exact date I am doing it is someone's birth/death or marriage date. It's a bit creepy but also kind of nice to make that connection over generations.

Jill, old voter registers are used for genealogy all the time.

How wonderful Monica! You never know what pops up and there could be a connection somewhere along the line. Keep us posted on what your mom finds out.