Update history for okobojo.com December 2004 - Added more pictures of gravestones we took in October. Also added captions and information about the McGuires buried there compliments of Zelda Dubel. Zelda was kind enough to write a synopsis of her relatives and send some photos of them. If you have family in the cemetery please feel free to contribute information and pictures and I'll add them as well. October 2004 - Finally got back to Okobojo on October 2nd and 3rd. There's a new house and a new hunting lodge there. It must be the first significant new construction there in 50 years. Added four new headstone pictures to the cemetery. March 2004 - I'm recovering from an accident that broke both of my heels and I'm unable to get to the letters to type more of them in. I'll be tinkering a little with the site this year but it will be a while until a major addition. I'm still very interested in talking to anybody about all things Okobojo. June 2003 - I've been working on a long deliberated book project lately so there's too much going on this summer to get everything done. Sorry. I'll update again in the fall. May 2003 - I added a link to the SD Historical site on the Evans Hotel to page 58 of George's memoirs. March 2003 - Added Willis and Lucille's wedding picture to the synopsis on Willis from January. It was donated by Frank Wilder - one of Aunt Cathie's sons. He also sent in a great picture of John S. Green which I added to the bottom of the John S page. A great big thank you to Frank and all the Wilder boys for their contributions! Added 4 letters to the Okobojo letters section - January 1901 and February 1901 from Madge to Will, July 1917 from George and one that I estimated at 1915 from Willis. February 2003 - No update. January 2003 - I finally got Great Uncle Willis' poetry typed in. I also wrote a short synopsis of his life. You'll find both here. December 2002 - It's been a busy month with the holidays and all. I've been working on a Java Script bug on and off since June. The bug was preventing me from having popup stats on more than one person per screen. I finally figured it out and I'm working on it here. Soon I'll make popup stats for all the major Okobojoans. Please send me vital information on former Okobojo residents in order to have them included. November 2002 - Added pictures of vintage print shops to the tour of Will's print shop in Georges Memoirs. There are new pictures on pages 8, 9 ,10 and 19. It's been brought to my attention that the closups associated with the Okobojo pioneer women photograph I added last month failed to include the dog. That error has been corrected and I would like to thank the astute reader who brought this matter to my attention. I also added some new graphics to the Okobojo Times pages in the Intro and in the Okobojo letters section. I updated some information on Green family history for the Wilders in North Carolina and put it here. Also added two newspaper articles to the Okobojo letters timeline in 1884, a letter in 1914 and a letter in 1923. Rewrote the first page of the intro again too. October 2002 - I replaced the poor quality scans of the Okobojo pioneer women and the Okobojo baseball team with high quality scans from actual photographs that were donated by Rhoda Wicker - an Owen descendent. Rhoda has published a book of her research and you can get a copy at http://home.att.net/~rewicker. The updated pictures are the third and fourth pages of the Intro section. The higher quality photos allowed me to add a closup feature, so now, if you click on the face of a person in the picture you can see a closup of them. She also donated a scan of a letter Jesse Owen wrote in Dec. 1898 while he was in the Philippines with the Green boys. I typed in the letter and added it to the Okobojo letters timeline. Thanks a ton to Rhoda for those wonderful contributions! September 2002 - When I heard that Lucille Weber died I wrote a poem about the time I met her and Great Uncle Willis in 1970. I added the poem to the end of the Okobojo letters timeline. Added 22 new photos to the Okobojo Cemetery section and added 4 new photos to Georges Memoirs - Pages 1, 5, 45 and 95. June 2002 - Working on new timeline format and popup stats for Okobojans and key players. Both still have some bugs at this time. I put scans of Hazel's Glessner family research online for some other Glessner descendents. Modem users beware these are scans and they are slow to download. I'm going to take most of the summer off from programming. I decided to come back and re-write Madge and Will's section. It's still a work in progress too. I also added a satellite photo to the Okobojo map. Now I'm done for the summer. April 2002 - Added a letter that grandpa George wrote his dad in 1917 to the Okobojo letters section - George was 9. Added some pictures that were sent in by Aunt Cathie's sons to her life story in the Okobojo Stories section. They sent the first picture I'd ever seen of the original Glessner and Green Homesteads. Thanks a ton to all the Wilders for their contributions. March 2002 - Added captions to the Glessner Sheep Ranch banner picture. Added a link for Dr. John T. Hunt's memoirs to the John S. Green page. He served with John S. Green in the 40th Illinois. Thanks to Carol Lee Yarbrough for her hard work in creating this wonderful website about the men of the 40th. I also added a Biography of Judge John Green and added few new pics to the intro. Also added some new pics to the Cemetery Section and re-wrote the John S and Sarah Green Section. January 2002 - Began adding excepts from some of the Okobojo Stories to the pictures of the headstones in the cemetery section. Added a description from Della May McGannon Bagby's story as an intro to the main cemetery page. December 2001 - Added three new items to the Okobojo letters section dated 1891, October 1899 and September 1903. Thanks to long lost cousin Karen (Green) Allen for a photocopy of the 1903 newspaper. She works at the South Dakota State Historical Society and she has been a ton of help. Added some footnotes for clarification to Della Mcgannon Bagby's story in the Okobojo Stories section. Della lists Charlie Green (one of John S. Green's kids) as one of the people who got off the boat at Pierre with her family when they first came to Okobojo but it's unclear. I'm trying to figure out if John's family came from Yankton by boat with her. Any information about this would be appreciated. November 2001 - Finally finished typing Grandpa's Memoirs and added a downloadable/printable version in ascii text format. View it here (right click to save the file to your hard drive). October 2001 - Typed in another 30 pages of Grandpa's Memoirs. Added a picture of the Okobojo Hotel to Steve Travis' recollections in the Okobojo Stories section. Added a page with information and pictures of the Okobojo Town Hall. I finally made a map of the Okobojo area. I haven't figured out how to work it into the web site yet so this link is the only place it shows up for now. September 2001 - Added some very interesting accounts of the1883 land rush by R.J. Courtney and Steve Travis to the Okobojo Stories section. Also added Issac McGannon's Okobojo Recollections from 1892 and an 1884 article from the Watchman about Okobojo's first Christmas to the Okobojo letters section. All of these stories and the associated pictures came from a very rare 1939 edition of the History of Sully County that was loaned to me by Bonnie Zebrosky. Special thanks to Bonnie for that and for sending lead type she and her family dug from the site of Will's old print shop at Okobojo. I also added pictures of Dad and Jack Finley riding horses up to the old Green homestead to the end of the into. August 2001 - Added this update history to help people who want to see what's new on the web site. I also added a poem called Okobojo by Great Uncle Willis to the second page of the intro (click the more>> button to see it). Thanks to Sharon (Ripley) Donnelly for contributing a homemade book of Willis' poetry. What an amazing find after all these years. I'll be adding more of Willis and George's poetry soon. July 2001 - I added two new Okobojo Stories - Great Aunt Cathie and Bessie Lumley. I started putting headstone pictures with many graves in the cemetery section. I will continue to add more pictures in the future. I also added more info about Will Green in the Will & Madge section, including his war diary and his obituary. June 2001 - Added two new banner pictures - click on the banner to change it. Added Issac McGannon and Charles Glessner to the Okobojo stories section. Added a photo of Viola Trumble that her family sent in. Added a few more Okobojo letters. Added 10 more pages to Grandpa's Memoirs. Added separate Okobojo cemetery section. May 2001 - I started a separate section for Okobojo stories. I put copies of Viola Trumble and Della Bagby's life stories on there to kick it off. I also thought that would be a good place for Rick Binkley's wonderful letters he wrote me about Okobojo and for Tarina Kopren's notes about the Okobojo school. Added a few more Okobojo letters. I rearranged the format so the Greens of Okobojo have their own section now and added 20 more pages to Grandpa's Memoirs. April 2001 - I put on a new banner picture. It was taken from the same position as the other one so they should line up together. Click on the banner to see them both. I typed in some of the letters from Will's war chest and put them in a new section called Okobojo letters. I am experimenting with a horizontal scroll bar to navigate thru the years - I would appreciate any feedback anybody has on it's usefulness. Added 20 more pages to Grandpa's Memoirs. I don't have very good records prior to April. |