Welcome
This is our family website for Loofbourrow, Syfert, Day, Barker, Agnew, Rittenhouse, Shanks, and many others that are in the family tree. This site has books, references, history, genealogy, obits, photo archive, and much more.
The Photo Gallery is currently being upgraded: It is a work in porgess so check it out from time to time. I am frequently adding photos. Contact me if you have historical or updated photos to share.
Happy Ancestory,
Ron Snow
Family Names
If you go back to the mid-1800's, one set of family names we share are: Loofbourrow-Syfert , when in 1865 James Shanks Loofbourrow married Mary Catherine Syfert. Their children married into yet other families: Conlin, Agnew-Barker, Day, Easling, and Bates. There was a bit of England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, and Germany in the family at this point in the mid-1800s and most came from families that came to America in the late 1600's. James and Mary Catherine's grand-children then continued to expand the connections to 17 additional families, and from the following generation scores more.
Chances are you might not have the surname of Syfert, or Loofbourrow, but your ancestors did! Maybe your linage came from unions since: From the Day, Jones, Hockaday, Johnson, or from dozens of later unions.
A First Hand Experience with Pandemic
Some of you may find the diary entries that our own Royal Day made during the 1918 Spanish Influenza interesting. At the age of 17 (going on 18) Royal Day had made a contract with himself at the beginning of 1918 to write a diary with the aim "to amuse myself on reading it several decades hence". The October and November diary entries mention the Spanish flu pandemic and you can read his experience here. WW-I had just ended and tens of thousands of servicemen were returning home from the war. Royal had graduated from Pasadena High School, started at USC and was a member of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC).
Just a note about Royal's writing style. He was just 18, a typical teenager of the times, and he likes to use initials for his girl friends and often drops in French phrases. The transcription and annotation of his diary was made possible by Royal's sons Bob and Rich Day. The full diary is available in the books section.
Holiday Memories
A few years ago we collected holiday stories from several of our cousins and relatives and gathered them into a 35 page collection. These include stories from the turn of the century (1900) and some as recent as a few years ago. There are stories from our relatives in Iowa, Oklahoma, many from southern California area and up at Hollister. You older ones will enjoy the memories and you younger ones will get a glimpse of family Christmas' past. I hope you enjoy!
Down load the Holiday Memories collection. If you have an iPad you can download it and save it as an iBook. Most of you will probably just print it.
Geneology
Thanks to fantastic family involvement in helping capture our family history, and the diligent and hard work of decades by Margie, we all now have a rich family history document that includes: interesting charts, Family Trees, Ancestor and Descendants charts, and lots of details on our ancestors..
Interested? Check out the new 2nd edition of our Family Genealogy by Margie (Hockaday) Kinnaman or try our online Family Genealogy. This online data has a security check that prohibits seeing 'living' people but it does show our history and ancestors. Contact Ron for more details.
Gift Idea
First, the new 2nd edition of our Family Genealogy by Margie (Hockaday) Kinnaman. Margie is our family historian and this 520 page hardcover has our family history dating back to the 1600s to present. It is sold at cost and available here at Lulu, they print and ship in about 10-14 days.
Thanks to Bob and Rich Day, Royal Day's sons, Ron Snow has transcribed and annotated Royal's 1918 diary, a diary he wrote when turning 18, graduating from High School, and starting College and adulthood. This hardcover is sold at cost and available here at Lulu.