
website of Katie Willmarth Green	writer/historian/genealogist

New Projects

A sequel to Deborah Whitney of Shady Flat is well along. It is called (tentatively), Deborah Whitney, Daughter of the Mountains.

In it, Debbie’s adventures continue at Shady Flat and at Whitney’s Upper Mill, her father's other sawmill on the shoulder of the Sierra Buttes, in the summer of 1874.

A sneak preview: Debbie gets into a peck of trouble (of course) -- she seriously enrages her parents ... works her way back out of trouble through a flurry of hard work and minding her p’s and q’s (sort of)... unexpectedly makes an exotic friend, who changes her life for the better... strikes up a tender relationship with an animal... suffers a near-fatal injury while wandering in the woods on a solo expedition... carries on an ink-splotched correspondence with Selena Kelly ... enjoys a reunion with her teasing and hip big brother, Sam... is visited by her beloved (and slightly outrageous) Aunt Deborah... experiences several other interesting and dangerous things, as you now expect from this unusually bold, question-asking, risk-taking ten-year old girl in Old California.

Essays

I currently write a folksy monthly essay on a variety of topics for "Voice of the River Valley", an arts and culture newsletter covering people and events of a dozen towns along the Wisconsin River in Southwest Wisconsin, where I now live. Check out the website at www.voiceoftherivervalley.com for information. This past year's essays, based on the Chippewa moon calendar, are intended to become a chapbook before long.

Beatty Image

Sierra County Vital Records from 1850-1905, With Biographical Notes and Photographs

Note! You may contribute to this effort!!

The official birth, marriage and death records of Sierra County, lodged in the Clerk/Recorder's office at the Courthouse in Downieville, CA, are woefully incomplete. For whatever reasons, people often didn't bother to trot over and record these important events -- especially births -- until the State made it mandatory in 1905. People looking ardently for information about ancestors, those of us who help others trace pioneer families, and scholars doing purely academic research, have long gnashed our teeth over the spotty records.

Several years ago I stopped waiting for someone else to do something about this dearth of information and began making a computerized list. Thus far I have transcribed all the b/m/d records from fiche at the Courthouse, extracted listings from Lee Adam's Sierra County Pioneer Cemetery Index, and am slowly making my way through old newspapers on microfilm at archives such as the State Library, the Bancroft and Huntington Libraries, and wherever else such records may be found. Happily, some individual families have already shared their Bible entries and other unpublished records with me. I entreat others to do the same. I'd like to include photos and biographies of these Sierra County citizens, if at all possible. We'll never have a complete inventory of all who were born, married, or died in the county but we can certainly collect and publish a database that is much closer to reality than what now exists.