Families Project

As mentioned on the opening page of this blog, the Friends of Fort Flagler are involved in numerous activities, including “…researching people both military and civilian who lived on the fort.” The Fort Flagler Families project is that research effort. Board member Carol Maki began this project a few years ago when she realized that while a lot of people knew about the guns and batteries of the original fort, there seemed to be very little known about the people that lived here. And being a retired professional genealogist, she had some good ideas about how to remedy this situation. As of June 2009, there are 548 people in a computerized index. These 548 individuals include those that were at the fort as soldiers, officers, wives, children, servants and civilian employees, circa 1898 through about 1915. It also includes some military personnel that were only at the fort for a short time, perhaps participating in a trial, perhaps as a patient at the hospital. Information in this index may include name, rank, occupation, source (how we know they were at FF --- census, monthly sheets, family letters, etc.), date of birth, place of birth and when they were at the fort. An expanded index adds parents, children and siblings of the 548, with a current total of over 1,200 people. In the coming months, we will bring you a few stories of these people, including Lt. Chester Loop, whose son was born at Fort Flagler in 1910; Blanca Guiteras, born in Cuba in 1848 and living with her husband, Captain John Deane Charles Hoskins, and their daughter Jennie, at Fort Flagler in 1900; Dr. Elbert Elvero Persons, who made many of the decisions in the construction of our 1905 hospital building; and Manford Cleveland Turman, who came over from Fort Casey in 1903 for surgery at Fort Flagler, and did not, perhaps as a testimony to the care he received, die until 1963, in Idaho Falls, Idaho! If you have suggestions or questions about this project, contact Carol at JNCL2@cablespeed.com.