by Catherine Ellerton
Moapa Valley Progress
Attention! ATTENTION! All you genealogists – have you been trying to find a relative whom you know was a Veteran of the Spanish American War, but you can’t find any record? Perhaps, you could try www.godfrey.org. This web site was recently updated to include a Roster of Enlisted Men in that war. The following story is a look at the “small world” that genealogy creates and the joy of sharing with others of our uniting history.
Recently Roy Millegan and Arcylle Shaw of the Jefferson Valley Museum in Whitehall, Montana, and Helen Caraveo of La Verkin, Utah, and sister of this reporter, worked with Christine LeFoll, the Library Technician of the Godfrey Memorial Library in Middletown, Connecticut, to add another piece to life’s puzzle.
Helen had attended a Genealogy Workshop in St. George, Utah. She advised one of the leaders, Richard Black, of that workshop that her family was in possession of a Roster of Enlisted Men in the Spanish American War. Helen’s grandfather, Arthur Zimmerman, a former Whitehall, Montana, resident and a Veteran of that war, was the owner of this Roster. The pages within contain the handwritten signatures of the Enlistees and the states they were from (to include: California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Utah). It also includes watercolor drawings (such as a map of a bay with location of ships and that of the troops); drawings of life in the Philippine Islands and cartoons of military men during that era. This Roster is currently on exhibit at the Jefferson Valley Museum in Whitehall, Montana.
Black, the Director of the Godfrey Memorial Library, requested permission to add these pages to the Library’s Genealogy Web site, www.godfrey.org. With the help of the JV Museum’s volunteers this has been done.
This Library has a unique and extensive collection of materials of the early 1800s and many homemade family books. Although its web site is on a subscription basis, it can be accessed as a visitor. Further access can be made at any LDS Family History Center, as they are a member of this extensive database collection which is utilized by scholars and genealogists all over the world.
Once again, loving and caring hands across our Nation have united in the quest to discover our past.
