USCT Research & Cowboy Days Event

By Drew Doebelin

Its been almost two weeks since I last wrote a post, and it’s been very busy! A lot of what I’ve done has been research towards the USCT project, but I’ve been able to help out with a little bit of scanning and cleaning items for the museum. My brother and I also finished work on an excel that should help with ordering commonly used items (paper, envelopes, etc.) and tracking when we get low on things.

About the USCT project, Ashley and I found two more soldiers and started building out their family trees to see whose family may have stayed in Callaway! Since realizing the 1890’s veteran census existed, this search has been a lot easier since it lists out a soldier’s alias if they changed their name after the war. I hope to have more information to tell everyone soon!

We also had the Cowboy Church’s “Old West Day”, of which I helped set up the display for. It was a really fun event, there were wagon horse rides, reenacted shoot outs, a blacksmith demonstration, and even an apple pie contest that I got to help judge. We had quite a cool few items displayed at our tents, including a really pretty lace collar, surgeons kit (many people were disturbed by how big the needles were) and gun powder horn. There was a lot of amazing people I got to meet, so I really appreciated getting to participate! Learning to talk and work with the public is something I’ve always been worried about, but I find the more I interact with people the easier it gets!