RLP 377: Visiting the Cassia County Historical Society & Museum

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro, episode 377: Visiting the Cassia County Historical Society and Museum. 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 genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin 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 (44s):
Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hi everyone and Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (51s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m doing great. I’ve been brainstorming a lot of fun, different ideas for research that I want to do next and thinking about fun record types that I’ve learned about for making proposals for the next National Genealogical Society conference. And I just get excited about it. It’s fun

Diana (1m 12s):
Thinking about what you want to teach because we learn so much as we’re preparing to teach, making the slides and syllabus. So, and it’s always fun to talk about our research, a case studies and things too.

Nicole (1m 24s):
Exactly.

Diana (1m 24s):
Our presentations.

Nicole (1m 26s):
Yeah, I like to use like research reports that I’ve written where I’ve really found a lot of good things and correlated things and there’s always like something to teach about from those reports.

Diana (1m 36s):
Oh, absolutely. So one of the things that I like to do is do a project in Claude, one of the large language AI models and then put in a report and just ask it for ideas. You know, what are some ideas for either a blog post or a a session, a presentation, something I can teach from this. And I’m always surprised that sometimes the AI will pick up on different things that I hadn’t even thought about that would be a great presentation. So, you know, I had fun getting together my ideas for the NGS National Genealogical Society conference as well.

Nicole (2m 14s):
Yeah, it is fun to work on that. And I know you’ve been also working on recording some lectures for the Texas conference too and I need to get started on those ’cause we are supposed to turn in the recording soon.

Diana (2m 26s):
Right, and I have had fun with that and in both of those lectures I am using some examples from my own work. So one of them is Small Bites, Big Impact, and it’s on crafting focused narratives to illuminate ancestral lives. So we have talked a lot about these little narratives on the podcast, different little stories that I’ve discovered by just taking one theme and exploring that. You know, like the education of Bobby Gene Shults, my dad, and I have learned so much from those. So it’s really fun to give that presentation and I’m excited to share that. And then the other one I’ve been working on is my Clemsy Cline research, putting together the three different projects I did and showing how, yeah, it’s possible if you have a female and the counties are burned and you have no idea who a father is, you can use cluster research and the available records and a lot of correlation and then finally DNA to help you find a father.

Diana (3m 28s):
So, you know, that’s been a big part of my research the last two or three years and it’s fun to have it come together and be able to prepare slides and a presentation focusing on that.

Nicole (3m 42s):
Hooray, that’ll be really fun to hear you teach about that. Our announcements today are that the next Research Like a Pro webinar in the webinar series is going to be by Melanie Whitt. And the title is Parents for Ellen Cecilia Scott: a 19th-Century Irish Immigrant DNA Case Study And she’s going to be talking about an orphaned first generation Irish American who was born in 1860, Ellen Cecilia Scott. And she’s going to talk about using census and newspaper records to find more about her life, figure out where she was born, what happened with her father and her adoptive parents and all kinds of questions.

Nicole (4m 22s):
And using DNA analysis to reveal genetic networks and pedigree to triangulation and correlation of geographic evidence and other methodologies to help solve the case. So it’s going to be a great one using mostly Ancestry DNA matches and focusing on the 19th century Irish research. So we hope you’ll join us for that. And Melanie is one of the team members here at FamilyLocket Genealogists and she has really great qualifications. She has a Master of Science with Distinction in Genealogical, Paleographic, and Heraldic Studies from the University of Strathclyde.

Nicole (5m 4s):
She is also a Qualified Genealogist, a QG that’s a credential from a UK body. And she has done a lot of research internationally: France, Sweden, and Germany and the British Isles. So she has a unique perspective and we’re excited for her to share that webinar with us. The next Research Like a Pro with DNA study group will begin in February of 2026. So if you’re thinking of joining us, put that on your calendar and registration will begin in December. And the peer group leader application is on our website if you want to help out as a peer group leader and you can receive complimentary registration. Also, we want to remind you to join our Monday newsletter to get notifications of new content from us.

Nicole (5m 49s):
And we are going to be attending the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference. And that’s a virtual conference on November 7th and 8th. And we’ll both be teaching a couple classes. I’m talking about AI and genealogy, as well as tracking economic status through tax records in Texas. And then Diana’s talking about Small Bites, Crafting Focused Narratives and From the Embers: Uncovering Female Ancestry. So we will hopefully see you there virtually

Diana (6m 20s):
And we are always excited to present at the Texas Conference with all of our Texas roots. It’s fun to use some of our Texas ancestor as examples in our lectures. Well, today we’re going to not talk about Texas. We are going to go to Idaho, where I grew up. I recently was able to visit my hometown of Burley, Idaho in Cassia County and they have a really neat historical society and museum located there. I had gone to this museum as a young girl and then every time we would go visit my parents, well not every time, but many times I would take my children there. And this time it was just me and my husband and I wanted to go with a genealogist’s perspective to see what could be gleaned for someone researching their ancestor history.

Diana (7m 11s):
And I noticed that many of the exhibits were the same. I remember them from many years ago, but there were also some new treasures there that was so fun. So one of the things that it would be really helpful for someone who’s researching a family member living in the area is their collection of scrapbooks. And I thought this was just fascinating. So they have this large table and it’s raised so you can just stand and open up these great big scrapbooks. And through the years, whoever was in charge of the museum would cut out the newspaper articles and carefully put them into the scrapbooks. And a lot of them were specific articles just about the museum.

Diana (7m 55s):
And I hope to find mention of my Kelsey family in those because my uncle Ted Kelsey was instrumental in the museum and I was a young girl when it was established, the museum, in 1972. And he had passed away just before that in 1971. And he had, he had died unexpectedly at the age of 52. And it was so sad for our whole family. My mother especially was devastated. He, Uncle Ted was nine years older than her and he always took care of his baby sister. She would run to him with her owies she, she would relate and he was just always so caring for her.

Diana (8m 40s):
So it was really hard when he died. But it was neat when I looked through scrapbooks, I found two pages that were devoted all about his, there were newspaper articles covering his death and one of them also had a tribute letter from the Chamber of Commerce that I had never seen. So I did have some of the newspaper articles because of course my mother had also, you know, cut all those out. But this other letter was unique and when the museum was built, they put three big flagpoles out in front and the center one has Ted’s name written and it says Ted Kelsey. And it’s using horseshoes to spell his name because he loved to ride.

Diana (9m 25s):
And this is such a perfect tribute to him having this little monument there in the front, You know, just the bottom of the flagpole. So that was neat. It was fun to see a little bit of my family history right there in the scrapbooks. And if I hadn’t been able to find those newspaper articles or I didn’t have family who had saved those, it would be really exciting to find those right there in the scrapbooks.

Nicole (9m 50s):
That’s so fun. I love the flagpole art. I would call that art. It’s really pretty to have like that horseshoe, what do you call that? Horseshoe font. It’s really fun. There you go. And it’s decorated with more horseshoes and rocks. So that’s a fun memorial. So you also found two pages in the scrapbooks featuring the cabin that our family donated to the museum. So your grandfather, my great-grandfather, Edward Raymond Kelsey disassembled the pioneer cabin in the 1940s and then reassembled it on his farm. But after his death, his widow and the children decided that it would be the perfect addition to the museum.

Nicole (10m 35s):
So it got moved there and now it sits out front joined by two other cabins. And the cabin had originally served as a schoolhouse, so now it holds a stove, desks, slates and other educational items. When Edward moved the cabin, he numbered the logs and many of those numbers are still visible on the inside, which is really cool. Mom, you wrote a blog post about Edward Raymond Kelsey’s cabin. So we’ll link to that in the show notes. But it’s a really cool cabin and I remember going there as a kid to visit and take pictures in front of it and just see the old cabin from great-grandpa.

Diana (11m 20s):
Yeah, it’s neat. And I, it was a big deal when they were moving it because while I was growing up it was just there on the property. And so we would go out and, you know, look at it. I have some of my older cousins remember playing in it. Grandpa would say, get outta there you kids. But they would get up on the saddles. He had kept his saddles in there, and pretend that they were riding the range and he always had it full of antiques. He collected all sorts of things. And so he’d have these old horse collars and oh so many neat things. So it was kind of like his own little private museum. So it was really fitting that when he passed away they, they literally lifted it up and put it up on a trailer and hauled it into town and deposited it there at the museum.

Diana (12m 9s):
And when it was first put there, it was very lonely looking. It was the only thing out there in this big dusty front yard area front. It’s bigger than a yard. I mean it’s kind of a big area, but now it’s joined by these other cabins and they planted flowers and some shrubs and now it just looks right at home there. So it’s neat. And there’s the plaque on the front that says it was donated by the Kelsey family and has my mom and her, my siblings names inscribed there. So it’s just a part of my history and I am always happy to go back and and learn a little bit more about it. Well now let’s have a word from our Sponsor.

Diana (13m 31s):
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Nicole (13m 53s):
Well I was just thinking about the old cabin and how great Grandpapa Kelsey took each log and numbered it and then disassembled it and moved it to his farm. And I was thinking, well where did it come from? But I love that the newspaper clipping that you have from the scrapbooks in the museum, talk about that, and I’ll just read it. It says The cabin is believed to have been used as one of the county’s first schools as well as a homestead cabin. The structure will be restored and now sits on the grounds of the Cassia Museum in Burley. So it sounds like great-grandpa found it. And it says, it says it was found at a site on Cassia Creek near Connor.

Diana (14m 34s):
Right, kind of up in the hills, just these tiny little settlements. And they might have gotten bigger except for the area down by Burley, which really grew was on the Snake River. And so when they dammed that up and had irrigation come in, then that was the area that grew rather than up in the hills. Those little little towns up there were kind of abandoned. And so the cabin had been basically abandoned and so he went up there and dismantled it. I think two of his sons helped him and brought it back, which is such a neat project.

Nicole (15m 11s):
It is. It’s funny that he saw that and decided to like log by log, move it to his farm.

Diana (15m 18s):
I know, I know. It’s, it’s funny.

Nicole (15m 21s):
Preserve history, I mean he preserved history by doing that because then he could donate it to the museum,

Diana (15m 28s):
Right? And it just allows many more people to see it. When we were there it was the Cassia County fair going on and I was just so happy to see there. There were a lot of families and with young children and they were going in and seeing what it would’ve been like to go to school back in the 1870s. And so it’s just neat to be able to share that and so many more people can view it rather than driving all the way up to Connor Creek and and trying to find it. So yeah, in the blog post I wrote specifically about the cabin. It was fun because on Facebook there is a Facebook page that’s about Cassia County and someone had posted some articles and some pictures and things about the cabin in this area and I had not known some of that history before.

Diana (16m 23s):
And so I did a little bit more research of course on the, the family and the area and wrote a blog post about that. So, you know, it’s so fun to just dive deep into some of these little pieces of our history.

Nicole (16m 37s):
So true. Well back to the museum. So when you arrive at the museum, a large topographic map greets visitors and the interactive map illuminates various trails when you click on a button. And this was original to the museum and fascinated you as a child, mom, that’s funny. So you still love seeing the trails light up and thinking of the pioneers who crossed through the area on the way west to California or Oregon. The map shows the Snake River at the top marking the county boundary as well as cities and towns and the southern mountain range.

Nicole (17m 17s):
So that’s nice. And the carefully chosen artifacts displayed in front remind us of the challenge of taking a wagon through the area, which was then only sagebrush.

Diana (17m 29s):
And many of those outlying areas are still sagebrush. Well, you have to keep in mind that this was 1972 when this opened up and this, this map was there right at the beginning. And so it’s pretty low tech, but for the time it was really high tech. You know, you push a little button and these lights would light up, You know, now we go to museums and we have all this interactive things that’s powered by technology. So this is old school, but it’s still super fun to see the lights come up. And it’s neat because it was, you know, the Oregon Trail, California Trail go right through the area. So anyway, I think it’s such a fun thing to walk in and see this right away, this neat map of the county.

Diana (18m 15s):
So that was just like a little blast from the past to my childhood ’cause I did remember that. But a whole new area that they had put in since I’d been there was the World War II exhibit. And this was in a whole new room that they had built on. So I love how this little museum just continues to get better and better and they keep adding to it. And this has a full-sized Jeep, it has an eagle, like a real eagle, you know, in a glass case. And uniforms completely cover the walls from the conflict of World War II. I had no idea that there were so many different uniforms worn.

Diana (18m 54s):
So that was really neat and I loved how they had it organized by location. So, you know, all the soldiers who fought in Normandy where in one area, and all of those who were in a specific, like the Philippines, you know, the South Pacific were in another area. And so they had the uniforms that corresponded to those areas as well as local newspaper articles about soldiers, local soldiers from the county who had served in that area. And they also had some memorabilia, you know, families had donated medals or different things. So that was so neat. And you know, it was very patriotic. There’s red, white and blue sashing on one of the exhibits and it just felt like you were stepping back in time to this era of World War II, which, you know, we’re kind of fascinated with that era and like to read a lot of books and watch movies and things about it.

Diana (19m 49s):
So another exhibit that is all about World War II is the American war mothers and their efforts to support their sons. And I love this as well because my grandmother had three sons serving in the war and she was very active in the organization. And so it was neat to see a little tribute to those mothers who were making sacrifices. And I had discovered a little bit about my grandmother, Florence Creer Kelsey. She was the wife of my grandpa Kelsey, who, who did the cabin thing. And so I had written all about her in one of my very first blog posts and I found a picture of her with her group of war mothers there in Cassia County and they were sewing bandages and doing their part on the home front.

Diana (20m 38s):
So it was just neat to see a little little bit about that as well. They also had a whole section that was like a huge barn. It was a building, but it looked like a barn because it had all the tools and farm implements used by farmers and ranchers throughout the year. And they’d set it up as like the blacksmith shop and the livery. And so it was neat to go walk around and see like some of these machines. I just thought they were so ingenious. You know, I grew up on a, on a farm and had the big combines and the fancy tractors and such. And so seeing some of these historic machines, like there was a corn sheller and an oat separator and luckily they had little tags on them ’cause I would’ve had no idea what it was supposed to be.

Diana (21m 27s):
So that was a fun section.

Nicole (21m 30s):
And your pictures of this section are really fun. We’ll have a link in the show notes to all the pictures of everything we’re talking about, but it’s fun to see how they set up the museum to look like a barn and to show all the different farm implements and all the different display of everything. The clothing.

Diana (21m 46s):
Yeah, they’ve done a really nice job with this and the clothing. Oh my goodness. Women a hundred years ago were absolutely tiny. They have this display of wedding dresses. And I looked at it and I honestly thought that would now fit a 10-year-old girl.

Nicole (22m 7s):
Wow.

Diana (22m 8s):
They were so little. And the same thing with some of the uniforms. They had some World War I uniforms that were just really small and like the helmets were small. So I guess with good nutrition, people today are just bigger.

Nicole (22m 23s):
That could be.

Diana (22m 24s):
So there, there were all sorts of neat things. You know, household goods. They had a little kitchen, they had a doctor’s shop. You know, for a child going through who had no idea like what an old stove looked like, it would just be so neat. You know, this would be a fun place to take your kids. So I was impressed and it was fun to see, you know, some of the things I remembered from way back in the past. A lot of things haven’t changed and they’re just like when they started out, which I think is great.

Nicole (22m 51s):
Well, the last thing you looked at at the museum was the book section, which featured several volumes about the people in history of Cassia County. And there was a book there titled Cassia County, Idaho, the Foundation Years by Kathleen Hedberg. So that was great to see that book. And it had documentation and a complete bibliography of source material, which is exciting to find a source like that. And since my great-grandfather, your grandfather, Edward Kelsey, settled in the area about 1915, it’s perfect to read this book because it will talk about the history of the area at that time, and it can help add context to the stories and photos that we have already about him.

Nicole (23m 37s):
And this trip to the museum really was fun to go back in time and think about the history of the area and it provided those valuable resources for helping to research our family’s roots in the area. So advice: if there is historical, if there is a historical museum in the area where you research it will definitely be worth checking out. And probably each one will be a little bit different. And this one was really good, but it could be worth the effort to explore and see what resources and exhibits they have that could help you.

Diana (24m 15s):
Right. If I hadn’t gone there in person, I would’ve had no idea about the book. You know, I had no idea that Kathleen Hedberg had written this amazing book and she, she says in the beginning that she initially just wrote a 20 page paper about the history of Cassia County for her high school senior research project. And she thought she’d done quite well. Well now it’s a 256 page book about the history. Oh. And so, like you said, it is completely source cited, which I really appreciate because a lot of people just kind of, you know, will write the history from their memories and such, but don’t have any sources for it. And she really sought out some great sources.

Diana (24m 57s):
I mean, I’m just excited to read it and whenever I’m writing about my grandparents, I can now go through and learn the rest of the story, you know, just besides what I know and what they’ve written about in their history. So yeah, so you know, go visit these places and see if there is something there that can really help you. So it was fun. I was glad I went.

Nicole (25m 21s):
Well, thanks for sharing your visit to the museum with us. And thank you to everyone listening. We hope you have a great week, and we will talk to you again next week. Bye

Diana (25m 30s):
Bye-Bye.

Nicole (26m 9s):
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 booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.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 at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.