SIGHTS

Seeing sights feeds the mind ideas. (Earl Wilson)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man’s skin — seven or eight ancestors at least — and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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What Happened to Herman Hallen?

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What Happened to Herman Hallen? Herman Hallen was born in 1844 in Spellen, Westfalen, Germany. He was the youngest child of Hermann Hallen and Elisabetha Wink. Hermann and Elisabeth had five other children: Joanna, Theodore, Christina, Godfrey, and Anna. Immigration records show that they all traveled from Spellen to Waterford, Racine, Wisconsin, in 1856. They all show up on the 1860 United States Census. Herman was sixteen years old at the time of the census. The 1860 census is the last record of Herman. In the 1870 census, his name is missing. The names of his parents and siblings appear in the 1870 census. They show up in various church books and civic records thereafter for marriages, christenings, and deaths. The other Hallen relatives have gravestones with dates in the cemeteries of Waterford, Burlington, Lyons, Phillips, or Marinette. Although stoic German parents would refrain from verbal expressions of grief, Herman’s death would certainly ha...
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Memorial Service for Mary Ellen Ryder

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Memorial Service for Mary Ellen Ryder 6 September 2008 * Boise State University Student Union Building Friday, September 5, was a late summer day, with searing sunshine, cool breezes, and pure blue skies. It was a good day for the drive north on I-15 and I-84 from Salt Lake to Boise. There was no hint of the recent tragedy, no sign of the disaster, except for small stretches of scorched land near the freeway in a few places. At a rest stop near Boise, a “Biker Mama” said that she used to live in the Columbia Village where the fire occurred. She said that news reports stated that the fire spread very quickly, that homes just exploded one after another as flames devoured dry brush nearby. After I got settled in a hotel near the Boise State University campus, I took a drive north on Highway 55, winding my vehicle and my thoughts up the beautiful Payette River canyon in the evening light. I wanted to have a sense of Mary Ellen’s landscapes in Idaho, to see some of the places she had...
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