"Evansville Sporting Legends"

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FOREFATHERS OF EVANSVILLE FOOTBALL... Everyone knows about legendary Reitz coach Herman Byers, but who was his coach? Check out an article I've put together on Examiner.com about Herbert Henderson, the man who coached Coach Byers and also played for the NFL's Evansville Crimson Giants. by Daniel Engler

Spotlight on Herb Henderson, former Central coach and Evansville pro football player

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-28339-Evansville-High-School-Sports-Examiner~y2009m12d31-Spotlight-on-Herb-Henderson-former-Central-coach-and-Evansville-pro-football-player

Deceased ID = 22174 [Obituary transcription from Browning Genealogy Database]
Deceased Name (maiden): HENDERSON, HERBERT ()
Address: 820 E BLACKFORD AVE, EVANSVILLE, INDIANA
Date of Death: Sunday, January 13, 1991 Age: 91
Place of Death: KETCHAM MEMORIAL CENTER ODON IN
Minister: RANDOLPH W MARVIN
Cemetery: CREMATE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL PARK EVV IN
Funeral Home: ALEXANDER NORTH
Occupation: INDIAN INDUSTRIES SPORTING GOODS STORE OWNER
Activities: FOOTBALL PLAYED IN ROSE BOWL ON BIG TEN TEAM
Comments: COACHED CENTRAL HIGHSCHOOL GOLFER ARCHER MEMBER INDIANA FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME QUARTERBACK CLUB FOOTBALL REFEREE WORKED GUS DOERNER SPORTS
Grandchildren: 14 Great Grandchildren: 9
Relatives: HENDERSON, BANCROFT DR C (Son) Cleveland, OH
HENDERSON, JOHN E (Son) Santa Rosa, CA
HENDERSON, CHARLES H (Son) Haubstadt, IN
HENDERSON, ROBERT L (Son) Grand Blanc, MI
HENDERSON, PAUL W (Son) Odon, IN

- Compiled by Don Counts

Below added by JGWest: [from Evansville Sports Hall of Fame Evansville Convention & Visitor Bureau]

Herman Byers ~
Evansville football coaching legend. Coached Reitz High School's football team to 189 victories, eight undefeated seasons, seven state championships, 12 conference titles and 14 city titles in his 27-year career. His 1961 team not only went undefeated, they were not even scored upon.

This from Reitz Football.com:
"WINNERS NEVER QUIT AND QUITTERS NEVER WIN!" - Herman Byers (Reitz Football Hall of Fame Coach)
2009 Indiana High School Football State Champions... Evansville Reitz Hign School

Reitz Football Head Coaches
George Murphy (1919-20) C.V. Maple (1921)William V. Slyker (1922-24) Elmer Weber (1925-40)Ralph Becker (1941) Herman Byers (1942-68)Bob Padgett (1969-77) Bob Ashworth (1978-82)Bill Hape (1983-90) Bob Gaddis (1991-2000)John Hart (2001-07) Tony Lewis (2008-present)


PaulCondry Blog
Evansville Reitz Wins Second Championship in Three Years
Posted 11-29-2009 by PaulCondry

Here is a lot of great info about the school, its history & more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FJ_Reitz_High_School

Indiana Historical Collection Damaged as a Kentucky Civil War Memorial is Preserved

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We begin the new year with bad news for genealogists & historians...

Fire destroys about 80% of the Bartholomew County Historical Society collection, 75,000 items were estimated lost in the Dec. 24, 2009 United Way building fire in Columbus, Indiana.


Read more at http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=11737018

However, there is good news for the new year for historians & genealogists, especially Civil War buffs...

New Kentucky home for the oldest national Civil War memorial commemorating the soldiers of the 32nd Indiana Infantry who died in the Battle of Rowlett's Station near Munfordville in Hart County, KY. Read the 31 Dec 2009 article in the Kentucky New Era: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KY_CIVIL_WAR_MEMORIAL_KYOL-?SITE=KYHOP&SECTION=STATE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Tombstone Thursday - Williams

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Oak Hill Cemetery

Evansville, Indiana

Richard T. Williams

Patience A. (his wife)

Section 7, Lot 58

(Click on images to enlarge)

-Photos taken & submitted by JGWest

[Tombstone Thursday is dedicated in memory of Donald G. West 1952-2000]

From the FIRST MATE's PHOTO ALBUM...

APRONS...

...The common everyday apron that Mom wore almost everyday around the house!

Remember... making an apron in Home Economics Class in School or for your exhibit at the County Fair for the 4-H Clothing Project? I remember about 50 years ago watching (with 3 of the boys of my 4-H Club) the older Mike Phillips & Anthony Long (the two being cousins to each other) wearing aprons that they had made in the 4-H Dress Revue. They were laughed at in those days since boys were not expected to wear house aprons, but they were showing that boys could do what girls do. In those days girls/women were trying to show that they could do what the boys/men could do. It was the beginnings of the “Battle of the Sexes!” The four of us pledged to do the same for the next year... it is hard to believe how foolish young boys can be!!! My sister Tina can back me up on this story. Dennis Avery, Dana Hart, Freddie Isaac and myself made our aprons (not an easy task using that old foot-pedal Singer sewing machine). Freddie “chickened-out”... but Avery, Hart & I walked on stage and modeled our aprons during the 4-H Dress Revue. We got even more laughter than Phillips & Long! Amazing that Phillips & Long became attorneys and very active politicians along with Avery becoming an Indiana State Representative (Phillips became the Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives). In politics, I became the Superintendent of the Evansville/Vanderburgh Levee Authority and later Evansville City Manager of Locust Hill & Oak Hill Cemeteries. Hart had a life-time career with Alcoa. I had heard that Isaac had a career in the coal mining field. I wonder what happened to that blue apron with clouds & sailboats that I had made & never worn except on stage for that 4-H Dress Revue? - Written by John G. West

The Apron Pattern photos and the History of Aprons were found on the Internet & sent to me by Don Counts.

The History of Aprons

I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath,because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. And when the weather was cold grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folks knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner. It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

From My Email Box - "Kentucky Records Resurface! & Free Ancestry Magazines"

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From Carole Palmer (via KYGenWeb Coordinator's List):

Old Ky. Records Resurface, Prepared for Public (The Associated Press)
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky land, census and marriage records from the late 1700s to the 1900s have recently resurfaced and are being prepared for public inspection.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported the books are being indexed to make information easier to find and documents are being scanned so they can be made available for public viewing.
The original record books will not be available for the public.
"The documents are so old and the pages are so fragile that I really would not be willing to put them out there for the public to peruse through," Deputy Fayette County Clerk Linda Potter said.

Potter found out about a volume of land patents containing the names of the commonwealth's earliest settlers, called the "Doomsday Book." The book, originally in the clerk's office, had been moved to Frankfort in the early 1970s. Microfilming at the Department of Libraries and Archives should be complete within two weeks, said Barbara Teague, state archivist and records administrator. The Doomsday Book contains the names of settlers who applied for land patents from 1779 through 1780, when Kentucky was still part of Virginia. Kentucky became a state in 1792. Kandie Adkinson, an administrative supervisor in the Kentucky Land Office, said the books are important for genealogists who want to document history and traditions of family members.

"Additionally, by determining if an ancestor received a commissioners' certificate for settlement prior to 1792, individuals may qualify for membership in First Families of Kentucky," a hereditary society established in 2005, Adkinson said.
Another record book recovered by Fayette County clerks, the "Land Entry Book," contains similar information from 1783 to 1784. Several years' worth of marriage licenses were also found in the county clerk's storage area. The clerk's office also recovered several books containing Fayette County school census records from 1896 to 1909 for both white and black students. The census books contain students' names, addresses, names of parents and siblings, and dates of birth. Potter said the school records are a "significant discovery" for black genealogists. "Unfortunately, the Fayette County clerk's office doesn't have a lot of records for black people to go on," she said.

[Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com]

From Don Counts: Through Google Books you can get back issues of the Ancestry magazine free... here is the link to the Jan/Feb 2009 issue ~ http://books.google.com/books?id=FTgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&lr=lang_en&as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

You can also pull up all back issues!

"Using Family Names For Computers!"

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The backyard Garage is finally torn down!

With all of the rain this year (plus not feeling well & a sundry of other excuses), it has taken me almost the whole year to finally tear it down. But, yesterday, a friend & his boys helped me. Busy from 6AM until the friend got here, I was tired, cold and really out of the mood to go through with it. But, with others to motivate me, we were done in about three hours. I still need to haul the debris to the dump, but the garage is down.

This is why I did not have time to post anything yesterday, nor for today. However, I was reading Facebook posts and one of my friends is Bill West (no known relation to me) who puts out a very nice genealogy related blog of his own... had an interesting topic about naming computers. Bill named his computers after TV show characters. One of the comments came from a Diane who said she named her computers for family members citing her two aunts. I got the idea that it would be cool to name my computers after my ancestors. So, I added the following comment to Bill's Facebook entry: "Diane, that is a neat idea... naming computers after family! Ignatius West was born in 1750 in Granville Co., NC and is the brother of my direct ancestor Thomas West, Jr. Thus, Iggy (my nickname for him) is an Uncle many "greats" back. So, I, hereby name my computer "Iggy"!"

We all have some cool names in our ancestry that are interesting, neat, special or highly unusual like my direct ancestor Littleberry Woodis. I could name a computer "Littleberry" or even "Woodis"! I could name one "Cincinnati" after my Great, Great Grandmother Cincinnati O. [Williams] West (I still do not know what the "O" stands for and it was used many times in records). My father, brother & nephew were all named "Gaither Glennis West" with either of the given names would make great names for a computer. Mom's name was Bernadine... not a bad computer name. Powerful names like James Tobias Long or Mary Bright Rogers. Another one John Barton Haynes. My favorite is Arthur Sylvester Mays husband of Susan Apalone Lewis. The name Ap(p)olone was used a lot in my Mattingly family.

We could name all sorts of items for our ancestors. Since we travel a lot to Ohio to see the grandkids in the Cincinnati area... I think I will name the car in honor of my GGGrandmother "Cincinnati!" My cell phone "Littleberry!" (Well, they have "Blackberry" phones, don't they?) Davy Crockett named his long rifle "Old Bess" - so, why not name important items we use? I wonder what is showing on "Tobias" today?

Oh, if I still had a garage, I could have named it "Woodis!"

- Written by JGWest