Hello, Pip and all the friendly cousins. Here in Everett, Washington it is sunny and the temperature is in the 60s. Daughter and I are going downtown this evening to pick up some apparel that we ordered online yesterday. I am done with shopping in malls. If the black dress is too short I can always add some stretch lace to the bottom, as I did with the gray Marvel comics heroes dress that I got at Hot Topic some years ago. But I have found nothing since in Hot Topic that I, a 68 year old, find inspiring.
Yet I find that genealogy makes me happier than sewing. Genealogy all happens on the computer. No mess, no fuss, and no guilt over what I've left undone. Plus I am always wondering whether I "should" use that scrap of fabric in this or that project. My motto: piece drunk, quilt sober. Pay very little attention to whether I "should" place it somewhere, and just get 'er done. Makes for many crazy blocks and string piecing.
As the month flips over, and the Memorial Day ceremony is behind me, I renew my effort to find anything about the unknown soldier in the Mukilteo Pioneer Cemetery. The burial list (handwritten) shows him as "Soldier McAlster," following the DeSelle children who died in the late 1880s. Accordingly, the grave marker (which reads "McCalsu" due to a misreading of the handwriting) is placed near these children's grave. It's not placed with the earliest burials, which include three Civil War veterans, dating from the 1870s.
Accordingly, I have been looking for McAlisters or similarly spelled surnames in Mukilteo before 1920. One soldier, who lived briefly in Mukilteo in the early 1900s, is not buried here but at the Veterans' Home in Retsil. I have honed in on a McCallister family that lived in Lowell, just around the river bend from Mukilteo, in the late 1880s. My candidate for the unknown soldier is
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McCallister-950 , one William McCallister, who is in the 1887 Territorial Census, residing in Lowell, and who is not with wife and son in the 1889 census. There are no county death records for that period. I did not find him in the county probate cases. I have no proof that he died in Mukilteo (although he could have) and no proof that he was a soldier. His son and his brother, however, did serve in the 1st Oregon Infantry during the Rogue River War of 1855-1860, at which time William McCallister was living in that part of Oregon. This is the tantalizing set of circumstances that I am researching. I am not going public with it until I can say something definite.
Finding something in a newspaper would definitely help. The spelling of the surname is a challenge when applying search engines. I found something online from a San Francisco paper about the murder of William's brother, Richard, by his own son, John McCallister, who went to the Oregon State Pen at the age of 15.
I added a few veterans, a WW II and a Vietnam casualty, from Mukilteo to WikiTree this past week. More people than ever before came to me after my talk with questions and comments.
I am waiting a call from the president of the Historical Society about going to the bank to open a new Certificate of Deposit account. Don't know if she made the appointment for today or not.
Take all care with your brains and your other body parts this week until we chat again.
