Cragun - Bingham - Porter - South - Salinas - Spouses - Parents + Basic Genealogy information. Also a passionate advocate of FamilySearch and FamilySearch Family Tree. Email Larry at larry@cragun.net
The first and easiest way to attach a source to a person in Family Tree will be to find it on FamilySearch.org, as I have depicted below, finding my father Royal Cragun in the 1940 Census.
All sources you find go into your FamilyTree Source Box by just dropping down MY SOURCE BOX, as depicted below and adding it to the source box, your holding place for all sources you attach. From there you go to the person, click go to the source box, and you attach the person to the document. It's real simple.
The second way to put a source into the tree, and attach it to a person is to find a source that has its own unique URL. Find A Grave is an example of that, each memorial has it's own URL. Photos in Flickr, documents published in sites such as slideshare.net, and articles of documents on a blog have unique web addresses, or URL's. See photo below for an example.The URL here is long, that's OK.
The 3rd way is to have a document in hand or on a computer. I haven't seen, just heard rumors about the official word on uploading these to the tree. Ron Tanner, project manager told an audience I was in to just start scanning your documents. What I think will happen is that we will be provided a way to upload a document in to FamilySearch, then one button it into the source box. In the meantime I am using slideshare to upload documents or stories, Photobucket to upload photos, and my blog, this blog and my research blogs, to post the document with comments for a URL to attach.
I already have over 100 sources attached to my families in Family Tree.
It is an exercise of love, but it can be sort of exhausting to spend hours doing it.
Please feel free to leave a comment that is a question. We have new missionaries to train this week so it might take me a day or two to respond. I had one comment that this seems exciting. He's right, it is.
When you are a teenager you miss the importance of certain events that take place, right in front of you. My father had shared this story with our family many times. When he was in his 80's I encouraged him to dictate it to me so I could create some sort of book on this event. I guess I waited too long, as he couldn't stay focused, only reiterated some of what I write here. Dad did know from the day of the event I describe that what the world knew about nuclear accidents wasn't what he knew. He lived it. When I was 16 years old my father had cancer in the groin. He lost a testicle and spent months in radiation treatment, killing every cell in the groin area, thus killing the cancer. I now wonder did his heroic work cause the cancer.
Every work day for over 10 years my father, Royal Wilby Cragun drove from Pocatello, Idaho to the Arco Atomic Energy Site. He was a journeyman electrician from Pocatello Electricians Union local 449. I remember his co-workers Roland Helm, Ronnie Dransfield, and others would car pool. They were electricians and my father told me they were building a prototype for the The Atomic Submarine Nautilus. This was a duplicate of what the seagoing Nautilus would be. The companies mentioned below were common in our dinner conversations.
From WikiPedia: Nautilus was powered by the S2W naval reactor, a pressurized water reactor produced for the U.S. Navy by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Argonne National Laboratory, together with Westinghouse, developed the basic reactor plant design used in the USS Nautilus after being given the assignment on Dec. 31, 1947 to design a nuclear power plant for a submarine.[6] Nuclear power had the crucial advantage in submarine propulsion because it is a zero-emission process that also consumes no air. The physics critical experiments supporting this design were performed at Argonne. This design is the basis for nearly all of the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine and surface combat ships, and was adapted by other countries for naval nuclear propulsion. The first actual prototype (for the Nautilus) was constructed and tested by Argonne at the S1W facility in Idaho.
My father and his buddies had an air of pride about what they were involved in constructing. One day they returned home very late. Dad was in a state of shock. There had been a terrible accident. Three men had been killed.
For their safety there was always a process, of having on their person a device that measured the radiation level in the ship and on their bodies. They couldn't enter or leave certain areas without those devices measuring safely. The possibility of being contaminated was real. Also, there were instruments all around they could see performing the same function. This day they my father witnessed a terrible accident, a nuclear accident.
As dad told it, a nuclear explosion took place in a portion of the sub. It created radiation that permeated a portion of the ship. My father and Roland Helm were close to the event but safely out of harms way. Another man near the explosion panicked, tore off his protection suit, headed for his car and drove toward Idaho Falls. Two men near the explosion were locked in the area and soon died.
My father and Roland were either asked or volunteered to enter the contaminated area to retrieve the bodies.
They were scrubbed down before and after and received all of the precautions safety standards would demand. Dad told me they retrieved the bodies, and I sensed he felt he and Roland had performed an act of bravery.
He told me as they returned to Pocatello that night they witnessed their co-worker who ran, in his car, the worker dead, and the car being buried there in the desert.
Why my father did not write this story during the time of the event, he was in his 40's, I do not know. Perhaps he was told not to. At times I heard our government brag about our never having a nuclear accident causing deaths. I would confront him, his story was always the same and his hesitation to put it in print real.
I know three men died one day in the Arco desert. I know my father and Roland Helm retrieved the the bodies of two of them. I know that a third man, and his car were buried in that desert. I know we cannot say no one has died from a nuclear incident in our country. I also know that our government, and certain people that worked at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the Argonne National Laboratory know.
I have no motive to disparage any nuclear program. I just in honor of my father and Roland Helm, who are both dead now, want what few facts of the story I have been given, be published. Here, it's done.
After posting this I found WikiPedia referring to the accident. I also found this video:
I also found this on Encylopedia of Earth dotcom: The NRTS was also the site of the
first fatal nuclear accident in the U.S. which killed three men on July
3, 1961. The men were working in the experimental reactor Stationary Low-Power
Plant Number 1 when one of the control rods was removed from the reactor
improperly. This led to a core meltdown and eventual explosion of the reactor.
I guess there is confirmation that supports this story. The news stories that say there were no deaths are wrong.
Our Grandmother Blanche Bingham had a rough life at times. I wrote previously from her writings as an old lady, how she said she was lonely. Click Here We have other writings where she said how happy she was. We are told things we are having a hard time verifying. Her first husband, Grundy, seemed to be a bigomist, so the story goes. I was told as a young person this marriage was anulled. We see in her writings the word divorce. Then she married Cragun and it seems those were hard times. Simeon Cragun, my grandfather died. At that time my father, Royal Cragun was the oldest at home. He was a responsible type person and went to work, foregoing any higher education, to support Grandmother and his younger siblings.
Yesterday, my sister Nancy called. Being the bloodhound detective she is, and prompted by the recent Who Do You Think You Are show, decided to check out the bigamy story. She called and asked me to go to Ogden, where many of these events likely took place. It seems the dates of marriages, births, etc. aren't matching up.
Seeing the document beats hand me down stories.
Ahah, I have one of Grandmothers marriage certificate in things I got from Mother. It saves a lot of effort to have the documents easily at your fingertips. So now I refer you back to the article: Be Ye Therefore Organized, click here for that. It's really a great feeling.
Here is one of the documents you wanted me to research, Nancy: front and back. Click the link below the certificate to go to SlideShare.net where you can, and I did upload the document. A larger photo is at that site.
When I was a teenager my dad took me deer hunting. It was not fun for me. I wounded a little guy. Dad told me I had to track it down as I only wounded it. It took a while, but I had a trail of blood to follow. I did find him, he was lying down and alive. Have you ever had a wounded young deer look up at you in pain and sadness? That's what happened to me. There was nothing sporty or fun about having to finish him off. Deer hunting was over for me forever.
Now, to lighten things up - here is a story that might make you smile:
Why we shoot deer in the wild (A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this)
I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up-- 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold..
The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope .., and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.
That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
Did you know that deer bite?
They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ..... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head--almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.
It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp... I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope......to sort of even the odds!!
When you visit familysearch.org do you have a family tree link at the top? Probably not, but trust me, you will want one. The plan is to introduce family tree this year. About 5,000 of us are beta testing it now.
Those who are using new family search find many problems in the accuracy of the data, which can be frustrating. If that is you, don't worry, new family search will become family tree. I am telling people who call into Church Headquarters requesting corrections, to be patient, they can do it themselves when Family Tree is launced.
Family Tree is a new approach to genealogy. It is unlike any tool you’ve used before. You will connect with others who share a common interest in your genealogical lines. Together, you compare findings, weigh evidence, and decide what information is most correct. The history of your work and the rationale for change are preserved for others to see. You’ll find great satisfaction in your family research because you are part of a team working towards the same goal—the most accurate, complete, and enduring family tree ever produced.
I think the most important part is how the system allows you to correct errors yourself instead of waiting for the person who input the wrong data or waiting for the church to agree with your correction.
There is an edit process. It allows you to make the correction. It asks you to support that change. It provides a public view of who made the change, your support for the change, and allows someone else to provide their opinion. This process creates a collaboration. You, for your tree can use what you believe is the best correct answer, while the other opinions remain as part of the file.
See below where my father Royal Cragun had incorrect information posted.
His middle name is not Willy. I intend on providing a link to a copy of his birth certificate as evidence.
There was no information about his burial, so I added that. I was provided a box to show documentation and it remains visible to all who visit the entry.
The Church expects the numbers of users to be in the millions, many of those non members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
If you will leave your name as a comment, I will notify you when Family Tree goes live.
