Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about Diana’s 52 Ancestors post in response to the prompt about an ancestor who was the first to graduate from high school or attend college. Diana wrote about her father, Bobby Gene Shults, the first of his ancestors to graduate from college. We review Bob’s autobiographical life story and discuss his schooling from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bob made use of the GI bill to help him finish college with a degree in animal husbandry, becoming the first in his family to do so.
Transcript
Nicole (1s):
This is Research like a Pro, episode 255, the Education of Bobby Jane Schultz. Welcome to Research Like a Pro, a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogist professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team@familylocke.com and the authors of research like a pro, a genealogist guide with Robin Worland. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research like a Pro with dna. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research, and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.
Nicole (43s):
Today’s episode is brought to you by find a grave.com. The best place to search online for burial information for your family, friends, and famous people at Find A Grave. You’ll find details about cemeteries and individual memorials for the people buried in those cemeteries. Hi everyone. Welcome to research like a Pro.
Diana (1m 0s):
Hi Nicole. How are you today?
Nicole (1m 2s):
Really good. Just having a really fun time in the DNA study group and pretty anxious to get back to my work that I’m doing on the Dyer Family. It’s been so rewarding to apply all the things I’ve learned over the past several years with DNA evidence and be able to return to this question that I’ve had ever since I started really using DNA evidence and being able to make significant progress. So it’s exciting.
2 (1m 25s):
It is, and it really speaks to just having to build your DNA experience when you first get started, you’re not ready to do anything really difficult. You’ve gotta just start at the beginning and learn slowly how to work with it, and then you get better and better. It’s just like when we started with genealogy, we knew how to use censuses, but we didn’t start using land records for a long time, so we build on our experience, that’s for sure.
Nicole (1m 53s):
That’s so true. Yeah. As we’re recording this, we’re towards the end of the DNA study group, but when it comes out, the study group will be over and it’s going to be the week of the National Genealogical Society Conference, so that’s fun.
2 (2m 4s):
Yeah, that is coming up quick. So for announcements, we do have that conference that is starting on Wednesday, so that’s exciting and I’m looking forward to traveling out there and having our booth. So if you’re going to be there in person, come by and say hello. It’d be fun to meet you. Well, we also have our Airtable Quick reference guide available in P D F from our website and our Research Psycho Pro webinar series for 2023 is going, we’re loving hearing these case studies, and on June 20th we have Heidi Mathis who will be presenting Incorporate DNA into your German research, the Slag case.
2 (2m 47s):
Heidi wrote a series of blog posts for us about DNA and German research, and so she’s just a great reference point for how to do this, and she’ll be talking about who were the parents of Burkhart Schlagg, a mid 19th century German immigrant indirect documentary evidence points to parents. Does CNA evidence confirm this hypothesis? And I think so often we think we have the right person identified as the parents of our ancestor, and it’s so wonderful to be able to add DNA evidence now to that and say, oh yeah, this definitely is a biological ancestor. Well, our next research Psycho Pro study group is this fall beginning in the end of August, going through November, and the peer group leader application is on our website.
2 (3m 36s):
We’d love to have you join us as a peer group leader to work with a small group. So check out the application and send us your report and your experience, and then join our newsletter for coupons. We keep you up to date with all the latest things that we’re doing and give you links to the newest blog posts and podcasts. And we have our coupons for when we have our sales.
Nicole (3m 60s):
Well, today we get to talk about my grandpa Schultz, which is so fun. We’re gonna talk about his education. And this is a fun topic to think about because in the past a lot of our ancestors didn’t have the opportunity to receive an education. So it’s fun to think about the first ancestor in the family to graduate from high school or attend college. It’s sad that out of necessity, a lot of ancestors did have to stop going to school after about eighth grade or sooner to start helping in the field or in the family business. So on mom’s paternal line, her father Bobby Jean Schultz, he was the first to earn a college degree.
Nicole (4m 40s):
So in writing about ancestors for the 52 Ancestors challenge, she decided to bring all the records and family stories together and learn more about the factors that led to his degree. So what records are available for looking into an ancestor’s education. In grandpa’s case, there was the census school records, family histories, and photos. I love grandpa’s name because people thought he was Robert or Bob, but he was Bobby. He was named Bobby at birth, and he did go by Bob after college and people would assume that it was short for Robert. And it’s funny because one census Enumerator even decided to write Robert instead of Bobby.
Nicole (5m 22s):
The records reveal many different schools as Bob’s family moved between California, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Mom, you made a timeline to sort out all these different moves and piece together the story. What a great way to put all of that information together, especially as they’re moving around so much.
2 (5m 38s):
Oh yeah. He had so many moves and I think to my own history, you know the, I went to the same elementary school, same junior high, and the same high school my entire life, and we never moved. It was so different from his upbringing where they moved so often. But it was confusing because I had his history and I had his father’s history to go by. So I had some accounts, I had some records, but sometimes those histories are not always spot on with with the details. And so I had to put it all together. But we’ll start at the beginning with his birth. So he was named Bobby Jean Schultz, and it is funny that he was Bobby and his sisters and brother and aunts and uncles always called him Bobby.
2 (6m 23s):
I thought it was hilarious. When he was older, he was always Bobby. That’s what they knew him by. Everybody else called him Bob. But he was born on March 16th, 1927 in Sanger Fresno, California. And his very first census there in 1930, he was in the household of his parents, Leslie and Eddie Schultz. They were in Merced County, California. And Les was farming cotton. And he noted, Les did in his history that he and Tom Norris share cropped on the Chowchilla River and made a crop in 1930. But the prices were so bad, he decided to move his family back to Texas where he farmed cotton again. So this was interesting because this was the very beginning of the Great Depression, and that really contributed to this fact of the family moving all over the place, just trying to earn some money and make a living.
2 (7m 16s):
It was kind of fun to see the family history and the census come together and correlate there. So they moved back to Texas and produced cotton. And Les says that he produced 150 bales of cotton and he sold it for $295, which I think is fun that he remembered or had in his mind the exact number that he sold it for. But then they had to move again, and this time he moved to Colorado, which is where Eddie’s parents lived in Kim Aasa County. And by this time, Bob was ready to start school and he and his brother Ch wrote a borough to school.
2 (7m 58s):
So that was really a funny story that he would tell about how this borough had to buck them off once before it would go down the road. And they hated getting on that bro, cuz they knew they were gonna get bucked off and then they’d get back up and he would trot on down the road. But when I did a little story about that one, it was just fun to think about what that would’ve been like for these little boys. You know, maybe six and seven, they were just a year or two apart having to ride a borough. I guess it was better than walking. They all often had to walk.
Nicole (8m 33s):
That’s so funny. It reminds me of how often my kids will ask me to drive them to school in the winter. The winter here in Arizona is very cold and it’s never snowy, but even so, when they wake, come in the morning, if it’s kind of cold, mom, can you drive us? And I’m like, no, you guys have awesome bikes. And it’s really
2 (8m 51s):
Close. You’ll have to share the story with them and say at least you don’t have to get bucked off a burrow every morning. Every
Nicole (8m 56s):
Day. That’s so funny. Well, when you mentioned they were living in Alamosa County, that kind of made me laugh because I’ve been there to Alamosa County and Lance’s family, my husband’s family, the Dyer family, lived in Alamosa.
2 (9m 13s):
Oh, interesting. Yeah, and we drove through there a couple of summers ago after going out to Kansas. It’s just a lot of farmland. Yep. Looked like a great place to go farm.
Nicole (9m 24s):
I wonder what it’s like in the winter though.
2 (9m 26s):
Very snowy, I think.
Nicole (9m 28s):
Well, Bob talked about the one room schoolhouse in Plum Valley and how the teacher was his dad’s cousin. He was a good student, but did use his new knife to whittle on his desk and had to stay after school to learn his lesson. Bob learned to read, but then came down with a case of rheumatic fever. He missed several weeks of school, and when it was time for him to return, his dad bought the little burrow for the boys to ride, since Bob was still recuperating. Ordinarily they walked a few miles to school, but that was an unusually icy and snowy winter. So now we kind of get a picture of why they had the burrow.
2 (10m 7s):
Yeah, and I remember he talked about that snowy winter, that it snowed so much and just kept piling up that they don’t think they could hardly see out the windows of whatever they were living their cabin or house because there was so much snow. Crazy. Oh man.
Nicole (10m 23s):
Well, after a little while in Colorado, les moved his family back to Texas and tried farming there again. It was not fun. It sounds like because the drought of 1934 did end the crops. And so Les and Eddie took their three children on a covered wagon adventure to Oklahoma. I mean, I can just imagine that it, how kind of fun as a kid that would feel to be at like on a camping trip with your family in a covered wagon. And most people at that time were in cars, you know, driving from Oklahoma to California, but they were in a covered wagon.
2 (10m 60s):
Right. And Bob’s dad, Les had gone on a covered wagon trip when he was a little boy and they’d gone from Texas over to New Mexico and he just remembered it being so fun. He thought it would be great to give his own children the same experience. And so we did.
Nicole (11m 17s):
That’s great. So when they arrived in Oklahoma, the Shultz family lived in a log cabin. It was located outside of Taliqua, Oklahoma in the heart of the Ozarks, and Bob and his siblings attended the school Oil Springs Hollow, and by this time Bob was in the third grade. The teacher, Mrs. Pence taught all eight grades and the desks were just rough wood tables and benches. Bob wrote one time while attending school here, another youngster and I were sent to the wood pile to get some wood for the stove, and we saw a dog running down the road, acting very strange, running in circles and filming at the mouth.
Nicole (11m 59s):
We ran to the schoolhouse and told the teacher she sent some of the older boys to the neighbor’s house and they got their gun and killed the dog. He was rabid.
2 (12m 10s):
So that reminds me of a story, old Yeller. Did you remember reading that story where there was the dog became rabid? Yeah. That’s so sad. He had so many adventures. My dad did and told all these stories. It was just fascinating putting ’em all together to talk about his school years. Well, let’s take a minute and do a word from our sponsor. Find a grave.com. Find a grave.com makes it easy to find the graves of ancestors. Create virtual memorials and add photos or virtual flowers to a loved one’s memorial. You can search by name, location, cemetery, date, and more. Find a grave members, add more information each day. So if you’ve searched the site before without finding what you were looking for, come back and check again.
2 (12m 52s):
Looking for a way to give back to your community. Download the free find a grave app, visit your local cemetery and add missing grave information to the site. It’s an easy and fun way to spend some time outside and help other people who are searching for their family and friends. Find a grave.com is completely free to use. So start your search today@findagrave.com. Well, after they had been in that cabin in Oklahoma for a bit, they had an interesting record that was kept, and I discovered these because it was a hint that popped up on family search. This was 1936 and 1937 and it was school records.
2 (13m 33s):
When I went back and dug into those a little bit more, I saw that Bob’s dad less was the school census enumerator for the school district, and he wrote down all the ages and birth dates of all the students in District 33. So he gave his own children’s information and then he also was in charge of recording that for all the other families. And I just thought, this is such an interesting record, I’ve never seen this anywhere else. But then as I was looking through it more, I found that several of Bob’s classmates were members of the Cherokee tribe. And this makes total sense since this area was part of the Cherokee reservation with the headquarters in Taliqua. So likely the reason for the school enumeration was to see how many Cherokee children were enrolled.
2 (14m 17s):
And I have a fun picture of this with my dad and his brother right on the front row and their little sister right behind them. And looking at the picture, I could see, yes, there were definitely several of the children who were Cherokee. So isn’t that funny that I’ve looked at that picture and I’ve heard the story, but I did not put that together until I dug into those records and learned more about those records.
Nicole (14m 44s):
Oh yeah. Well I love that picture. I’ve seen it a lot of times too, so that’s interesting. Well, during their time in the cabin in the Ozarks, the Schultz family had many adventures that you researched and you turned into fun little stories. So we’ve loved reading those with our kids. Bob Getting Shot has been a very famous one in our household. We turned that into a little book that my six year old just read the other day and he was getting ready for bed and he, he couldn’t just read through it. He had to jump to the page where Bob got shot and find out if he was okay.
2 (15m 23s):
Oh, that’s great. That’s great.
Nicole (15m 26s):
But we also like the story of the tornado and the dust storms and the coon hunting. So there were a lot of exciting things that happened at that time.
2 (15m 34s):
Yeah, I think he had more adventures than most people do, right?
Nicole (15m 38s):
I mean, most people don’t get shot and survive that, so.
2 (15m 41s):
Yep.
Nicole (15m 41s):
However, at that time it was very challenging, you know, the Great Depression, and they were in a place that didn’t have very many opportunities. So realizing that California offered more opportunities for his family in 1937, Les returned to Singer and secured work and then sent for Eddie and the children and they settled into a two-story house. And Bob started the fifth grade in the Fairview School there in Singer California where there were four grades per teacher in 1939. Bob had sleeping sickness and spent three weeks in the hospital, but luckily he never had any ill effects afterward about his schooling in Singer Bob wrote, I graduated from the grade school in 1941, the year World War II broke out.
Nicole (16m 27s):
Many of my Japanese friends were evacuated to camps. I attended Singer High School for four years where I was active in football, basketball, and baseball. The last two years we were undefeated in our league in football and basketball.
2 (16m 42s):
I thought that was really fascinating too, that he experienced that whole era of the Japanese being sent to the internment camps and he had saw his friends leave and one of the pictures that we have of him is him and his brother again, and then right next to them is one of their Japanese friends. And how sad is that, that that was such a terrible time for these Japanese Americans that had only known living in America and all of a sudden they are targeted because of their ethnicity and sent away. My dad lived through so many things in our history that we learn about, and he was right there in the middle of all of that.
2 (17m 24s):
Well, when he turned 18 in March of 1945, he had gotten through enough of his senior year that he could graduate early and he joined the Navy, so he did earn his high school diploma, but he missed graduation, and instead he was sent off to aviation machinist school in Norman, Oklahoma with the war in the Pacific over in August. He never saw active duty, but he did spend the next year on the u s s and Tetum and saw China and Guam. So he wrote in his history in the fall of 1946, I signed up at Fresno State College and went one semester studying engineering.
2 (18m 4s):
I had forgotten my math so much I couldn’t make it. So I quit school and farm for two years. In 1948, I decided I’d better try school again. This time I signed up for a major in animal husbandry and got along much better. While in college I joined the Sigma Tao Fraternity, and in my junior year I was president of the fraternity. The following year we became affiliated with the National Sigma Kai Fraternity. During my college days, I also served in most of the offices of the Kai Beta Alpha, the honorary agricultural fraternity on campus. In 1951, I was chairman of the Aggie Field Day. This was the big event when all the judging teams from the whole area came to the campus to spend the day and judge all types of livestock and products.
2 (18m 48s):
I also ran for student body president, but didn’t quite get the job done. I was defeated by Chuck Moran, one of the football stars. I served on the student council a couple of years, almost Chairman of the Religion and Life Week on campus. I graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree in animal husbandry. Well, this was so fun to read his history and then get out his yearbooks, because I have all of those now and the yearbooks have pictures and they really show what his time on the campus was like. Now what happened was we had the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act in 1944 that typically we just hear called the GI Bill and Congress passed this so that all of these veterans from World War II would have an opportunity to get a college education.
2 (19m 39s):
And that was key in so many of our ancestors. And so Bob joined fellow veterans and he used those benefits to get a college education, which was a wonderful thing for his family and a wonderful example for his descendants.
Nicole (19m 58s):
Yeah, I was just thinking about how, you know, he struggled with math and you know, I have a couple kids who have struggled with math and it’s such a good example that he decided he would try again and didn’t give up forever. You know? I love that.
2 (20m 14s):
Right. I love it too. I think he went to work farming and he thought, I have got this opportunity through the GI Bill to get an education. I can do something different. So I do love that, that he tried again. I also love that he was so active in all these organizations and a leader on campus. He was such a quiet man, you know, you don’t really necessarily picture him as going out running for student body president. Right.
Nicole (20m 40s):
No.
2 (20m 42s):
So I thought that was really fun too, seeing what he wrote about that. And then it was just fun looking through his yearbooks, seeing him in all these different fraternities, these organizations, and I thought it was very interesting that he was also Chairman of the Religion and Life Week, which kind of points to him searching, because his family, they were all moving so much, they never really left stories about belonging to particular churches or particular religions. They just would go to whoever was preaching out by the river. You know, that’s one of the stories they have. They’d just take their wagon out and there was, there was a preacher there by the river, and everybody would just come and gather there in Oklahoma.
2 (21m 25s):
And so I thought that was an interesting thing that he was chairman of that activity.
Nicole (21m 31s):
That stood out to me as well. And I remember when I interviewed some people about Bob’s mother, Eddie Bell Harris, they said she was a religious woman who believed in God, and I bet she shared that with her sons, you know? Yeah.
2 (21m 47s):
I think that she must have just fun. It’s fun to take, again, a little piece of a person’s life and explore that and think about how that made them who they are. I really inherited my dad’s love of learning. He always had a book in his hand, always, always, always. He never was anywhere without a book because he never knew when he’d have a few minutes to stop and read, and he tells a story about how in the cotton fields when he was young and they were supposed to be out there picking cotton, he would lay down and read his book and his dad would come along and get so mad at him. But he loved westerns so much and watching them and reading them.
2 (22m 28s):
The very last book he was reading when he passed away was a Louie Lamore, and he read all those. He loved those.
Nicole (22m 37s):
Who doesn’t love Louie Lamore? Those are fun adventures. Yeah. Well, yes, I do remember him being a lifelong learner and that he was always reading. So that’s a fun memory to close with in this episode about Grandpa Schultz. I am so glad you’re writing these little vignettes about our ancestors and it’s fun to talk about them. So thanks everyone for listening, and we hope you’ll also take some time to write short stories about your ancestors and preserve the memories for your future.
2 (23m 11s):
All right. Thanks everyone. We’ll talk to you next time.
Nicole (23m 14s):
Bye. Bye-Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, research Like a Pro and Research like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at family lock.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses To get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter@familylocket.com slash newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to research like a pro.
Links
The Education of Bobby Gene Shults – https://familylocket.com/the-education-of-bobby-gene-shults/
The Adventures of Cowboy Bob: That Blasted Burro – https://familylocket.com/the-adventures-of-cowboy-bob-that-blasted-burro/
The Adventures of Cowboy Bob: The Covered Wagon Trip and the Train – https://familylocket.com/the-adventures-of-cowboy-bob-the-covered-wagon-trip-and-the-train/
The Adventures of Cowboy Bob: Getting Shot https://familylocket.com/the-adventures-of-cowboy-bob-getting-shot/
“Oklahoma, School Records, 1895-1936,” Bobbie Gene Shults, 1936, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2LD-NR2C : accessed 28 Jan 2023); citing Scholastic Census Report, January 1936, school District no. 33, Cherokee, Oklahoma, United States, Proctor, Oklahoma; FHL microfilm 2,440,316.
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Research Like a Pro Resources
Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference – by Nicole Dyer – https://familylocket.com/product/airtable-research-logs-for-genealogy-quick-reference/
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2023 – monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2023/
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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