Blast o’ the past!
Monday, 2 February 2009
The blast of the title does not refer to the wintery weather (although it could!), but instead to visiting the now spiffed up building that used to be plain cement block and is where I used to go for monthly 4-H club meetings.
The most interesting tidbit gleaned from the Wikipedia entry on Alaiedon township based on 2000 census data:
For every 100 females there were 123.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 130.4 males.
This imbalance confuses me. Of course, I’m a woman who left, so I’m part of the reason for this stat? (Can’t believe it; that was quite a while ago.)
Far more interesting, however, is this history from a 1880 book; the earliest (Euroamerican) settlement dates to the late 1830s. Many surnames mentioned here survive as road and street names (e.g., Strickland, Phillips, Dell, Darling), and even some (I assume!) descendants carry a few of those names.