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Thaddeus O'Malley's Timber Culture Grant

Earlier this year, I researched a man named Thaddeus O'Malley to determine if he could be related to my second-great-grandmother Catherine Ryan Gilbride. Thaddeus O'Malley and his wife Honora McNally are the common ancestral couple to several of my DNA matches. My hypothesis is that they are related to Catherine's line in some way, as I cannot account for them in any other direct line. This research at present is stalled...and a job for another day. I did learn something new, though, while looking into Thaddeus O'Malley's life. He was granted a land patent in Nebraska in 1892. It was a Timber Culture land patent—an unfamiliar type. The Timber Culture Act was passed in 1873, and followed the Homestead Act of 1862. It awarded up to 160 acres of public land after applicants made improvements, including planting 40 acres of trees on their land (later lowered to ten acres). The program aimed to provide lumber to residents of the Great Plains for building and fuel, and al

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Generational Photo

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Generational Photo - January 12th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey


 

BOOMER! 

I love this three-generation photo of my husband, son and father-in-law, for a few reasons. 

All three are died-in-the-wool University of Oklahoma fans. Jim and Papa (the kids' term for their paternal grandpa), both born and raised in Oklahoma, grew up rooting for OU. As far as football was concerned, OU was the most important football thing going. James was quickly initiated into the OU fold as soon as he was old enough to hold a football. So when it was time to pick a theme for a multi-generational photo, an OU-theme photo it was.

Ironically, our son now attends OU. OU may have been his last college visit of three, but it was the school that quickly rose to the top, the dream school. Somehow it just felt right that he would choose OU, and fulfill the unspoken generational dream that someone from the Casey family would attend there.

It's also not lost on any of us that another Casey family favorite—the Cleveland Browns—now possess a former OU quarterback in Baker Mayfield. It came as a complete shock to me to learn in the early days of my relationship with Jim, that both he and his dad were not only lifelong OU fans, but also lifelong Cleveland Browns fans as well. That's right, these Okies had been rooting for this gal's hometown team for years. A marriage made in heaven? In more ways than one!

OU is inextricably woven into our life as a a family. 

And that's OK.

  SOONER!



 

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