Index:

1. Earmel Case worked in an ice cream factory, making the edges of the ice cream blocks square for ice cream bars. She also worked in a candy factory, dipping chocolates, then, in a Photography Studio developing film and tinting the pictures. There was no colored film and pics in those days and they had to be hand painted.
She lived in a boarding house when she met Lester Stewart. She met him on a blind date in January and were married April 5, 1942, in a double wedding with the couple they double dated with. Married by the Justice of the Peace.

2. My Mom (Earmel Case) has told me that her dad and George owned a lead mine together and mined it. They would then load the lead into wagons and take it to town to sell it. James and George were getting ready to sell the mine when it flooded the night before and they were stuck with it.

3. Andrew Case was killed in an explosion at the Atlas Powder Co. He had married Ruby Pearl Culton, my grandma's sister.

4. Lester Stewart, my father, remembers taking his mother, Margaret, and Grandma Johnson from Tecumseh Nebraska to Arkansas in a 1937 Ford to visit his Uncle Joel Ferguson. (b. 1878-1965, buried in Benton County Arkansas)

5. From David Case, Memories of his grandparents:
I grew up near Pittsburgh and am in the Carthage area quite a bit. I guess Henderson is William H. Case. He is my great-grandfather. His son William married Iris Heiniger. She was from Carterville but they moved around a lot. He was a minister and was always setting up congregations, then moving on. They split up when my dad was young. William Case died in 1995 and is buried in Forest Park in Joplin. He had settled down in Webb City and was an independent insurance agent and worked at Jim Bob's.

Mag is Maggie Reynolds, William H.'s wife. Dad loved her. He said that you couldn't spend any time with her without her making you play rummy with her. Also, she always wanted to kiss Dad, but she chewed tobacco and always had it streaming down her face.

When a new musket was ordered, you ordered the lock, the stock or the barrel. If you wanted the WHOLE musket, you ordered it lock stock and barrel. Going off half cocked? That is because that musket would sometimes go off when it was only half cocked.

July 3rd - August 11th: Why are these called the dog days of summer? Ancient Romans thought the dog star Sirius added extra heat to our sun during this time of year. They called this time dies caniculares or dog days. Sirius is twice as hot as our sun but is too far away to raise the temperature. Folk lore, has it that from mid August to mid September, it meant the dogs were more more rabid and dangerous.

The Seven Daughters of Eve is a thrilling work of science that reveals how biological research can enrich our tangled lives. It is a book that chronicles many of the most exciting developments in genetics over the past decade by a man who is not only a brilliant scientist but also a gifted and thoroughly engaging writer. It ultimately demonstrates how much more we still have to discover about the absorbing story of human evolution.
In 1994, Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly revelatory was his successful identification of a genetic descendent of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today. How was Sykes able to locate a living relative of a man who died thousands of years ago? In The Seven Daughters of Eve, he gives us a firsthand account of his research into a remarkable gene, which passes undiluted from generation to generation through the maternal line. After plotting thousands of DNA sequences from all over the world, Sykes found that they clustered around a handful of distinct groups. Among Europeans and North American Caucasians, there are, in fact, only seven.
This conclusion was staggering: almost everyone of native European descent, wherever they may live throughout the world, can trace their ancestry back to one of seven women, The Seven Daughters of Eve. Naming them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine, Sykes has created portraits of their disparate worlds by mapping the migratory patterns followed by millions of their ancestors. In reading the stories of these seven women, we learn exactly how our origins can be traced, how and where our ancient genetic ancestors lived, and how we are each living proof of the almost indestructible strands of DNA, which have survived over so many thousands of years. Indeed, The Seven Daughters of Eve is filled with dramatic stories:
from Sykes's identification, using DNA samples from two living relatives, of the remains of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaress Alexandra, to the Caribbean woman whose family had been sold into slavery centuries before and whose ancestry Sykes was able to trace back to the eastern coast of central Africa. Ultimately, Sykes's investigation reveals that, as a race, what humans have in common is more deeply embedded than what separates us.

"8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895"

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, and illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cents A bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology?, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre,semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. what is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon,St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

This gives the saying of an early 20th century person that "she/he only had an 8th grade education" a whole new meaning!

Here is a durable, easy to make, low cost formula for chinking.
2 parts clay (or dirt)
1 part sifted wood ashes
1/2 part silt
water to mix.
the clay or dirt must be broken down as fine as possible and the ashes must be sifted to clear them of any clinkers or debris. (hydrated lime can be substituted for the ashes). Don't leave out the silt, that gives the mixture its cement-like properties.

Mix each batch slowly until you can "feel" the mass sticking together. It will take some experimenting to get the consistency just right.

Chinking itself is a slow job, so don't wait until time and weather are against you. Whatever tool you use, garden trowel, putty knife or kitchen spatula, insert the chinking far into the cracks as necessary. Fill the hole and smooth the surface with the flat edge of the blade. Certain climate and temperature conditions may cause the mortar to crack as it begins to harden. check the work every week or so and smooth out cracks with a putty knife and water.

If you leave the silt out of the mixture, you wind up with a glue that will cement any cracks in your cast-iron stove. You could also use this recipe to make mortar for a stone wall.